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Over the last few weeks, senior officials from Harvard and Northeastern universities responded superficially to expressions of anti-Semitism on their campuses. In both cases, the real sources of anti-Jewish animus on America's campuses were ignored. Instead, we got politically correct rhetoric.
At Harvard, a flier invited students to join "The Pigeon," touted as Harvard's newest "final club." The invitation included the admonition "Jews need not apply . . . Coloreds OK." Most soon came to understand mis was a prank - an inept sendup of the snooty, semi-secret associations - many with elitist pasts, and not an attack on Jews.
There are some very problematic things about the attitudes toward Israel - and the Jews who support it - within various entities at Harvard. The Outreach Program of the Middle East Studies Department, for example has disseminated teacher training materials - funded by Saudi Arabia - that defamed Jews in Israel as murderers and torturers of Palestinian women.
The clumsy "Pigeon" fliers are the least of the problems for Jews at Harvard. The flier affair illustrates the continued false assumption that today's anti-Semitism still surges from old-style WASP and white-supremacist Jew haters. The reality is that at Harvard and across the country, antiSemitism is increasingly a product of leftist and Islamist professors and institutions. Most Jews do not yet understand that. Jewish leaders - with the help of university officials - are doing all they can to avoid or deny this politically incorrect, and awfully upsetting, reality.
This was shown in the aftermath of the desecration of the Chanukah menorah at Northeastern two weeks ago.
This was the fourth known physical attack on Jewish symbols on...