#348 — The Politics of Antisemitism

Making Sense with Sam Harris

Waking Up with Sam Harris

Samharris, Currentevents, Politics, Ethics, Religion, Neuroscience, Science, Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.6 • 29.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 January 2024

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sam Harris speaks with Rabbi David Wolpe about the global response to the atrocities of October 7th, 2023. They discuss the difference between Israeli and diaspora Jews, the history and logic of antisemitism, the role of conspiracy theories, Great Replacement Theory, reasons for Jewish success, right-wing antisemitism, left-wing antisemitism, the response of Harvard to October 7th, the college presidents’ testimony before Congress, the future of DEI and civil discourse, the BDS movement, antisemitism vs anti-Zionism, Jewish acceptance at Ivy League universities, the antisemitism endemic to Islam, foreign funding of US universities, and other topics.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast, this is Sam Harris. Just a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently on our subscriber feed,
0:15.0	and will only be hearing the first part of this conversation.
0:18.0	In order to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast, you'll need to subscribe at Sam Harris.org.
0:24.0	There you'll find our private RSS feed to add to your favorite podcatcher,
0:28.0	along with other subscriber-only content.
0:30.0	We don't run ads on the podcast, and therefore it's made possible entirely through the support of our
0:34.8	subscribers. So if you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming one. Today I'm speaking with Rabbi David Wolpey.
0:49.0	David is a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. He is a rabbinic fellow at the Anti-Defamation League,
0:58.0	a senior advisor to the Mymonides Fund, and the Emeritus Rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
1:06.5	And because he's at Harvard, he's had a front seat view of the recent controversy around anti-Semitism and free speech.
1:16.0	I spoke to him before the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay resigned in the
1:24.1	President of the aftermath of that terrible testimony before Congress.
1:25.1	Elizabeth McGill, the President of Penn, resigned first, and
1:30.3	Claudine Gay resigned last week, though she's still a professor at Harvard.
1:35.6	She resigned for reasons that were unrelated to her testimony, however.
1:40.4	It seemed that she had an impressive pattern of academic misconduct, namely plagiarism.
1:47.0	Many people on the left are alleging that racism is the reason she was forced out.
1:51.7	That is clearly not the case. I'm sure she was personally subjected to a lot of racist abuse in the aftermath of her testimony before Congress. I don't doubt that, and I'm sure that was awful but as for her being forced to resign
2:06.6	from the presidency of Harvard that was not a racist mobbing of her. The painful irony is that it was
2:16.3	concern about racism and sexism perhaps that explains why she occupied the position of the presidency of
2:23.9	Harvard in the first place. As many people have pointed out it is very difficult to
2:28.2	imagine a white man with her academic record getting anywhere near the presidency of Harvard.
	...

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