Re: “Will universities be made to pay for anti-Black racism, too?” (Aug. 24, Opinion):
Shaun Harper asks, “Why has no faculty or college ever been required or anticipated to pay $1 billion (or any quantity near that) for the racial discrimination and violence that Black individuals endure on campuses?”
Sadly, Harper misses the 2 painfully apparent solutions: 1. As a result of universities are usually not the supply of racism (or antisemitism) on campus and elsewhere — President Donald Trump’s right-wing white nationalist supporters are. 2. As a result of Trump and MAGA have cynically seized upon alleged antisemitism as a handy device to advance their precise agenda — to undermine the exemplary American greater schooling system, which typically helps pro-democratic, anti-racist and anti-authoritarian voices.
One should not neglect McCarthyism within the Fifties with its calls for for loyalty oaths from American universities, nor Nazism within the Thirties with its imposition of Aryan ideology on German universities. Universities have been the canaries within the mines of democracy and have to be defended with unwavering willpower.
Michael Perlman, Seattle
