Religion is a Mental Illness

I Was Stabbed in the Eye at Yale

The school has allowed anti-Israel students to run roughshod over their most basic policies. Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.

https://www.thefp.com/

I was stabbed in the eye last night on Yale University’s campus because I am a Jew.

I wish I could say I was surprised, but since October 7, Yale has refused to take action against students glorifying violence, chanting “resistance is justified,” “celebrat[ing] the resistance’s success,” and fundraising for “Palestinian anarchist fighters” on the frontlines of the “resistance.” In more recent days, the school has allowed students to run roughshod over their most basic policies against postering, time and place restrictions, disorderly conduct, respect for university property, and the rights of others, not to mention stalking and harassment.

Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.

This latest round of anti-Israel demonstrations at Yale began April 10 when a group of a dozen Yale students threatened to go on a hunger strike if, by the end of the week, the university did not divest from weapons manufacturers “contributing to Israel’s assault on Palestine.” The strikers’ letter, posted around campus, claimed “our existence in this University and this country are ones defined by necropolitics,” seeming to invoke a blood libel about Jewish power. 

The hunger strike began April 13, when students set up a tent encampment outside of Yale’s Sterling Library and later that week moved locations to Beinecke Plaza, which is at the center of campus and is home to Yale’s World War II memorial. At the time, my friends and I had thought that this was nothing more than a tactic to intimidate prospective and admitted Jewish students, who were on campus visiting that week: a sign next to the encampment read “Ask your tour guide about Yale’s investment in genocide.”

By April 15, the hunger strikers were joined by a new anti-Israel campus group called “Occupy Beinecke.” Occupy Beinecke erected a wall on Beinecke Plaza, and covered the Plaza with dozens of large posters, including a memorial (where students drop off flowers) for Walid Daqqa, who commanded the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and was imprisoned for the kidnapping, mutilation, and murder of 19-year-old Israeli Moshe Tamam.

I’m well aware of students’ free speech rights, having worked closely with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression as well as the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which both helped me ramp up a campus magazine this year. The issue isn’t students who glorify Hamas—as morally perverse as I find that view. It’s that Yale administrators and professors have cowered to the mob and have refused to stand up for the most basic Yale values by condemning their glorification of terrorism and demonization of Jews. Indeed, Pierson’s head of college told me in October that Yale’s 14 heads of college were all instructed not to advertise a Shabbat dinner mourning the lives of those lost on October 7. 

By April 20, the students’ encampment had grown to roughly forty tents, sleeping bags, umbrellas, and a stereo. On Saturday night, a student in a Class of 2026 group chat encouraged Yalies to come and show their support for Yalies4Palestine. As a student journalist for the Yale Free Press, I went to check it out. Other reporters from the Yale Daily News were already on the scene.

I should say here that I am a visibly observant Jew who wears a large Star of David around my neck and dresses modestly. I went over with my friend Netanel Crispe, who is also identifiably Jewish because of his beard, black hat, and tzitzit.

When we approached the anti-Israel protest accompanying the tent encampment to document the demonstration, we were quickly walled off by demonstration organizers and attendees who stood in a line in front of us. No one else documenting the event was blockaded this way. 

In every direction we moved, demonstrators stood in front of us, arms linked, yelling along with the crowd. (Watch this video and ask yourself if this would happen to a student who did not look visibly Jewish.)

They shoved us and waved their flashlights in our eyes. One demonstrator held up a boombox in front of Netanel’s face, blasting a rap song with the lyrics:

Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit

As I separated from Netanel and tried to walk through, the wall of protest organizers in front of me remained. When I said, “I can walk. I have freedom of movement,” they mocked me: “Do you hear that, everybody? She can walk!”

Before too long, the protesters encircled me in addition to the human blockade. Their arms linked, and they danced in a circle around me so that I was pinned between them, the human blockade, and a wall. Some other demonstrators noticed this and joined in on the taunting. 

They pointed their middle fingers at me and yelled “Free Palestine,” and the taunting continued until a six-foot-something male protester holding a Palestinian flag waved the flag in my face and then stabbed me with it in my left eye.

My assailant was masked and wearing a keffiyeh, concealing his identity. He also wore glasses and a black jacket. I started to yell and chase after him, but the wall of students continued to block me as I screamed. Next, I went to the Yale police, but they offered little in the way of assistance. They told me that their orders came from administrators who weren’t present at the demonstration, and that there were only seven officers to handle a crowd of about 500. So I was checked out by an ambulance EMT, who recommended I go to the hospital.

The midnight demonstration, the encampment, the violence, all of it violates Yale policy. Some of it, like my assault, also violates state and federal law. Yet nothing meaningful seems to happen in response. Given Yale’s permissiveness, I had the sinking feeling that someone would get hurt. I just didn’t expect it to be me. 

I felt pressure where the stick of the flag had hit my left eye and had a headache last night and much of today. I’m okay now, though. But last night, sitting in the hospital, I couldn’t help but think of my mother, Shahnaz, who grew up in Iran. Her neighbors threw rocks at her for being a Jew. She has a scar on her eyelid to this day. 

Sahar Tartak is a sophomore at Yale. She is a student leader for Chabad and editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press.

They Were Assaulted on Campus for Being Jews

At Yale, Sahar Tartak was stabbed in the eye. At Columbia, Jonathan Lederer’s Israeli flag was burned and he was hit in the face.

https://www.thefp.com/

For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa. Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security.

There would be relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians.

Just remember the righteous—and rightful—outrage over the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted “The Jews will not replace us.” 

This weekend at Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators did all of the above—only it was directed at Jews. They told Columbia students to “go back to Poland.” A Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety.

Demonstrators on these campuses shouted more chic versions of “Jews will not replace us.” At Columbia they screamed: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” At Yale they blasted bad rap with the following lyrics: 

Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit

These campus activists are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters. They are people who are openly celebrating Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students who came near. We are publishing the accounts of two of those students—Sahar Tartak and Jonathan Lederer—today.

Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.)

It is not, however, a First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize those who say them. We are also free to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who have abandoned that mission, and who stand by and do nothing meaningful to stop scenes like the ones of the past 48 hours.

The students who support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness.

There are courageous students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan Lederer and Sahar Tartak.

At Columbia I Am Told: ‘Go Back to Poland’

My Israeli flag was stolen and burned. I was hit. And the school is preventing the NYPD from protecting us.

https://www.thefp.com/

I Was Stabbed in the Eye at Yale

The school has allowed anti-Israel students to run roughshod over their most basic policies. Yesterday, I paid the price for their inaction.

https://www.thefp.com/

The Yale Free Press Is Bringing Courage Back to Campus

This year the Yale Free Press will treat university students like the adults we are— individuals who are capable of grappling with contentio

fairforall.substack.com

Like many campus clubs, the Yale Free Press (YFP) is a decades-old college paper that has risen and fallen with the times. During the pandemic, the YFP nearly died. Last year, an ambitious editor-in-chief brought it back, but unfortunately felt it was necessary to use the pseudonym “Gentleman Jack.” He wasn’t alone—many writers also went by pseudonyms. Why? The Yale Free Press is right-of-center. Journalists are not immune to fear of retaliation for wrongthink, even at (especially at?) the university level. To espouse an opinion deemed unacceptable by campus activists has a real potential to cause consequences for the writer. This year I’m counting on the maturity of my fellow classmates; I’m betting that by putting my real name on the masthead, I can encourage others to own their opinions, and to treat those with differing opinions with kindness and respect.

Yale has developed a reputation as a place where free thought is met with contempt. Undergraduates encircled, vilified, and yelled at a professor who told them they should not need administrators to create a sensitive environment for them. Law school administrators attempted to coerce a student into signing a pre-written apology for using the phrase “trap house” in a party invitation. Multiple federal judges boycotted clerkship applicants from Yale Law School because of its failure to uphold the value of free speech. The university should be a place for vigorous intellectual debate and conversation, but support for this seems to be dwindling as students increasingly demand safe spaces and trigger warnings. Many would gladly trade in their curiosity for conformity if given the chance. It appears some already have. 

Yet, as a Yale student and editor-in-chief of the Yale Free Press, I do not see my campus only in terms of horror stories. Nor should I. Last fall, I published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal criticizing critical race theory in public schools, followed by interviews with Fox, Newsmax, Quillette, and more. I found a home in the William F. Buckley Institute, a bastion of viewpoint diversity on our campus, and the Yale Political Union, a confederation of primarily conservative debate societies. I wrote for both the Yale Free Press and the better-known Yale Daily News, espousing the benefits of conservative religious practices and even criticizing a free speech debacle at Stanford Law School. 

Fortunately, opportunities abound in the viewpoint-diversity network: internships, travel, and high-profile political meetings. On campus, life is good. Friends who disagree with my politics accept me and are too curious to be intolerant. If anything, they view heterodoxy as exotic, exciting, and even a tad rebellious. Professors and administrators are also kind; they have treated me with a sense of care that I can only call familial. 

At Yale, as is usually the case in life, the truth of free speech's status lies somewhere between the well-publicized horror stories and rainbow showers described above. It lies in a generation of students who are sympathetic to shouting down controversial speakers and installing cameras in bedrooms to prevent sexual assault, while others still self-censor for fear of becoming the main character in a cancellation story themselves. It lies in campus clubs quietly rejecting students because they are spooked by their political views. It lies in the politicization of every campus institution — tutoring centers, resident life, and religious groups. It lies in freshman orientation programs that refuse to address crime because to do so would be “racist” and to teach students preventative measures against sexual assault because that is “victim-blaming.”

Yale’s campus culture right now is mostly normal, and I am consistently impressed by those with whom I share a campus. I am insistent on the goodness of our students and faculty alike and the goodness of human beings in general. I am insistent on the insatiable appetite of my truth-seeking peers, who are more interested in facts than dogma. I am insistent on a shared common sense, which recognizes the absurdity of ignoring literal safety measures for the sake of political correctness. 

For these reasons and more, I am ramping up the Yale Free Press as its editor-in-chief. We are recruiting more writers, and we intend to write more this year. We are tapping into resources for student journalists and creating those resources as we go. For instance, we formed an online network of student journalists from campuses across the country to share tips, opportunities, and offer support. We will cover what other campus papers do not: the issues of speech that lie in between space—those that require nuance and complexity to understand. The “exotic” philosophies— conservatism, classical liberalism, religious traditionalism, and so on—that sharp students are fascinated by but shielded from. The common-sense questions that everyone seems afraid to ask. At the Yale Free Press, we are choosing to treat university students as the adults we are, adults who are capable of grappling with contentious topics with maturity and intellectual rigor. 

Yale is a renowned university and a one-way ticket to public influence. Its students must question the day-to-day happenings on campus, and they cannot ask questions if these happenings go unnoticed. Future leaders ought to be immersed in uncertainty if they hope to create something positive one day. That is the purpose of higher education. It is neither professional development nor social justice bootcamp. It is time to think. 

On our university's coat of arms, the words “light and truth” are written in Hebrew and Latin. The Yale Free Press has an ambitious goal of keeping readers out of the dark by relentlessly reporting the truth, and we intend to succeed.

Sahar: During my junior year my school had wanted to sponsor this political organization called Erase Racism, to give a presentation to the school on systemic racism in Long Island. And they had asked for student government to fund the presentation, but i didn't really know what the presentation was going to be about and they weren't really giving me any information. And this is when I was treasurer, so i needed to sign off on these checks.

They got student government members together for a meeting and just berated us for about an hour over Zoom about how our refusal to sponsor this organization was really our refusal to oppose racism.

My two student government advisors had also brought in my social studies teacher to join them in this meeting. So it was it was really intense just having three adults, all of whom you know had authority over me and one of whom had control over my grades in my junior year of high school.

And I was also, again as a junior, not used to situations like this. I'm Jewish. They asked me if I would have done the same thing for a Holocaust presentation. So from there i realized that there were some issues in the school that definitely needed to be hashed out when it came to just intimidation and speech.

Later on in the year, a student in the school, a friend of mine actually, showed his dad a Google Slides presentation that was being taught to his English Regents class, which is a mandatory English class in the school for I think juniors... yeah it's English 11 Regents. And the contents of the presentation were again very controversial. Some of the things that were said in these slides were that America is as racist today as it was 200 years ago.

The students who were watching the presentation had harbored white fragility when it came to race and that white fragility was actually a function of white solidarity, so white people get upset at being called racist in order to fight for racism. And that we all have internalized racism and it ended with a pledge to be anti-racist, but that was anti-racist as defined by this controversial slideshow. It had some it had some recommended readings, I think one of which was maybe White Fragility.

So the contents of that presentation was released to a lot of parents who just were not happy about it. So the parents brought that to the Board of Education. Board of Education offers a public kind of discussion where you as a constituent get to talk to the Board of Education about this issue, this issue, that issue, and a lot of parents were going up saying, whoa I object to this being taught to my kids on a mandatory basis, and also I didn't know about this being taught to my kids, and also apparently this was being taught for years and the school administration knew about it so what's going on here.

So this Board of Ed meeting was was huge.

Ben: Perhaps half the parents of this of the school district here are immigrants or refugees, Jewish or Asian. Unfortunately my father learned what white supremacy was he he grew up in in Poland, in the part of Poland that's now in the Ukraine.

Having their kids being taught that they're white supremacists, it's very incongruous to the local actual felt experience, the lived experience of the people in this town.

Sahar: So i found out about this Board of Ed meeting, I think maybe the day of or the day before, and what was going to be happening and what a lot of parents in particular were coming to protest.

So I decided that this was really going to be my opportunity to speak up about other things that were happening in the school and really let the rest of the community know that there was a lot going on. That the school administration had basically been sponsoring this mandated learning of controversial ideas to the kids and was also sponsoring intimidation to get there.

So I wrote up a speech basically detailing what happened with student government and also just included this question of, really this presentation, the very controversial Google Slides presentation, it's been being taught for years. How could the people in charge here have not known about this and how could they not have been so transparent you know.

It was a problem, it's an issue that our school was enforcing ideologies with with an iron fist, rather than a gentle hand.

Opinion | My High School’s ‘Antiracist’ Agitprop

Teachers tried to bully me into signing a $375 student government check for a group promoting critical race theory. I refused.

www.wsj.com|Sahar Tartak

I was educated in the school district ranked by Niche.com as America’s third-best. Immigrants from around the world come to Great Neck, N.Y., to raise their children. My best friend’s father was at the Tiananmen Square massacre. My classmates left behind their families in El Salvador. My mother escaped revolutionary Iran, and my grandfather escaped the Nazis.

Lately, though, the area’s diverse and liberal-minded residents may have reason to think their local school officials aren’t as open-minded as they thought. In 2021 Great Neck North High School directed the student government to give $375 of student funds to a “racial equity” group to speak to the student body about “systemic racism.” I was the student government’s treasurer, and I felt we didn’t know enough about the organization and its mission to disburse the funds. So I refused to sign the check.

In response, the teachers who advise the student government berated, bullied and insulted me at our next meeting, which took place over Zoom for my parents to overhear. They began by announcing that my social studies teacher would be present. Together, the three adults told me that the principal himself found my stance “appalling.” I had made them and the school “look bad,” they told me. One teacher said the situation gave her “hives.”

When I suggested that students might not need or want a lecture on systemic racism, my social-studies teacher asked whether I’d also oppose a Holocaust survivor’s presentation.

I objected to that comparison, but she cut me off: “If you’re not on board with systemic racism, I have trouble with that, girlfriend.”

When I didn’t back down, she made a bizarre accusation: “The fact that you think slavery is debatable . . .”

I logged off Zoom and started crying. My parents comforted me, and I decided I wasn’t going to sign that check.

That’s when I noticed how illiberal my liberal high school had become. I once expressed disagreement with the narrative of the “1619 Project,” and that same social-studies teacher snapped that I was opposed to hearing other perspectives. I had signed up for her class because it was described as “discussion-based,” but certain discussion seemed forbidden.

Later, a friend showed me a lesson from his English class—a Google Slides presentation urging that students pledge to work “relentlessly” in the “lifelong process” of “antiracism.” According to these slides, America is a place where racism is “no better today than it was 200 years ago.” I disagreed but didn’t mind the debate. Yet this wasn’t about debate: Immigrant children were being told to “pledge” to defend a view many of them don’t hold.

I doubt students could have comfortably objected in class. The lesson pre-empted criticism by imputing to them “white fragility,” which means they “close off self-reflection,” “trivialize the reality of racism,” and “protect a limited worldview.” The adult presenting this accusatory material was a teacher who had the power to grade them and affect their prospects of getting into college.

When parents caught wind of this presentation, their group chats exploded: “I feel like I live under a rock.” “I did not realize the extent of this at all.” “If you too are troubled by this, join us at the upcoming school board meeting.”

I decided to tell the school board about my treatment at the hands of teachers and school officials. I was nervous but I made my case. The response, to my shock, was a standing ovation. I also received many expressions of support from fed-up parents, from teachers who silently abhorred their one-sided “professional development” courses, and from students who had been punished by administrators for questioning the orthodoxy of systemic racism. (One of those students had been sent to the principal’s office for refusing to sign an “antihate” pledge.)

That experience prompted me and a few like-minded others to look into our school’s curriculums. What we found was an arsenal of lopsidedly race-obsessed lesson plans. One was about the American Psychological Association’s “Apology to People of Color” for its role in “Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism.” Another was titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” My favorite: “A Critical Race Theory Approach to The Great Gatsby.”

The schools in our district had always followed the guidelines of New York state’s comprehensive social-studies curriculum, which included teaching about the pervasiveness and evils of slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, discrimination against Chinese immigrants and so on. What we discovered was something else—partisanship and race essentialism, mixed in with administrative intimidation and bullying that our officials refused to address.

District officials responded in the way school officials often do when criticized. They ignored us for as long as possible, then delayed taking action for as long as possible, clearly hoping everybody would forget the controversy and move on. They didn’t respond to my father’s freedom-of-information request until the day before a contentious school-board election. The board then promised to further investigate the curriculums, but we never heard anything after that. My school brought in a member of the state Education Department’s Board of Regents, to discuss curriculums, but that resulted in nothing.

I graduated last spring, but no one has moved on. Students and parents across the country are finally asking tough questions about anti-American curriculums. Immigrants like my mother and grandfather found refuge in America because for all its problems, it’s a wonderful place full of generous and open-minded people. The nation’s schools have a duty to teach students that basic truth.

Sahar Tartak is a freshman at Yale and a fellow at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.