Quasimodo

Sep 6 2008, 10:24 PM

Philip Kurian was an AA Duke senior who received a Benjamin Duke Scholarship, a Truman Scholarship, and was a student representative on the Board of Trustees. In short, he was an intelligent student, above average, and the recipient of a Duke education.

In 2004, the university decided to let the Palestinian Solidarity Movement hold a conference on the campus. This became controversial as the makeup of the conference included supporters of terrorism. At that time, Kurian wrote a guest editorial for the Chronicle, entitled,
"The Jews"

The question here being, how can someone who has received a college degree from a leading university, and graduated with many awards and distinctions,
write this as a serious opinion piece? If he believed this way before he arrived at Duke, how were these views not challenged by his Duke experience and education? (Did diversity fail in his case? ) Or, if he did not believe this way, did he learn this at Duke, or have it reinforced ?

I will skip over the question of why the Chronicle published a piece asserting that one of our diverse minorities has too much power and is using its influence in a malevolent manner, especially with regard to other minorities...

http://www.israellycool.com/2004/10/20/hat-tip-hitler/

"The Jews"

(snip)

It is well known that Jews constitute the most privileged “minority” group in this country. Among the top 10 universities, Jews enjoy shocking overrepresentation:

["shocking"?]

Only the California Institute of Technology has an undergraduate Jewish population below 10 percent, and four schools have particularly stark Jewish advantages—Harvard (30 percent), Yale (23 percent), UPenn (31 percent) and Columbia (25 percent). Keep in mind that, at best estimate, no more than 3 percent of all Americans are Jewish.

[I would venture to speculate that all those Jews earned those spots in universities by their grades and SATs. I would further venture to speculate that some Jews who were otherwise qualified for admittance to those schools were not accepted to them because places had been made for others who were less qualified, in the name of "diversity". I will even venture to asset, that all Jews, like all men, are incredibly diverse from one another, and cannot be lumped together into a generic category. But I digress. . . ]

(snip)

Granted, I tend to err on the side of complete academic freedom; I would probably let the Ku Klux Klan hold a conference on campus, as long as it could be couched within the framework of serious discussion. But what Jewish suffering—along with exorbitant Jewish privilege in the United States—amounts to is a stilted, one-dimensional conversation where Jews feel the overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended.

[If I were to ask a random citizen on the street to name a minority group which feels an overwhelming sense of entitlement not to be criticized or offended, would his first choice be likely to be the Jews?]

If the Duke administration had buckled under the influential weight of the Jewish establishment by not allowing the PSM conference, we would be suffering from the Orwellian notion of consciousness, where the only ideas that matter are the ones espoused by the powerful.

[Tolerance is lovely, so long as only your own ideas are tolerated. If you are criticized, then the other side is being "Orwellian"? Sounds like something Karla Holloway might have thought...]

While Jews undoubtedly lay claim to a long history of racism and genocide that continues across the world today, this characterization does not transport perfectly to the United States. After World War II, overt anti-Semitism gradually subsided, in part because of American response to Hitler’s murderous regime, but largely due to Jewish association with whiteness and the privileges white skin affords. In short, Jews can renounce their difference by taking off the yarmulke. Clearly, this is not a luxury enjoyed by all minority groups.

When former President Bill Clinton nominated his first two judges to the Supreme Court, both were Jews. Remarkable in the slightest? No, of course not. But the American public still can’t get over Clarence Thomas’s cultural heritage, after being appointed by Bush 41.

[ The American public--by which I assume Kurian means the white American public--is not obsessively irked and offended by his race. It is however bemused by the intense dislike of him by the majority of the AA community--a dislike similar to that felt by that community for Condi Rice. (Maybe because neither one embraces victimhood? )]

(snip)

What’s worst is that the “Holocaust Industry” uses its influence to stifle, not enhance, the Israeli-Palestinian debate, simultaneously belittling the real struggles for socioeconomic and political equality faced, most notably, by black Americans. As the world-renowned historian John Hope Franklin mentions, the U.S. decision to authorize federal funding of a holocaust memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.—hallowed ground otherwise reserved for commemorating U.S. history—camouflages this nation’s guilt in our own crimes against humanity: the Native American genocide and slavery.

[Once again, we must never detract attention from the unending guilt we must all feel because of the defeat of the Native Americans--which is now called genocide, although a considerable number of tribes appear to be still in existence--and slavery. (Slavery was the supreme sin; if there was a worse sin committed in history than the use of cheap labor from Africa by white colonists in North America, I don't think John Hope Franklin
knows what it is.) ]

I do not ignore historic Jewish oppression or discredit the stark realities of the holocaust. Nor do I discount anti-Semitic sentiments that still persist in America. With the burden of Tikkun Olam, Jews were even some of the most vocal abolitionists and supporters of the civil rights movement.

[Over half of the students who went South on Freedom Rides in Freedom Summer and who went to register voters in Mississippi were Jews. Many were reviled, beaten, injured, had bones broken, and worse. What was their percentage in the population? Did the author say it was 3 % at most?]

However, to preserve our democracy and honestly confront inequality where it persists, Jews must own up to their privilege in America, and use it more wisely.

[IOW, paraphrased : "Those Jews have too much privilege! There are too many of them in college--where they don't deserve to be and where they take the place of other people--and they deflect too much attention from the supreme guilt this country ought to feel for its treatment of the Native Americans and slaves. We need to be aware of their influence
and not let them use it to challenge our view of the world." (a paraphrase, IMHO representing the main themes of the above.)

What is surprising is NOT that there are people who feel this way; but that a highly intelligent, well-educated and recognized Duke student should have come to these conclusions. Where and when did he learn this, and how well does it fit into the metanarrative?]