By Dzulkifli Abdul Razak
Of late, the Harvard Corporation — the University’s highest governing body — has been alleged to apply a lower standard of academic integrity to administrators than students.
“If a university is willing to look the other way and not hold faculty accountable for engaging in academically dishonest behavior, it cheapens its mission and the value of its education” – reportedly quoted from an official letter sent to the University.
It requested Harvard to produce “all documents and communications” related to the plagiarism allegations or related to the review by members of the Corporation.
It “also warned that Harvard could lose federal funding if it is found to not have taken the claims of widespread plagiarism against Gay [the president] seriously.”
On December 12, the Corporation, a 12-person governing board, released a statement declaring its “unanimous support for the embattled president”.
Beside Harvard, the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania also faced similar scrutiny based on their answers to questions about their alleged violations to their respective institutional code of conduct on bullying or harassment.
None of them explicitly said that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct. Instead, they explained it would depend on the circumstances and conduct.
Later, however, both the Harvard and Penn presidents felt compelled to issue new statements in attempting to clarify the testimony, whereas the MIT counterpart, herself being Jewish, was somehow not immediately reported to respond to the same scrutiny.
Gay being black seems to be the most targeted.
Meanwhile, the US Department of Education announced investigations of several other universities for possible discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, which supposedly violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
This includes the University of Pennsylvania, Lafayette College; Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey; and Drexel University, being the latest on the list. More are expected to be implicated in the witch-hunt!
The issue at hand seems to be about how US campuses are handling racial-biased accusations following the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, and the disproportionate air and ground counter offensives on the Gaza population that has triggered waves of pro-Palestinian campus protests in various US universities known for their democratic traditions of free expression.
In many ways, it is nothing new, except that this time the table is turned against the dominant forces!
For a long time, Islamophobia for example, has been used as as legitimate basis to openly target a designated group of people in US campuses, especially during the post 9/11 period.
But no one was harassed to apologise, let alone resign! In fact, under similar pretext, a war was declared by the then US president, to somewhat justify the action taken based on the false weapon of mass destruction theory, to fuel more hatred towards the Muslims, indiscriminately.
As late as 2020, former President Donald Trump announced a ban of Muslims from entering the US. Hence, this time for Muslims in the US, the widespread of animosity is reminiscent of the past experiences, which to some is much more dystopian, leveraging on an even more sophisticated form of hypocrisy and contradicting standards.
Accordingly, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it received 774 reports of bias incidents and requests for help from Muslims across the US from Oct. 7 to 24, a 182 per cent jump from the average 16-day period in 2022.
Yet, little is done (if at all) about it, more so today!
Not surprisingly therefore, the controversy quickly expanded into a broader issue of “free expression” not only in US campuses but way beyond, given the heightened level of unhappiness and dissatisfaction all round.
Reportedly, supporters of Palestinian rights regard it as a deliberate attempt to muzzle criticism of Israel, which faces almost a worldwide condemnation for the disproportional civilian death toll associated with it, namely among women and children.
Thanks to the overtly planned military offensive, even to massacre, if not genocide against the Gazans, with support from the richer western nations.
The apparent choice of the word “genocide” is no doubt discriminatory but only when applied to a selected few; not so in actual life involving tens of thousands of real life lost collectively, inflicted by the very same “selected few” and their ardent supporters.
If this is not hypocrisy at its best, applying conflicting standards, then what is?
The US universities so-called codes was not called upon to account for such a devastating hypocrisy! And none is insisting too.
As though, this is not evident enough, others in the US employment sectors got into the game when they alleged that “white workers are being unfairly disadvantaged by diversity, equity and inclusion − DEI, for short − programmes that only benefit minorities in diversifying the targets.
Quite coincidently, just last week too, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk aired similar sentiments: “DEI must DIE,” in a post on his social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter). Musk has been on record to take on the side of the oppressor as documented in this column fortnight ago.
Some quarters call this “reverse discrimination” in challenging the DEI initiatives which up until now is deemed to relatively rare. But not any more if things are allowed to be distorted the way it is today, by mainly white workers!
Moreover, the anti-DEI activities are projected to expand further in 2024 as Project 2025 undertaken by Trump and his complicits who are active in weighing the campus controversies.
In 2020, the president then issued an executive order banning the federal government and its contractors from offering DEI training on systemic racism!
The most recent development points to several major companies (like the universities) that have modified their policies meant “to increase racial and ethnic representation after conservative groups threatened to sue”, according to a Reuters review of corporate statements.
This means that not only are campuses with so-called world class status are embroiled in racism and discrimination, it goes beyond that is now fast emerging to our horror.
World class indeed! – BACALAHMALAYSIA.MY
- The writer is Rector, International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM)
