These kids are brainwashed and the public schools are adding more fuel to the fire. Here in CA we have an "ethnic studies" requirements that is just a factory of "social justice warriors" meanwhile academics continue to decline
Thank you for sharing your story and for having the courage to stand up for justice. I hope that you are rewarded with a position in a saner environment.
I applaud your difficult decision, and am certain you will find thousands of students in the coming years who will be grateful and lucky to learn from you. Best of luck to you.
I think you should stay, Professor Karchmer. Please stay, don't let these racists at the MIT intimidate you.
Students' passions are shifty. It sucks right now, but it will get better once the war wanes down. Who will show them reason once the current news and fashion cycle moves on?
The rest of the nation(s) needs good people like you around. We're right behind you.
Thank you for writing this Mauricio. It's clear this is a very painful time and I'm sorry. Do you have ideas about any/all of the following: Why your students don't think critically, whether it's worse than when you started teaching, and what could be done about it?
I wonder if the students, including the teaching assistant, that Prof. Karchmer found listed in the pro-Hamas groups came to campus with their biases or learned them at MIT. I'm seeing a trend towards blaming faculty and on-campus DEI indoctrination, and I'm certain there's plenty for which to condemn them, but I wonder if the push for skin-deep diversity is also resulting in increasing numbers of students from communities that have high rates of antisemitism already. Is the corrective to both types of campus antisemitism the same?
I understand the decision personally, but I wonder about the long term effect of having dissenting professors leaving these universities - could he not have incorporated some "critical thinking" into his courses to try to counter-program what is being taught elsewhere? By leaving his position, who will replace it? Given the hiring standards and requirements for commitments to "DEI", likely a professor who will embody and convey the same sentiments he observes in his other colleagues, creating more and more of a closed environment to graduate what will still be considered the "elite" graduates in STEM who will go on to found and staff high placed positions in many of the up and coming tech companies, finance, corporations and elsewhere, and if this "oppressor/oppressed/decolonization" ideology is as deeply placed to not be unset by "real world" experiences as was typical of most former "college radicals", then we're looking at having the next generation or two of our most influential sectors run by these grads having these views that will most definitely shape those sectors, as well as those from Harvard etc.
So unless there's some big sea change with employers and industries who no longer view graduates from these universities as "elite hires" and go to hiring and internship pools, abandoning these institutions to this ideology and its promoters seems like a bad long term decision, even if it's just a few here and there, it still matters to have some semblance of dissent and push back on the extremes and the takeover of entire disciplines by this "ideology" by those who can provide it.
These students of yours and at other so-called elite universities may be fortunate to have superior intellect and financially able parents, but that does not give them wisdom. Your colleagues who supported terrorists just re-enforces that fact that being able to jockey around number's does not confer an intellect that is superior in other areas. They are more like idiot savants than anything else. Their inability to really scrutinize a situation, and delve into its causes and outcomes. They automatically regress into a melanin supporting mode that was drilled into them by a woke system unwilling to realize that they are wrong. Ask them why the Hamas leaders are billionaires while their brethren have nothing, and the response will both be inadequate and a spewing of all of the propaganda lies put forth by their heroes. Reality and Hamas supporters have never met. Ask a gay person why they support Hamas when they wouldn't last ten minutes in Arab countries, and you will get blank stares. Come to Florida. We get treated better here.
Mauricio, Thank you for this story and it destroys me that you had to write it. My heart breaks for these Jewish students (as well as faculty) that are put in this position. Unfortunately, while 10/7 lit the match, this ideology has been bubbling up and pervasive in higher education for a while. We have to do what we can to stop it. I feel so helpless but education and talking about the real truth is the only thing that can work. We somehow need to educate people - one person at a time to eventually make a difference. That is unless we can use Ben Kawaller's inferred idea and maybe slap some sense into them...jk..kinda
These kids are brainwashed and the public schools are adding more fuel to the fire. Here in CA we have an "ethnic studies" requirements that is just a factory of "social justice warriors" meanwhile academics continue to decline
Someone from the new University of Austin should be recruiting him!
Thank you for sharing your story and for having the courage to stand up for justice. I hope that you are rewarded with a position in a saner environment.
I applaud your difficult decision, and am certain you will find thousands of students in the coming years who will be grateful and lucky to learn from you. Best of luck to you.
I think you should stay, Professor Karchmer. Please stay, don't let these racists at the MIT intimidate you.
Students' passions are shifty. It sucks right now, but it will get better once the war wanes down. Who will show them reason once the current news and fashion cycle moves on?
The rest of the nation(s) needs good people like you around. We're right behind you.
I am no fan of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. But it seems to be time for Atlas to shrug. Good luck Mauricio.
Thank you for writing this Mauricio. It's clear this is a very painful time and I'm sorry. Do you have ideas about any/all of the following: Why your students don't think critically, whether it's worse than when you started teaching, and what could be done about it?
I wonder if the students, including the teaching assistant, that Prof. Karchmer found listed in the pro-Hamas groups came to campus with their biases or learned them at MIT. I'm seeing a trend towards blaming faculty and on-campus DEI indoctrination, and I'm certain there's plenty for which to condemn them, but I wonder if the push for skin-deep diversity is also resulting in increasing numbers of students from communities that have high rates of antisemitism already. Is the corrective to both types of campus antisemitism the same?
this is an excellent question.
Respect, Dr. Karchmer.
I'm glad you are in the position to make this move. Thank you for standing.
God bless you Mauricio . Thank you.
So sad. Thank you for giving him this platform to tell his story.
How much longer will we survive this onslaught to freedoms of America?
I understand the decision personally, but I wonder about the long term effect of having dissenting professors leaving these universities - could he not have incorporated some "critical thinking" into his courses to try to counter-program what is being taught elsewhere? By leaving his position, who will replace it? Given the hiring standards and requirements for commitments to "DEI", likely a professor who will embody and convey the same sentiments he observes in his other colleagues, creating more and more of a closed environment to graduate what will still be considered the "elite" graduates in STEM who will go on to found and staff high placed positions in many of the up and coming tech companies, finance, corporations and elsewhere, and if this "oppressor/oppressed/decolonization" ideology is as deeply placed to not be unset by "real world" experiences as was typical of most former "college radicals", then we're looking at having the next generation or two of our most influential sectors run by these grads having these views that will most definitely shape those sectors, as well as those from Harvard etc.
So unless there's some big sea change with employers and industries who no longer view graduates from these universities as "elite hires" and go to hiring and internship pools, abandoning these institutions to this ideology and its promoters seems like a bad long term decision, even if it's just a few here and there, it still matters to have some semblance of dissent and push back on the extremes and the takeover of entire disciplines by this "ideology" by those who can provide it.
These students of yours and at other so-called elite universities may be fortunate to have superior intellect and financially able parents, but that does not give them wisdom. Your colleagues who supported terrorists just re-enforces that fact that being able to jockey around number's does not confer an intellect that is superior in other areas. They are more like idiot savants than anything else. Their inability to really scrutinize a situation, and delve into its causes and outcomes. They automatically regress into a melanin supporting mode that was drilled into them by a woke system unwilling to realize that they are wrong. Ask them why the Hamas leaders are billionaires while their brethren have nothing, and the response will both be inadequate and a spewing of all of the propaganda lies put forth by their heroes. Reality and Hamas supporters have never met. Ask a gay person why they support Hamas when they wouldn't last ten minutes in Arab countries, and you will get blank stares. Come to Florida. We get treated better here.
Mauricio, Thank you for this story and it destroys me that you had to write it. My heart breaks for these Jewish students (as well as faculty) that are put in this position. Unfortunately, while 10/7 lit the match, this ideology has been bubbling up and pervasive in higher education for a while. We have to do what we can to stop it. I feel so helpless but education and talking about the real truth is the only thing that can work. We somehow need to educate people - one person at a time to eventually make a difference. That is unless we can use Ben Kawaller's inferred idea and maybe slap some sense into them...jk..kinda
A man of principle.
This is post-modern, post-Christian America. All land is stolen. No one is forgiven. Morality lies with the data.
So see a “Hunger Games” movie to see where it all leads. Prescient.