There's an old saying about blind squirrels and acorns that comes to mind here. New York's Democrat (of course) Governor Kathy Hochul found such an acorn when she ordered the City University of New York to pull a job posting for a "Professor of Palestinian Studies."
Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York to immediately shut down a “Palestinian Studies” professorship posting at Hunter College that critics argued promotes hateful instruction that demonizes Israel.
The governor also directed CUNY to probe the taxpayer-funded Upper East Side institution “to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom,” her office said in a Tuesday night statement.
In the job listing, the four-year CUNY college stated: “We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality.”
Mark this day on your calendar, because I'm about to write something I never thought I'd have reason to write:
Governor Kathy Hochul did the right thing.
I know, right? Holy moley, gadzooks, zowie or biff-bam-crunk. That's not something any of us saw coming. I certainly didn't. But it's the case here, for several reasons.
First: This job posting and the presumed classes that would come with it are antisemitism on parade. Even New York's leftist governor saw that one coming:
“Governor Hochul has directed CUNY to immediately remove this job posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom,” a Hochul spokesperson told The Post.
“The Governor has continued to strongly condemn all forms of antisemitism and has made clear that hateful rhetoric of any kind has no place at CUNY or anywhere in New York State.”
Anyone who thinks that this wouldn't be an enormous platform for the worst kind of irrational Jew-hatred just hasn't been paying attention for the last few decades.
Second: There is no such nation as Palestine. There are no distinct, easily identifiable people we can point to and say "Palestinians." There are Middle Eastern Muslims who left the land that is now Israel in 1948 and, generations later, are still whining about being displaced, although other Middle Eastern Muslims who remained, who live in Israel now, enjoy not only full citizenship in the only modern, functioning democracy in the region but also the prosperity that comes with it.
Third, horse squeeze programs like this, besides peddling hate, do nothing to fulfill the primary purpose of education: Equipping young skulls full of mush with marketable skills. Hatred, at least in the United States, is not a marketable skill - unless you work for MSNBC.
See Related: Trump to Pro-Hamas Students Here on Visas: Get Out
A university education - any university, anywhere, but especially in the United States - has no business pushing any of this hateful corral litter. Oh, the proponents of the non-nation of "Palestine" and Jew hatred have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else, and they are free to stand on a street corner and shout about it, as long as their shouting doesn't interfere with the rest of the citizenry going about their daily business. But setting up a program of "education" (use of scare quotes is intentional) in a publicly-funded university? Not only no, but hell no.
It's questionable as to whether this is an indicator of any return to sanity in New York's education system. But at least it's one good decision out of many bad ones Governor Hochul has made.
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