Jon Reisman

The explosion of campus antisemitism and support for Jewish genocide (from the river to the sea) has shocked many Americans, but for this retired professor who spent 40 years on New England college campuses, it is no surprise at all. The sources of that antisemitism are relatively easy to identify.

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and anti-colonialism indoctrination divide the world into oppressed (victim) and oppressor classes and classify Jews as an oppressor class. DEI advocates, apologists, and administrators argue that oppressed groups cannot engage in racism or hate speech and that Hamas’s actions were justified because Israeli Jews are colonists on stolen land. United Nations and most Western “women’s” groups (if they can define women) have remained conspicuously silent on Hamas’s use of rape, mutilation, and murder as their weapon of choice. 

The left has captured higher education over the last 40 years and engineered a transformation of the professoriate and administration from about 70% left of center to something approaching 100% monochromatic leftism. Hiring and promotion depend on political acceptability- many institutions now require DEI loyalty pledges, and cancel culture silences conservatives who speak out. The disgraced and now displaced University of Pennsylvania President, who could not denounce anti-Semitic genocidal rhetoric in the name of free speech and “context,” has presided over an institution that has the second-worst free speech record in the country (Harvard has the worst) according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). However, weep not for the disgraced DEI diva- she will return to her six-figure tenured sinecure at the UPenn law school- after she has led a multi-year effort to oust tenured Jewish Law Professor Amy Wax for writing and speaking in defense of bourgeois values and against DEI shibboleths. I would love to attend a U Penn Law School Faculty meeting, although it might not be a shining example of the City of Brotherly Love.

When I was hired during the Reagan administration, UMM’s leading feminist (a radical leftist) complained to my division chair (a mainstream Democrat) that I had come out of a conservative right-wing economics program (Brown). The fact that I was, at the time, a conservative, Scoop Jackson Democrat could not compensate for my gender and dangerous pedigree. In later years, multiple attempts to cancel or muzzle me occurred when I:

• opposed the salmon listing; 

• ran for Congress, opposing racial and gender preferences (An Orono Human Resources administrator and Democratic activist wrote that I was a “nutcase”)

• opposed a clearly unconstitutional speech code banning any speaker deemed to “dehumanize” oppressed groups (this included basically any conservative Republican)

• insisted that if UMM hosted pro-gay marriage speakers, we should also invite opponents.

• dared to question DEI dogma in my columns, especially when I pointed out that despite committing UMM and UMS to the pursuit of “equity” and “social justice,” no one- not the Chancellor, the President, the Trustees, or the Faculty, had been willing to define those terms or argue with my definitions of equity as equal outcomes and social justice as the government redistributing income, wealth and power from so-called oppressor groups (including Jews) to oppressed groups.

I thought that when I retired and was granted emeritus status, the cancellation efforts would cease, but I was mistaken. One rabid leftist and propaganda expert on the UMM faculty cannot abide conservative speech challenging his worldview, and progressive groupthink has taken hold.  I recently sent an opinion piece by a Cornell Law Prof (Hatred of Western Civilization Stokes the Campus Antisemitism Crisis — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (jamesgmartin.center)) to the UMM faculty in the hopes that it might have some salutary effect. I was informed that this was an “inappropriate” use of the faculty listserv. When I asked what the criteria or rubric for determining “inappropriate“ was, after some word salad responses, it became apparent that there are no criteria except perhaps triggering sensitive leftists. I thought about suggesting a “rattling cage” metric but thought better of it.

Taxpayer support of illiberal indoctrination centers that promote leftist values while suppressing right-of-center views is not sustainable if the bias and indoctrination are exposed. Washington County needs a public university devoted to education, open inquiry, and viewpoint diversity.  It is a shame we do not have one in the Shiretown any longer. 

Jon Reisman is an economist and policy analyst who retired from the University of Maine at Machias after 38 years. He resides on Cathance Lake in Cooper, where he is a Selectman and a Statler and Waldorf intern. Mr. Reisman’s views are his own and he welcomes comments as letters to the editor here, or to him directly via email at [email protected].