One of the few benefits of the Hamas premeditated murder strike on Israeli civilians and Israel’s perfect response to it (‘OK, enough. You’re toast.’) is that it simultaneously ripped the masks off the corruption and the ethical vacuums in our two most ideologically compromised professions, journalism and education. Of course, the former will do its utmost to avoid reporting on the latter, but who knows? Maybe the truth will finally permeate the walnut shell-sheathed brains of the gullible and apathetic public.
Nah. What am I thinking?
Several professors have announced, often in truly disgusting terms, their belief that the Hamas terrorist attack was justified, and that it is “murder” for Israel to respond with deadly force. One poisoned school, CUNY, apparently has a faculty stuffed with such anti-Semitic fools: here’s a letter signed by over 80 professors and lecturers, including the celebrity ethics dunce Marc Lamont Hill, asserting the whole panoply of anti-Israel talking points. Any parent who allows their children to be indoctrinated at a college that would employ such intellectually dishonest activists as these as teachers is incompetent and irresponsible.
But I digress. Mika Tosca, an associate professor with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, went way, way beyond CUNY’s credentialed leftists in a rant on Instagram:
Yikes. Israelis are pigs, savages, and shit, disgusting and grotesque, and should rot in hell. How do you really feel, professor? Apparently, based on her subsequent post on the matter, she really feels completely differently:
This apology hits all its marks to make it qualify as a #1 level apology on the Apology Scale, “An apology motivated by the realization that one’s past conduct was unjust, unfair, and wrong, constituting an unequivocal admission of wrongdoing as well as regret, remorse and contrition, as part of a sincere effort to make amends and seek forgiveness.” There’s a problem, though: it’s obviously a lie from start to finish.
There is no plausible explanation given in the apology for why she would post a public statement embodying the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes and hateful claims if that’s not what she really believes. There aren’t many excuses available: “Someone held a loaded gun to me head and made me type that” or “I was taking dictation from a Hamas terrorist who had my baby by the throat” (Mika is trans —not that there’s anything wrong with that—so this is impossible, but you get my point) or “I was tripping on shrooms and thought I saw Netanyahu eat a girl scout troop!” or maybe “I had a complete head transplant today, so the bad head that thought up that post is gone!” might be convincing excuses to an idiot, but not that spewing vile anti-Semitic rhetoric was just “my reaction to violence in Israel and Palestine.”
She doesn’t even respect the public enough to try the insulting Pazuzu Excuse, which, conveniently enough, is described in the Ethics Alarms Glossary as “asserting that people just spontaneously, for example, denigrate Jews when they have never harbored an anti-Semitic thought in their lives,” so the Devil made them do it, or something. (Pazuzu, for those of you are are pop culture deficient, is the name of the demon who made Linda Blair’s head spin around in “The Exorcist.”)
Thus what looks like a model apology is in fact in the worst apology class, #10: “An insincere and dishonest apology designed to allow the wrongdoer to escape accountability cheaply, and to deceive his or her victims into forgiveness and trust, so they are vulnerable to future wrongdoing.”
In addition to being a bigot and a fan of beheading babies, Professor Tosca is also a liar. This raises the question: how are people like her hired to teach college students? What trustworthy institution would do that? The first Instagram message is signature significance: no non-bigot or responsible adult would post such a thing, ever. It should be difficult to detect these disqualifying features of an individual during the vetting and firing process, unless institution itself is irresponsible.
Ethics Alarms 
No apology can erase what she said. As soon as CUNY verified that she actually said it, no matter what attempt at an apology she made, immediate firing was required. That it didn’t happen reflects on CUNY to the extent that further action by the board of trustees also is required.
But…but…”academic freedom!”
I don’t know what the solution to the undergraduate and graduate institutions is. Maybe home-schooling needs to be instituted for undergraduate and graduate students with some sort of standardized test being available to get a degree.
Oh, right, academic freedom. That claim may come, but the offensive statement was made on a personal social media account, and as the president of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago pointed out, with “emotions roiling” a statement was made that caused distress. When that happens, there can be “ideas we, at times, disagree with or even find repugnant. But even when we disagree, we don’t shun, dox, or namecall (sic). We invite one another into more dialogue.”
So, personal account, roiling emotions, a bit of distress, let’s just talk it out.
And, of course, I carelessly wrote CUNY when it should have been The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Of course, The Art Institute of Chicago knew exactly what Dr. Tosca believed and probably endorses it. We all know that antisemitism is just a club the left uses to pound Republicans and/or conservatives with, such as when Donald Trump complained that American Jews didn’t support him as much as they should considering his pro-Israel policies.
Full Disclosure: The actual Art Institute of Chicago art museum is fantastic and full of wonderful works of art. We will never forget standing a foot away from “American Gothic”.
Forget it. Prof. Mika is untouchable. Our friendly anti-Semite is a trans activist and identifies as a woman. Prof. is also a climatologist and a big promoter of feminist ecology (whatever that is).
jvb
PS: Mika should have said this: “I didn’t make that statement on my Instagram account – my former self did (he comes out every once in a while and I can’t control what he says or does). My former misogynist toxic masculine identity got a hold of my socials and did this thing. Really! It’s true!”
jvb
The study on faculty hiring from years ago explain this. They found that Republican faculty would hire a Democrat if that person was the best qualified person 65% of the time. Democrats would only hire a Republican who was the best qualified candidate, 25% of the time. This indicates the importance of ideology in the two parties. Even if you start with a faculty that is 100% Republican, it eventually becomes 100% Democrat.
For the statistics:
In the first year of the 100% Republican faculty, there is only a 12% chance that a Democrat would be rejected purely on ideological grounds with a 5 person committee. The chance just goes down from there as more Democrats are hired.
For a 100% Democrat faculty, there is a 94% chance a Republican candidate would be rejected purely on ideological grounds.
Once the faculty becomes virtually 100% Democrat, they begin to discriminate on ideology within the party. More extreme views are viewed more favorably by the extremists, and moderates are trained not to look disfavorably on extremists.
That is how you get today’s faculty. There is no way around it due to extreme importance Democrats put on ideology. The Democratic party has a religion-like dedication to ideology that is not present to nearly the same degree in Republicans. The only way you could stop it is to insist on adults in the administration knowledgeable enough to stop such hiring practices. The only way to do this is to perhaps make the state university presidents nominated by the Governor and have a mandate to stop partisan hiring. Of course, that would never actually work. Education is doomed to be hopelessly partisan and extremist as long as the Democratic Party continues to be a cult.
Hiring her was not a mistake. Hiring her was simply adding another member to the team.
“The first Instagram message is signature significance: no non-bigot or responsible adult would post such a thing, ever.”
You beat me to it.
While I am not one to throw out the “signature significance” label lightly, it is appropriate. You can say stupid things in criticizing Israel; you can say ignorant things in criticizing Israel; and, frankly, you can say intelligent and insightful things in criticizing Israel. But, her critique hits NONE of those categories.
I am capable of saying stupid and ignorant things, but I do not think I would be able to say something that vacuous and inflammatory without somehow pausing and to reflect on my words before my thought was completed.
Then again, I tend to talk slowly and can only type with two fingers, so I may have a definite advantage in this area.
-Jut
“anti-Semitic”
I can’t stand the word anti-Semitic or antisemitism. It sounds like some sort of squishy academic term invented by sociologists to discuss some vague cultural effect that sort of just happens or people suffer from. It allows comfortable people to chat casually about things going on in the middle east without being confronted with what is really going on as if it’s just some sort of natural force as part of some cultures.
No. Call it what it is. It’s Jew Hatred. It’s hating Jews. It’s finding a group of people so abhorrent that the haters hate not just their culture but each individual one of them.
They hate a specific people who are known as Jews.
No one wants to say that because it makes them uncomfortable.
Dr. Mika didn’t suffer from a rash of antisemitism. No, Dr. Mika hates Jews.
I feel the same way about “Holocaust.” Too fancy. Reduces “the time the Germans decided to industrially murder nearly ten million men, women and children because of their religion” to some sort of naturally occurring event, a hurricane or something.
Actually, a holocaust is an offering totally consumed by fire, so it’s more a poetic reference. But it doesn’t capture the industrial nature of this genocide/democide.
See, Steve, the “offering” aspect turns the murders into some sort of ceremonial, purgative sacrifice. Which is terrible.
Yeah. I don’t like it much either. Though “state sanctioned minority murder” doesn’t flow.
Michael, I’m okay if a description of the largest atrocity of the 20th century and perhaps all recorded history doesn’t just roll off the tongue. Maybe it should be cumbersome and difficult.
Fair
I’m on board with this as Semite refers to Arabs as well. Jew hater is far more precise .
Thank you, Alicia. How ironic!
Sem·ite
[ˈseˌmīt]
NOUN
a member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs.
“Semite” is an obsolete term no longer used even by anthropologists or ethnologists, any more than the “Hamite” or “Japhetite” terms which were all postulated by early ethnologists (late 1700s, I believe) to denote geographic distribution of the descendants of Noah’s three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth.
Years ago, a Jewish friend educated me about this and he, too advocated the blunt term “Jew hate” to more accurately describe the evil.
Exactly.
I have to ask isn’t the Palestinian flag the equivalent of flying a Nazi banner or the confederate stars and bars?
If not why not. The former believed Jews were deemed lower life forms while the latter is assumed to believe blacks were lesser humans.
If a skinhead penned the diatribe against Jews as shown above the Democrats would want that persons head in a platter.
The logical inconsistency of the Left never fails to bemuse and astound.
It is remarkable how many of these snarky pro Palestinian faculty people are issuing groveling apologies. The guy at Cornell, for example. I’ve never seen anything like it. Lefties usually never apologize. Is this a new chapter in the handbook for radicals?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12651349/cornell-university-russell-rickford-exhilarated-hamas-terror-apology.html
The follow up.