Dear Editor,
This letter to the University Times responds to the Aug. 31, 2024, email message signed by Vice Provost Carla Panzella and Vice Chancellor Clyde Pickett. The message informs the Pitt community that two unnamed students were assaulted “while walking amongst a group headed to Shabbat services.” The assailant was arrested, and even though the investigation is not finished, “the assault was determined by law enforcement not to be targeted or directed towards any specific group.”
The Panzella-Pickett message does not mention that, as is known from other sources, the assailant wore a keffiyeh. The email makes no connection with the antisemitic keffiyeh-filled “encampments” that plagued Pitt and many other campuses recently. No mention is made that it was one of the attacked students who stopped and held the assailant until the police arrived — what if he did not? Nor is it noted that the antisemite coward attacked the kippah-wearing students from behind, cutting them in the face and neck with a bottle, replicating terror attacks on Jews in Israel.
It appears that in today’s American campuses you can be assaulted for being Jewish but law enforcement will coyly deny that it was so. Your university vice provost for student affairs and vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion will call that “random acts of violence” even while relating it to expression of “faith,” which is clearly nonrandom — whether it is any faith or, as is obvious in this case, Judaism. Antisemitism, its “palestinianist” variety supporting murderous terrorist Jew-hate, as usual, will be bundled with “all forms of hate,” as if they have anything to do with the “incident.”
The email from the University administration, words whose purported meaning is diluted and neutered in the same message, can hardly alleviate the hostile campus atmosphere for the Jews. “Diversity,” a neo-Marxian newspeak term, does not seem to include Jews.
In fact, as the recent op-ed in The New York Times by Paul Brest and Emily Levine of Stanford University points out, it is the very department that Vice Chancellor Pickett heads that “may undermine the very groups they seek to aid by instilling a victim mind-set and by pitting students against one another” and promoting antisemitic discrimination.
As argued in the complaint filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights in 2021, DEI programs in Stanford endorsed “the narrative that Jews are connected to white supremacy” and promoted “antisemitic tropes concerning Jewish power, conspiracy, and control.” The same pertains to the Black Lives Matter movement, much-endorsed by the various universities, including Pitt, and scientific groups. As I have noted before in the University Times, racialism that is the foundation of the DEI departments is a rehashing of Marxism and socialism with newly defined antagonistic classes. It will inevitably lead to suffering — first and foremost of those who are allegedly supposed to benefit from it.
Sincerely,
Michael Vanyukov
Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Psychiatry, and Human Genetics
Response to Aug. 31 Letter to the Pitt community
On Aug. 31, Vice Provost Carla Panzella and Vice Chancellor Clyde Pickett informed the Pitt community that two students were assaulted outside the Cathedral of Learning as they headed to Shabbat services, by an individual unaffiliated with the University. They went on to say that “the assault was determined by law enforcement not to be targeted or directed towards any specific group.”
Despite the implied assurance that the incident was “random,” they go on to state, “To be clear, there is no room in our community for violence and we condemn, in no uncertain terms, antisemitism, all forms of hate, and the actions of the alleged assailant.”
If the incident was not “directed towards any specific group,” why is antisemitism mentioned — a total contradiction? Of course, Pitt administrators condemn all violence, but do not send out a communique to the entire community whenever such a crime occurs on campus.
Furthermore, the message mentions “plans including classes, speakers and events for the upcoming year that offer education, engagement and support.” This implies that the Aug. 30 occurrence entailed a much broader issue (e.g. antisemitism) than random bottle-throwing.
NBC News has reported that the criminal complaint filed by the victims specified that they were wearing yarmulkas (a Jewish head covering) and that the assailant was wearing a keffiyeh (a scarf associated with Palestinians). No matter what law enforcement initially reported, this information could not have been difficult to ascertain with all the resources of the provost’s and chancellor’s offices. If the event was important enough to report campus-wide, should it not have been reported in all its details?
Given the kind of clothing worn by victims and perpetrator, there is strong evidence to suggest that the Aug. 30 incident was directed “towards a specific group” — Jews — and the vice provost and vice chancellor need to issue a revised statement.
Lucy Fischer
Distinguished professor emerita, English/Film and Media Studies