Dear Editor,
This is the letter that I sent to the president of CUNY New Paltz Donald P. Christian. You have my permission to publish it,
Dear President Christian,
The outrageous shunning of Jewish students by SUNY Sexual assault awareness group for having expressed approval of Israel is seriously antidemocratic and should not be tolerated.
No matter how egregious Israel’s behavior, and I would argue that its alleged crimes are seriously distorted, marginalizing Jewish students because they don’t adhere to the prejudice of the day namely BDS will embolden the inquisitors inevitably leading to violence.
This has happened before. In the 1930s, Nazi Germany’s antisemitic philosophies invaded classrooms where Jewish kids were bullied and forced to stand and sing pro-Hitler songs. It was not long until their presence was so intolerant that they were banned from attending school altogether. Can anyone in good conscience not see that the current requirement for acceptance i.e. the loathing of Israel as the ticket for acceptance is eerily similar to what happened in Germany’s schools.
Forced ideological correctness also occurred in 1950s America in which many institutions and jurisdictions unbalanced over their fear of communism enforced a loyalty oath that if my memory serves me correctly was, I am not now or have ever been a communist.
President Christian, you have your work cut out for you to (a), burn out the totalitarianism from SUNY’s DBDS community, and (b), protect your Jewish students from bullying. Anything less and your institution is no better than racist universities in Nazi Germany and the “the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA), popularly dubbed the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)'” that “was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of private citizens.” [1]
Please don’t let history repeat itself.
Sincerely yours,
Larry Shapiro
[1] Wikipedia
