When Columbia University’s President Welcomed the Nazi Ambassador to Campus

Nicholas Murray Butler served as president of Columbia University from 1902 to 1945. During that time, as Matthew Wills writes, he also acquired national fame as a scholar and political figure; among other things, he ran for vice-president on the Republican ticket in 1912, and in 1931 he won a Nobel Prize—shared with Jane Addams—for helping to negotiate the Kellogg-Briand Pact, in which France, the U.S., and Germany renounced war. But as Wills points out, Butler’s attitude toward Nazism has left a shadow over his legacy.

In May 1933, the Nazis burned tens of thousands books at universities across Germany. Works by Einstein, Freud, Heine, Mann, Remarque, London, and Zola, among many others, were consigned to the fires. One of the authors whose books were burned was Franz Boas, the famed Columbia University anthropologist, who had long waged a campaign against racist pseudo-science and “Nordic nonsense.”

[Butler] did not rise to the occasion of speaking out in support of Boas, or academic freedom in Germany. When the Nazis expelled Jewish faculty members and students from universities, Butler stayed silent, continued sending Columbia students to Germany, and welcomed Nazi-approved students in exchange.

Meanwhile, students on campus who protested Nazi barbarism were met with a heavy hand. Faculty members who recognized the necessity of public protest against Nazis were punished as well—Butler ended the careers of two of them. Columbia’s student newspaper noted that the school’s reputation suffered because of “the remarkable silence of its president” about the “Hitler government.”

Read more at JStor Daily

More about: Academia, Columbia University, Nazi Germany, Pacifism

How Democrats Will Blame Israel for Their Defeat

Sometimes it takes a smart outside observer to see things about U.S. politics that Americans might miss. Stephen Daisley is one such observer:

Progressives in search of a scapegoat for their defeat will quickly arrive at Israel, specifically what they regard as the Biden administration and the Harris campaign’s support for Jerusalem in its fight against Hamas and Hizballah terrorists. Expect leftists to point to Harris’s loss of Michigan and especially the collapse of the Democrat vote in Dearborn, a city with significant Arab and Muslim populations. Expect them to say that a different approach, one supportive of the Palestinians rather than the Israelis, would have seen the Democrats hold on to Michigan.

It won’t matter that Michigan voted for Trump in 2020 and that his support there has much more to do with non-graduate white men than it does with Arab-American voting behavior. It won’t matter that Trump’s attitude towards Israel is far more sympathetic than Harris’s. It won’t matter that going down this path will bring resentment and hostility to bear on Arab Americans or Jews or both.

Progressives will see their chance to do something they have longed to do for decades: cleave the United States from Israel and leave the Jewish state vulnerable in a dangerous neighborhood. The surest way to do that is by adopting for the Democrat party the sort of views about Israel seen in center-left parties across the West.

Read more at Spectator

More about: 2024 Election, American Muslims, Democrats, U.S.-Israel relationship