The sad state of the American university seen through the window of Gaza

The greatest objection to the Biden administration's unconditional support in the US for Israel's barbaric attacks in Gaza, which have reached the dimensions of genocide, comes from the American people, who hold protests on different grounds every day. In fact, the Al-Aqsa Flood has also brought to light, for the American people, scandalous facts about where their taxes go.

The scale of the aid the US, which in recent years has been left alone with one of the greatest economic crises in its history, pours into Israel every year was not an unknown secret, but in the face of Israel's genocidal aggression it has begun to stand out glaringly.

It was in fact a matter of an awakening against America's Israel policies that had begun long before 7 October. The extreme exceptionalism it displays in these policies. Somehow this exceptionalism could be tolerated in the name of the Jews' right to live or to defend themselves. But no mind can understand, no conscience can accept, the killing of nearly ten thousand babies and children in order to defend oneself. In the face of this many child and baby deaths, not to mention being unable even to ask for a ceasefire, the US, which has also rejected requests for a ceasefire, continues to support Israel's blatant occupying aggression and injustice by pouring tons of money and weapons into it.

Seeing these crimes committed with their own taxes, the American people protest Biden everywhere he appears or speaks. At train stations, on planes, in the streets, in front of the White House. The protest he encountered most recently during a church visit was probably unexpected even for Biden, but this too happened. The protesters protested Biden for minutes as he took the podium to speak, over the support he gave Israel, and called for "a ceasefire right now."

While the horrible consequences of Israel's savage aggression unfold before the eyes of the whole world, its labeling criticism or protest of this murderous barbarity as anti-semitism must be something insane. If semitism is killing children, let everyone be anti-semitic. If semitism is bombing schools, places of worship, hospitals, maternity clinics and killing in a criminal manner, you cannot stop anyone from being anti-semitic. In fact, at such a moment, resorting to the accusation of anti-semitism as an argument of defense is an insolence hard to believe, an insane shamelessness. It has become very hard for politicians now to resort to this argument, but, lo and behold, in the legendary universities of America this argument is still invoked more than anywhere else. It is invoked because there is, in the administration of the universities, a highly oppressive, fascistic power that has until now hidden itself very well. Both this fascistic power and the means by which this power has been able to hide have once again shown themselves through the aftershocks of the Al-Aqsa Flood.

University students who organize demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians are being obstructed by school administrations. In American universities, flattered as homes of freedom of opinion, thought and expression, it has thus been exposed in all its nakedness that the limit of freedom is Zionism. The presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT, some of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the country, had to testify in Congress on the charges that they did not exert the pressure expected of them on their students and academics and did not prevent the protests (anti-semitic expressions). Besides this questioning, when pro-Israel donors threatened to cut off the 100 million dollar donation they had given to UPenn, its president had to resign.

In recent days, Harvard University's President Caludine Gay, who had chosen to resist the initial pressures in the name of university autonomy and freedom of expression, was likewise forced to resign, unable to withstand another wave of pressure. The new wave of pressure was of course heavier than the one that accused Gay of anti-semitism, but everyone knows that the only reason she was subjected to such an accusation precisely these days was the same. That is, her refusal to prevent anti-semitic expressions or protests on the university campus in the name of freedom of expression. We do not know whether Harvard University's Jewish donors threatened the university with cutting off donations, or whether such threats led the university administration to pressure Gay. Frankly, even as things stand, Harvard University, the richest university in the world in terms of assets, should have a financial autonomy far from dependence on donors. That is, one would expect the blackmail of Jewish donors in this matter to have no effect. But what forced Harvard's first Black president and second woman president to resign before her sixth month in office was the plagiarism accusation she faced.

The president, on whom the anti-semitism accusation was seen not to take effect, had her doctoral dissertation combed through, and it was determined that sufficient rigor had not been shown regarding quotations from it, and academic-ethics pressure was brought to bear on her. In fact, even though the university administration said that these detected errors were of a negligible size, Gay withdrew from the struggle in order not to wear down the legal personality of Harvard. Because what is being done is pure mudslinging. If the president had not come up against the Israel lobby

she would never have been subjected to such an accusation.

Even so, with her resignation the president has rendered a large enough service by exposing the false fascistic authority, the insidious surveillance of Zionist ideology, over the legendary academic autonomy, freedom of expression and freedom of science on which American universities have lived for years. Now perhaps the question that should be asked is how many flaws of how many academics, presidents or deans have been covered up because they continued their work by keeping silent about Zionism and pledging allegiance to it. To put it more plainly, the question that inevitably comes to mind on this occasion is: what kind of mud are American universities sitting on?