Harvard students put together a coalition of sixteen campus groups calling on the university to terminate Martin Kramer’s fellowship for his highly problematic suggestion that humanitarian aid to Palestinian refugees be cut to in effect lessen their numbers.
Their statement in the student newspaper is an opening shot at a clear institutional double standard. Racism has zero tolerance at Harvard, but when barely disguised as policy recommendations in support of Israel, it is deemed sensible and defensible.
So blurred is the university’s moral compass when it comes to Israel, that his proposal to actively work to decrease the population of Palestinians is put forward without the least expectation of repercussions or controversy. Thus, the sponsoring body, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, actually defended his recommendations as sound and within the realm of acceptability.
Despite the obviously racist — and genocidal in international legal terms — nature of his use the phrase “superfluous young men,” he has not been made to apologize. The other racist Kramer, of Seinfeld fame, apologized after launching into an N-word-laden tirade against hecklers at one of his shows. And he did not even go to the egregious extent of suggesting a decrease in the number of African-Americans. Perhaps, he should have instead wrote a policy paper calling for the prohibition of “superfluous young men” from attending comedy shows.
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This Martin "Lunatic" Kramer should be taken to the ring, beaten up, bloody his nose and left on the rope to dry. .Shame of Harvard! This prestigious institution of higher learning has become an institution of higher threat in my book.
Kramer's statement is racism in a raw form. And if bigotry is crime, this man would be behind bars, not poisoning students minds @ Harvard..
Posted by mahmoud el-yousseph | March 12, 2010, 3:59 ama significant reason to stop aid is that the children of the west bank are being taught genocide of Israelis and Jews.
Posted by j t chachkes,m.d. | March 12, 2010, 10:03 pmPutting all the talk of racism and genocide aside, the thing that struck me about Kramer's comments is that they don't make sense. So it might be that the guy is just a moron and all this time we're calling him a genocidal maniac. His logic – that providing aid (food and medicine) is leading to a population glut which leads to a radicalization doesn't stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. Population growth is directly correlated to poverty, the poorer you are the more kids you're going to have. This is a fact (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=per+capita+g… and http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=poverty+and+… and while cause and effect can be argued the one argument that can't be made is that driving people into more starvation and illness will actually reduce their numbers.
But this is precisely the argument that Kramer makes. Which brings us back to the original question – is Kramer a moron? If we give him the benefit of the doubt and say he just made an error he has one of two options to correct his logic. First he can stick to his conclusion that having too many dudes leads to islamic radicalization (and a really bad clubbing experience). And now that he's armed with some facts about population growth and poverty he should call for a reversal in Israel's policy of destroying the Gazan economy and creating more poverty and despair. The more developed economy, the smaller the population, the smaller the number of superfluous young men and less terrorism against israel.
His second option is to say that he understands that the punitive measures against Gaza will lead to more radicalization in the long term but that just doesn't matter. What matters is that Israel try (and fail) to eradicate the Palestinians in the cruelest and most inhumane ways possible because when you have a giant military you've just got to use it somehow.
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Posted by Rob Rasner Wikipedia | May 8, 2011, 12:22 am