Harvard Walkout Over Marty Peretz Money
Forty or so students walked out on their social studies class yesterday, as the fight about an endowment from New Republic owner/figurehead Marty Peretz heats up. The $650,000 undergraduate research fund comes from donations in the name of Peretz, who is, among many other things, a former Harvard professor. (There is already a Martin Peretz Chair in Yiddish Literature at Harvard, since the early 90s; that money comes from his married-into (and now separated) Singer fortune.) Peretz was recently disinvited from speaking at Harvard over his recent thoughts on Muslims. The students' crazy objections seem to mostly be about how Peretz not only hates Muslims but also most Latinos though mostly Mexicans and a fair share of the blacks as well. (But only what Peretz has historically classified as the lazy ones.) The Harvard Islamic Society is still waiting for its meeting with the school's president.
Don't let Rick Sanchez hear about this.
they should buy a big pinata and fill it with korans.
lol @ 02138
This would be a hard choice: one hand, Peretz, execrable; other hand, Social Studies 10, the best class on campus. Why not walk out of Ec 10 instead?
Really? That kind of chintzy change gets a fund named after you?
$650,000 doesn't buy many erasers in 2010.
It'll barely get you an undergrad degree.
Part of me says good for the students, and part of me says HOLY CRAP I WOULD NEVER WALK OUT ON THAT MUCH MONEY.
/student loans aren't fun, y'all
Take the money all call it reparations.
Most endowment money is dripping with blood. I wonder why they are fixated on Peretz. Follow the money trail of the endowed scholarships, professorships, research funds, library collections. More often than not it leads to union busting, third-world economy destruction, market manipulation, slavery, environmental destruction, and a whole lot more-not to mention the pocketbooks of bigots, as with Peretz.
But with all the blood, and all the loathsome sources of income, why fixate on the shrill editor of an increasingly irrelevant journal?
It’s all just a little too facile, a litle too fashionable, to focus on some idiot racist Zionist. When you’re in the Ivory Tower, going after Zionists is like shooting fish in a barrel-because all the world’s major problems right now begin with the Zionists, of course: their bottomless pockets, their bureaucratic control, their unceasing publication.
If these students are to be encouraged, then they might be urged to take a stronger stand against the forces of privilege and capitalism. They might transfer to a state school.
Video of this walkout: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkStSzyTRgc