"It was the night that convinced every Jewish person who had the means and ability to leave Germany, that it was past time to do so."
That's how I explain the horror of Kristallnacht - the night of broken glass - to students in my history classroom each year. The intensity of that wave of antisemitic violence carried out by Nazi gangs and the Hitler Youth elevated the already-widespread persecution of the Jewish population.
One of the great challenges of teaching events that happened nearly a century ago is trying to make such hatred, intolerance, and bigotry seem real. So very much of what gets assigned those labels today greatly diminishes the meaning of all those words. Christians who believe homosexuality is sinful and pray for the deliverance of those caught up in it are called "bigots." Those who refuse to use made up terms like Latinx or Latine get labeled "intolerant." Award-winning fiction writers who say that men are not women are accused of "hatred."
We've done a tremendous disservice to society, and young people in particular, by lazily hurling those labels around as pejorative attacks against political opponents we simply disagree with. What the Nazis were fomenting against Jewish people was real hate - an entirely different category than J.K. Rowling standing up for women's rights.
It's crossed my mind on more than one occasion these last few years, as I've seen my students' eyes glaze over and their attention span shrivel when I play testimonial video clips of Auschwitz survivors that the West is doing the one thing that historians have always said can never be done:
We are forgetting.
We are forgetting to the point that the only thing that will awaken us generations later is a catastrophic repeat of history.
I'm not suggesting another Jewish Holocaust is in the offing. But I am saying that we are fools to pretend there aren't those among us here in America who would gladly commit one if given the opportunity. Moreover, we are burying our heads in the sands of ignorance to not recognize how many of them are infecting the climate of our nation's "leading" universities.
CNN's Jake Tapper was the first person I saw reporting the story that the Orthodox Jewish Rabbi at Columbia University had sent out a message to nearly 300 Jewish students on campus to leave if they can.
It seems that warning was both prescient and discerning. And not just at Columbia, but across the Ivy League:
[Warning: Language in this next video]
While all of this is morally putrid and ethically reprehensible, I admit to harboring a bit of specific indignation for Yale. Each year, my advanced government students discuss the bizarre Halloween costume saga that took place on that campus. In 2015, the prestigious school's "Intercultural Affairs Committee" instructed students to be cautious about what costumes they wear for Halloween. The scandal erupted when a popular professor responded to that instruction by telling students to stand up for their right to wear whatever costume they prefer. Apparently, the progressive majority on campus decided that they needed the "safe space" provided by the Intercultural Affairs Committee in order to function properly. One wonders where that progressive majority is today.
But this isn't just Yale, and it isn't just Columbia. There's a current of antisemitic hatred sweeping the country, the likes of which the world has seen before. In pre-war Germany, the Nazis intimidated and barred Jews from schools and universities. And now?
As an education "professional," I'll gladly acknowledge that the Ivy League has never had my esteem or reverence. I don't encourage kids to go there, and don't believe those who do are any better prepared to impact the world in a positive way than their peers who don't.
