On December 5th, 2023, the presidents of Harvard, M.I.T., and Penn State testified before Congress, addressing whether they would take disciplinary action against students advocating the genocide of Jews, shouting intifada, and other anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slogans. It is important to remember that these demonstrations on our college campuses are currently amplified as they exist in the context of a worldwide anti-Jewish and anti-Israel climate as depicted in “Gas the Jews” slogans in Australia, posters depicting Jews as Nazis in Western Europe, American university students and professors’ expressing statements such as “the glorious Oct 7th incident,” shouting “dirty little Jew,” incidents such as bomb threats called in to, and swastikas painted on American University Jewish organizations, and Penn advising its Jewish students not to wear clothing and accessories related to Judaism.
Their response camouflaged in legalistic language invoked principles of our First Amendment of free speech and academic freedom. The presidents used convenient terms such as "when speech turns to action" and "the call for genocide is dependent on context" concerning the eradication of the Jewish people. The legality of our First Amendment is not the issue; rather the issue was how the leadership of our nation's elite universities would address what is acceptable speech in private educational institutions. We were looking for leadership from our elite universities; instead, we got Clintonian-style answers harkening back to when we were lectured on what the definition of “is” is.
This prompted public outrage, with many questioning why the presidents could not plainly and unequivocally condemn such speech as hate speech not aligned with the principles of their respective universities. Many attribute their reluctance to do so as a function solely of antisemitism, but as an American Jew born in the Soviet Union, I believe their held positions and their failure to lead are symptoms of a much deeper problem: Cultural Marxism and its pervasive viral grip on our educational institutions.
Marxism, which ideologically blanketed the Soviet Union, was weaponized against American educational institutions by the KGB as early as the 1960s and was strategically aimed at American college youth. The Soviet Union understood that the most effective way to dismantle America was not from the outside with bombs and fighter planes but from within. The KGB, rightly so, thought that if they could colonize the minds of young college students in the mid-60s with anti-American viral sentiments, these infected students would eventually control academia 50 years later and espouse anti-Americanism to new generations who, at that point, would presumably know nothing else. And now we are here. To be clear, I am not reducing America’s current identity crisis exclusively to the former Soviets; America’s current enemies are contributing other variables building upon our former enemy’s initiative.
Over the years the Marxist ideological framework evolved into Cultural Marxism (a derivative that prioritizes race and gender as identity markers and how it relates to power dynamics) and it has infected and permeated American universities to the point where our Ivy League presidents are choking on their own absurdity and have no right to speak of, invoke, and hide behind free speech: To misgender someone or to show microaggressions has been grounds for expulsion at our universities, but the genocide of the Jews is, well, okay. I can only imagine if one were to replace the litany of anti-Jewish slogans with "Blacks" or "Gays" what would happen in America. But Jews do not count. They do not fit the Marxist framework: They, as a group, despite centuries of persecution are successful and, worse, have their own nation-state. They must necessarily be colonizers and thieves. And therefore, concerning the massacre and rape of civilians on October 7th, well, they had it coming. Furthermore, what the upside-down Western world is now experiencing depicted by gays and other minorities (all despised by radical Islam) marching for Hamas, from the perspective of the Left, can be explained by the Marxist virus that has taken hold of America’s minds.
Marxism can be reduced to its two main axioms: First, the vast complexity of life can be reduced to into two categories: the oppressed and the oppressor. The oppressor is necessarily good and the oppressed is necessarily evil. But why? And here is the most insidious and dangerous element: Because all truth is purely subjective. There is no objective morality governing existence. Therefore, any truth is simply the impetus and convenient narrative to whoever is holding power at that time. It would then follow that nationalism, irrespective of the values it purports, is necessarily evil, and Israel - an outpost of Western civilization, tethered to Biblical values - planted in the Middle East has risen as the military and economic power in the region must necessarily be evil. Never mind of course that, just like the prior heads of the Soviet communist party who promised equality for all but instead took all the power and spoils of their ideological revolution, ushering in a great mechanistic bureaucratic meat grinder, reducing most Russians to rubble, eviscerating the human spirit of their citizens. America's academia has done much the same. The powerful academic elite do not serve truth and work to develop great thinkers through the synergistic processes that can only arise out of a diversity of thought, but rather mold activists. These future soldiers serve the academic elite as pawns in their self-righteous war, ushering in utopia joined with the curious consequence of their elites social standing and bank accounts rising to dizzying heights all under the guise of compassion, virtue, and equality. Just as Gaza is nothing more than a military-industrial compound set to destroy Israel disguised as a civilian region, many of our universities are nothing more than Marxist industrial complexes disguised as educational institutions. And if you dare speak out?! Just ask cancelled Harvard Black American professor Roland G. Fryer (if you do not know who he is, please do your own research). But apparently all wars need to be funded, even Marxists ones.
Enter Iran, Qatar, China, Russia, and other smaller players all of whom are united in their hatred for America. They are eager to help brainwash our youth by sending billions of dollars to our elite universities for the same reason the KGB infiltrated our education systems in the 1960s: To destroy us from within; to dismantle our belief in the superiority of Americanism; to obfuscate and confuse us; to weaken our will. And so, enter the strange union between radical Islamic countries and the hard left in this country: There is a saying in Islam "I am against my brother, I am with my brother against my cousin, I am with my brother and cousin against the foreigner." For now, elements of Islam are united with the LGBTQ community and others. In the future, when these liberal communities are deemed no longer necessary, they will slit their throats and yell "Allahu Akbar" as they dance in the streets of Gaza and Tehran up to their wrists in blood.
However, since the start of the Congressional Hearings, I never advocated for the firing or the resignation of university presidents Dr. Gay, Ms. Magill, and Dr. Kornbluth. As I write, however, two of the said presidents have resigned. Their exiting the stage of academia without dealing with the root problem of changing the treasonous culture that allowed them to be hired in the first place will change nothing. I would rather you keep them. Do not placate me. Rather, erase Cultural Marxism as the atoms of academia’s ecosystem because nothing in the roots of its garden can give rise to anything except betrayal to America. Until that is changed, all America will undoubtedly get are other Marxist-minded presidents who will take insignificant measures by striking a bargain to include Jews into the D.E.I. framework (the bastardized stepson of Cultural Marxism). No thank you.
I do not need membership in your false philosophy; I have the Bible.
I do not need the protection of your safe spaces; I have the IDF, Mossad, the second amendment, fellowship with American patriots and a calcified spirit to know that death is not the worst thing; loss of values is.
I do not need your long-standing "silence is violence" and “preferred pronouns” rhetoric; Free speech is not simply another right found in our American constitution; rather it is the key that allows all other rights to exist.
I do not need to discuss "microaggressions" ad nauseum; I would rather engage in and promote actual debate rather than assume, often wrongly, that I could know the inner workings of one's heart and mind.
I do not want to take your Diversity Training Courses; Irrespective that in my friend and work network exists many ethnicities, colors, and both genders, our diversity of thought – and not other identity markers – is our strength. We are further united by valuing each other’s character, competency and adhering to something far less “intellectual”: Good manners.
I want Marxism and (DEI) Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion dismantled completely. I want presidents of our elite universities run by people like Dr. Carol M. Swain - ironically the professor whose academic work Harvard President Helen Gay had plagiarized.
I choose not to be associated with institutions that prioritize ideological conformity over a free marketplace of ideas. New universities, such as the University of Austin, which is clearly following the University of Chicago's commitment to free speech and diversity of ideas will emerge as tomorrow's elite universities; Federal funding of the Ivy leagues will lessen, and the politicians who still vote in favor of their funding if they do not change will be revealed. Jewish, and other families will not send their kids to these fake temples of knowledge. America's top companies will not hire students from these universities; patriots will stop donations; high school students will opt for the military and trade schools in greater numbers; and in the garden of freedom, our current elite universities will have no choice but to change completely - or rot.
These university presidents (and most American university administrations currently) have now shown us who they are, and it is shameful. Not too long ago there was a great American who showed us the correct path to a better society and provided us much needed tools in rectifying real injustice. His name was Martin Luther King Jr. He was well versed and educated in the horrors of American slavery and the litany of evil that has plagued human history. Irrespective of that, he took a Biblical approach and taught that all of us should judge each other as individuals by the content of our character and not by the color of our skin. He taught us that we are all children of one God. He believed and fought for the American motto: E pluribus unum, from many, one. Instead of continuing Mr. King's correct fight towards perfecting our union, DEI hustlers choose to divide us as Americans and line their own pockets with self-indulgence and the power that comes with building a never-ending needless bureaucracy catering to invented grievances.
To Dr. Claudine Gay, your resignation letter took no unequivocal responsibility for either your ambiguous language concerning the genocide of Jews or your theft of plagiarism. You are not fit to lead. You would do well to go to the border of Israel and Gaza, put on a flak jacket and helmet, and learn for yourself what leadership is by emulating many IDF commanders who are juggling more adversity currently than you can possibly imagine while putting the soldiers who follow them in harm’s way by giving away their position (among other things) for the sake of protecting the civilians in Gaza who are kept captive and are used as human shields by Hamas.
And to Harvard, specifically, I say this: As a Jew, I exist at the edge of a knife of a 3000-year-old civilization. Many greater empires and civilizations have come and gone, but somehow against all odds, we are still here. Do not think your 387-year-old tenure will save you. If you do not fully embrace the principles of the country of that which you lay your foundation on, you will perish like so many entities before you, and in time, your “Corporation” that has created the culture that gives rise to people like Dr. Gay and her ambiguous, equivocating, spineless words, and her taking cover in a sudden convenient discovery of free speech hypocritically contextualized by Harvard’s culture that, for years now, has detested free speech when it has not served its D.E.I agenda, will be reduced to a faint irrelevant echo. But the Jewish people and Israel will still stand.
Maxim Fisher is an ambassador of the WV Faith & Freedom Coalition and son of Dr. Wesley Fisher, director of research for both the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) and the World Jewish Restitution Organization (WJRO).
