Post by robeiae on Aug 2, 2019 8:36:41 GMT -5
Not all that long ago, Oberlin College got hammered in court. It was sued by a local bakery--Gibson's--for defamation. And it lost, with the jury awarding Gibson's $44 million dollars (the judge subsequently decreased the award to $25 million + attorneys fees of $6.5 million). Some details here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibson%27s_Bakery_vs._Oberlin_College
The bakery was libeled and slandered by the students and faculty of Oberlin as a racist establishment, essentially, simply because it's employees caught a student shoplifting, a student who happened to be black.
The principle antagonist in this story was Oberlin's Dean of Students, Meredith Raimondo, who helped with the protests against Gibson's and spear-headed the move by Oberlin to disassociate itself from the bakery (it had bought from the bakery for a long time). And it was her actions, by and large, that sunk Oberlin in the case, I think.
Anyway, here's an interesting piece from an Oberlin alum (fyi, Michelle Malkin is also an alum): www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/02/at_oberlin_and_elsewhere_anti-semitism_was_canary_in_the_coal_mine.html
It details some background at not only Oberlin, but also at Evergreen College and the University of Missouri (both schools have garnered media attention--plenty of it negative--for recent protests that were supposedly about addressing racism). And it argues that in all three schools, there was a rise in anti-semitism or at least in anti-zionism on these campuses prior to these incidents.
With regard to Oberlin:
It is, I think, an interesting thesis, that anti-semitism is something of a "canary in a coal mine," when it comes to seeing a university veer off the rails as it were.
As far as I know, Raimondo remains in her position at Oberlin. And here is the pov of the Oberlin Review, with regard to the lawsuit (for those interested): oberlinreview.org/18975/opinions/media-coverage-of-gibsons-verdict-misses-the-mark/
In my view, the piece--written by the student editorial board--reads like an apologia dictated by the involved faculty.
The bakery was libeled and slandered by the students and faculty of Oberlin as a racist establishment, essentially, simply because it's employees caught a student shoplifting, a student who happened to be black.
The principle antagonist in this story was Oberlin's Dean of Students, Meredith Raimondo, who helped with the protests against Gibson's and spear-headed the move by Oberlin to disassociate itself from the bakery (it had bought from the bakery for a long time). And it was her actions, by and large, that sunk Oberlin in the case, I think.
Anyway, here's an interesting piece from an Oberlin alum (fyi, Michelle Malkin is also an alum): www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/08/02/at_oberlin_and_elsewhere_anti-semitism_was_canary_in_the_coal_mine.html
It details some background at not only Oberlin, but also at Evergreen College and the University of Missouri (both schools have garnered media attention--plenty of it negative--for recent protests that were supposedly about addressing racism). And it argues that in all three schools, there was a rise in anti-semitism or at least in anti-zionism on these campuses prior to these incidents.
With regard to Oberlin:
But the story starts earlier than that. As I’ve written on CAMERA’s In Focus blog, Oberlin is the school that hired, and first defended (before ultimately firing), rhetoric/composition professor Joy Karega. Karega had written on Facebook that the Mossad was behind the 2015 attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, that “Israeli and Zionist Jews” were responsible for the attack on the World Trade Center, and that Jacob Rothschild and his family “financed both sides of every war since Napoleon,” and “own your news, the media, your oil and your government.” She also claimed after Hurricane Sandy that the weather had been “weaponized.”
When Karega’s hatreds and myriad conspiracy theories came to light, the first instinct of Oberlin President Marvin Krislov was to defend her. As the controversy around her swirled, a few professors tried to explain to students what was wrong with her posts and that she was not being attacked, as some claimed, because she was a woman of color but that being a woman of color did not exempt her from the same standards that would apply to anyone else. For his part, Krislov allowed the inmates to run his asylum.
The problems at the school, moreover, went much deeper than one professor. A year earlier, some students celebrated the Jewish High Holidays by posting a huge banner, designed to appear as if it were written with blood, saying that tuition money funds genocide committed by Israel. And anti-Semitism was being taught by at least one professor in her classes.
Prior to becoming dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, the administrator whose actions so offended the jury in the Gibson case, was a professor in Oberlin’s Department of Comparative American Studies. In 2016, it was reported that Raimondo’s syllabi had included work by several professors widely perceived as anti-Semitic.
When Karega’s hatreds and myriad conspiracy theories came to light, the first instinct of Oberlin President Marvin Krislov was to defend her. As the controversy around her swirled, a few professors tried to explain to students what was wrong with her posts and that she was not being attacked, as some claimed, because she was a woman of color but that being a woman of color did not exempt her from the same standards that would apply to anyone else. For his part, Krislov allowed the inmates to run his asylum.
The problems at the school, moreover, went much deeper than one professor. A year earlier, some students celebrated the Jewish High Holidays by posting a huge banner, designed to appear as if it were written with blood, saying that tuition money funds genocide committed by Israel. And anti-Semitism was being taught by at least one professor in her classes.
Prior to becoming dean of students, Meredith Raimondo, the administrator whose actions so offended the jury in the Gibson case, was a professor in Oberlin’s Department of Comparative American Studies. In 2016, it was reported that Raimondo’s syllabi had included work by several professors widely perceived as anti-Semitic.
As far as I know, Raimondo remains in her position at Oberlin. And here is the pov of the Oberlin Review, with regard to the lawsuit (for those interested): oberlinreview.org/18975/opinions/media-coverage-of-gibsons-verdict-misses-the-mark/
In my view, the piece--written by the student editorial board--reads like an apologia dictated by the involved faculty.
