Duke offers forum for radical views

I found it difficult to believe, at first, that Duke would add insult to injury by first providing a home for the most rabid of anti-Zionist, straying into anti-Semitic, views by hosting the conference of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, and then by publishing this ridiculous rehashing of ancient stereotypes and justifications for anti-Semitism.

Philip Kurian dares to claim that the overrepresentation of Jews in higher education indicates some sort of Jewish conspiracy or Jewish lock on the American power structure, a claim rehashed time and time again by neo-Nazis, Islamic terrorists and the far left.

He twists the definition of “free speech,” insinuating that Duke has some sort of constitutional obligation to provide a forum for the support of terrorism against those all-powerful Jews. He takes the fact that Jews care enough about their community to run “four pro-Jewish, full page advertisements” as an indication that “we” are “up against a very well-funded and well-established organization, indeed.”

Apparently not well-funded or well-established enough to prevent Duke, or, as his column’s appearance indicates, The Chronicle, from becoming a mouthpiece for views that would cast the Jews as yet again a scapegoat for whatever societal issues people wish to draw attention away from.

Kurian claims that “To be Jewish is to have the right to move seamlessly between the majority and minority, without constraint.” Unfortunately, his article indicates that this is not true. For Kurian, it seems, what is more important than one’s opinions is his or her status as a Jew.

The Chronicle should be ashamed of itself for compounding the University’s abject submission to radical anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic views and publishing this column that would be more fit in the pages of the Egyptian or Syrian state newspapers than a newspaper at an American university supposedly free of the stain of the lies that have been used to persecute Jews for 2,000 years.

Evan Sholle