Harvard's Jews

There is a long article by Martin Perez that charts the Jewish presence at Harvard from its beginnings to fairly recent times. Link below:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/christians-and-jews-at-harvard-marty-peretz

And what it vividly catalogues is how influential Jewish thinkers were in the social sciences during that time. Virtually all the big ideas in that field came for a long time from Jewish thinkers. And broadly Leftist ideas became chracteristic of them

During my own academic career I encountered those thinkers obliquely. To do social psyhology or sociology was to engage with Jewish thinkers. Social science was simply Jewish with all the notable writers being Jews. But the writers concerned rarely mentioned their Jewishness. From a casual perpective they were just smart Americans.

I was a long way from Harvard but the Jewishness of the writers was still plain to me and I occasionally made cautious mention of it in my own writings.

Where the Jewishness of the writer was not openly acknowledged, I was usually still aware of it. I knew German, so Ashekenazi surnames stood out. I knew, for instance, what strangely derisive surnames like Goldberg and Finkelstein meant. They were mocking names given by Prussian border guards to refugess from Eastern European pogroms. So if you knew German, most American Jewish surnames shouted of their Jewishness. Some names were a bit of a puzzle. "Kren" for instance did not seem at all Jewish -- until you realized that it was Southern German dialect for horseradish. Yes. Some German Jews walked around being known as "Mr Horseradish".

And in my own research and writing I focused on another Ashkenazi body of thought -- not principally the Harvard authors but rather the group of very Marxist refugees from Germany's prewar Frankfurt school. I took an interest in their "authoritarianism" theory, principally authored by Theodor Wiesengrund, aka Adorno. It was a theory taken with great seriousness by most social psychological thinkers at the time and still has some following to this day.

But it was a total absurdity. It said that authoritarianism was fundamentally derived from conservatism. The huge example of authoritarianism on the world scene at the time was the Soviet union, which was undiputably Leftist. Yet authoritarianism was somehow conservative to most American Jewish scholars.

I spent a a lot of time pointing out the flaws in that theory in my writings but I was largely wasting my time. Leftist theories are reality-blind. If it sounds good to them it is true, pesky evidence regardless.

So my reflection on the history that Martin Perez has put out is great sadness: So many smart people were so foolish. The Jewish influence was great but produced so little of abiding worth. The attractions of Leftism neutered some great brains

I am pleased to note however that time seems to have had a corrective influence. Articles that I wrote as far back as 1970 are now widely read and favorably commented on -- though not usually by Jewish authors. Realism seem to be slowly replacing delusion. My British empiricism may eventually win the day -- JR.

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The nation’s ostensibly leading agency for medical science says men can safely “chestfeed” babies

Once a credible government health organization, the CDC has come out of the closet to affirm its true identity as a political activist establishment.

The agency was previously known for publishing current and relevant health information regarding vaccines and diseases, as well as public health protocols and guidance on numerous health-related issues that concern the public. However, since its questionable edicts were imposed on society during the COVID pandemic, it has become apparent to most that politics plays a greater role in the decision-making process than actual science.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Deborah Birx, and former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky became the most well-known names associated with dubious standards and protocols set during COVID. Their mask recommendations and policies seemed to be backed by those with the most to gain by tying our freedom to compliance rather than being based on whether masks could protect us from a virus. Mandates for the vaccines were likewise not based on whether they were actually effective.

Not all of that was determined by the CDC, but it was the CDC’s blatant dismissal of reality while promoting senseless public protocols that led to a substantial decline in trust. And it appears as though the CDC believes that the path of decreasing trust is the option that best suits its newfound identity as a political organization.

Walensky began her stint as CDC director in 2021, and her political biases in her medical recommendations for COVID protocols became abundantly clear when the guidance she provided seemed to conveniently align with the demands of another leftist organization, the American Federation of Teachers, and its president, Randi Weingarten.

In a recent hearing with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Walensky was asked about the decisions that were made at the time and what her communication with Weingarten had been regarding school closure policies. It was discovered that the two women had each other’s private contact information, and when pressed, Walensky struggled to answer the question of whether any of their communication had been about determining mandates for schools or if she had deleted any texts from their conversation.

Ironically, Walensky has repeatedly warned against politicizing medicine. Even in an outgoing interview in preparation to leave her role as CDC director, she said in the Wall Street Journal’s paraphrase, “Be on guard against misinformation and the politicization of science.”

If only she had followed that advice.

Recently, the CDC published guidance for transgender individuals, both male and female, on how to breastfeed or “chestfeed” newborn infants. The guidance covers females who have had their breasts completely removed under the idea that they can become male. Bizarrely, it also covers men who are trying to unnaturally force the growth of breast tissue by taking powerful drugs to feminize their bodies in misguided attempts to live as women.

There is no other way to describe this recommendation other than being deeply consumed by political beliefs. There is no scientific data or sane doctor with a valid argument for whatever the substance that is secreting from a male’s synthetic, drug-induced breast tissue being anything close to not only breast milk but any type of nutritional material that could safely be ingested by any living organism — let alone a newborn infant — without severe side effects.

Dr. Miriam Grossman is a board-certified child and adolescent psychiatrist who has been vocal about the immeasurable damage being done to children and teens through the gender ideology movement. She gave an interview in which she excoriated the CDC for making such dangerous, irresponsible, and unfounded health proposals.

“This is just an unbelievably egregious position,” she said, “saying that men living as women can be given these drugs for off-label use — for example, they might treat schizophrenia or other medical illnesses. They have this adverse effect called galactorrhea. … It means that a man’s breast tissue begins to secrete a substance. That substance is not breast milk. Furthermore, that substance that is going to be given to these infants has chemicals in it. Those chemicals are going to be absorbed by the infant. That’s the CDC these days.”

It is common knowledge that a woman who is breastfeeding an infant has to be very careful about the medications — both over-the-counter and prescribed — that she puts into her body. She has to be careful about the foods she eats, as dairy, vegetables, or any number of things can upset her baby’s digestive system. She is advised to avoid alcohol or caffeine. These legitimate, science- and data-based instructions are provided to a nursing woman because everything she eats or ingests will go directly into the baby’s system.

There are also certain foods that mothers are warned not to give their babies before the age of one. The options for pain and cold medicines for babies and toddlers is severely limited because their systems are not developed enough to safely process even child-safe remedies. It’s not until the ages of four to six when the choices in treating a fever or a runny nose expand drastically.

Allowing infants to drink milk — or, rather, nipple discharge — that is highly contaminated with potent chemicals strong enough to induce life-altering, permanent changes in an adult could and likely will lead to harmful effects in their own vulnerable and developing bodies, minds, and systems.

Of course, feelings are now the most important guiding factor in society. So, whether these infants develop severe side effects from the egregious act of being nursed by the secretions of a delusional individual is apparently a risk worth taking and a sacrifice babies need to make to preserve the feelings of the severely mentally ill.

The question is who or what will the activist CDC blame for babies who end up suffering serious side effects?

At this rate, the baby himself will likely be criticized for rejecting trans-milk and not affirming the identity of his “chestfeeder” by accepting feelings as a legitimate source of nutrition.

The best safeguard against those repercussions would actually be to internalize Walensky’s parting warning to be on guard against misinformation and the politicization of science

https://patriotpost.us/articles/98760-cdc-mangles-the-science-2023-07-12

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The search for neo-Nazis in Ukraine reflects American progressive hysteria, not Ukrainian reality

It was deeply exasperating and disappointing to read the latest screed published in The Forward [NY Jewish paper] regarding neo-Nazi influence within the now-infamous Ukrainian Azov battalion. The article, from Mr. Lev Golinkin, was necessarily both exasperating and disappointing to anyone who cares about these issues, and about Ukraine. It was, however, especially disappointing to me, a onetime contributor to The Forward, where I published my first reviews as a fledgling literary critic. The unceasing attacks on the heroic defenders of Ukraine in the midst of the Kremlin’s genocidal war are merely the latest indicator of its protracted decline into irrelevancy.

As multiple Ukrainians and Ukraine experts, including me, have tirelessly explained, the independent Azov battalion was indeed founded a decade ago by some very unpleasant men with often-questionable politics, at the moment when the basically defenseless Ukrainian state desperately needed to mobilize volunteers to fight the regular Russian army. The volunteer battalion would be very shortly assimilated into the Ukrainian armed forces. Doubtless, there still exist characters within Azov’s ranks with all sorts of unsavory beliefs, and some of them will be very happy to roll up their sleeves and to flex their pagan rune tattoos if you go drinking with them, as they have for me. But the battalion has long since been domesticated and taken under the firm supervision of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. Though the name of the fighting force remains, it is now a professional and elite special force that is led into battle by officers selected from the regular army recruitment pool. Those officers rise through the army ranks based not on ideology but rather on strict fidelity to the chain of command, which ends at the desk of Ukraine’s Jewish commander in chief.

The formation still contains a plurality of Russian-speaking fighters among its several thousand men at arms. Among these are Azeris, Chechens, Greeks, Russians, Belarusians, Poles, and Jews who have previously served in the ranks of the Israeli Defense Forces.

The many articles about Azov that have appeared over the years in the Western press have done tremendous damage to the credibility of the Ukrainian armed forces. These interventions in the debate are routinely and cynically exploited by Russian propaganda—both for internal and external consumption. So it needs to be stated outright in an unambiguous and axiomatic fashion: There exists no serious neo-Nazi threat in Ukraine. None at all. This is a phantom fear lurking within the minds of various fantasists and neurotics. Inasmuch as historical parallels can be drawn, the main fascistic threat comes from the occupying Russian army, which commits war crimes and mass rape against the population and furthermore attempts to reprogram them with propaganda accusing pluralist democrats of being Nazis.

The Forward debases its proud historical legacy of anti-authoritarianism by publishing such nonsense. The article in question by Mr. Golinkin represents a rehashing of his numerous previous interventions in the debate. I only wish that he knew what he was talking about. What makes his argument worth engaging with is that similar beliefs remain widespread among a swath of post-Soviet emigres who are older than 50, at the same time as they are becoming commonplace among a segment of the American progressive left.

Mr. Golinkin has written that he immigrated from Soviet Ukraine at the age of 8. He has seemingly never reported from the country. Now he has a bugbear about Nazis in Ukraine of the exact same sort that older Soviet emigres from America have. It is a pathology—a deeply understandable one based on the history—but not one that should be validated or embraced. Golinkin is attempting to make the rest of American Jewry internalize his own immigrant pathologies and fears while playing fast and loose with rhetoric in a way that does not help anyone except the producers of Russian propaganda.

The Ukrainian search for an inspiring and usable past—a search for brave historical warriors whose legacy might be appropriated for the sake of inspiring the heroic warriors of the present—is to be respected, even as some of the figures who have been lionized are not always figures that we would like to be lionized. The mobilization of masculine virtues and intensity are par for the course in the midst of a war of genodical annihilation, and Ukrainian society has certainly militarized to a significant degree over the course of the last 500 days.

Which is not in any way to engage in Holocaust denial or revisionism. My own Jewish great-grandparents were shot in Belarus in November 1941. Dealing honestly with what some Ukrainians chose to do in the 1930s and 1940s is imperative, so that we can fight honestly and without a pause. I am immensely proud that Tablet recently published John-Paul Himka’s essay on the pogroms in Lviv in 1941. However, it is a fact that today’s Ukrainians, in a time of war, have consolidated their society in a manifestly liberal fashion. We should do the same and stop telling fairy tales about Nazis.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/lev-golinkin-azov-ukraine-neo-nazis

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Australian Medical insurer drops cover for private doctors who initiate hormone treatments in adolescents with gender dysphoria

They are foreseeing how the winds might change

One of Australia's leading medical insurers has dumped cover for private practising doctors who initiate hormone treatment in adolescents with gender dysphoria, a decision that may put even more pressure on public hospital waiting lists.

MDA National said it will also no longer insure private doctors, such as general practitioners, from legal claims arising from the assessment of patients under 18 as suitable for gender transition treatments, such as cross-sex hormones and gender affirmation surgeries.

The Australian Professional Association for Trans Health (AusPATH), representing hundreds of health professionals who provide care to transgender people, is aware of some GPs who have already stopped gender-affirming care — a model that supports the child's choices and can lead to medical interventions such as puberty blockers and hormone treatment.

AusPATH is concerned the MDA National decision will particularly affect trans youth living outside major cities, who struggle to access public gender services.

"It's going to stop a number of children ever being able to access gender affirming care before they turn 18," AusPATH president Professor Ashleigh Lin said.

The MDA National decision, effective from July 1, comes after the insurer reviewed the medico-legal risks amid what it described as "growing criticism globally of the research that underpins medical and surgical transition of children in response to gender dysphoria".

It was made in response to "the risk of potentially high-value claims arising from irreversible treatments" provided to children and adolescents.

Gender-affirming hormonal therapies with testosterone or oestrogen may cause temporary or permanent infertility.

MDA continues to allow doctors to prescribe puberty blockers to treat trans youth.

While there is evidence of long-term side effect for puberty blockers such as reduced bone density, the effects on puberty are reversible.

"Children are not able to transition without relying on the assessments of medical professionals," MDA National said in a statement to the ABC.

"This places doctors in a uniquely vulnerable position with respect to future litigation – particularly so, if courts take the view that the practitioner has influenced a child's decision to medically or surgically transition and that there are limits to a child's understanding and what they effectively consent to.

"This has led to our view that medical practitioners who assess children as being suitable for transition and/or who initially prescribe cross-sex hormones are at a heightened risk of receiving claims, irrespective of the strength of the consent process and the standard of care or the model of healthcare."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-13/qld-medical-insurer-drops-cover-private-doctors-gender-dysphoria/102592298

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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