Re: “Will universities be made to pay for anti-Black racism, too?” (Aug. 24, Opinion):
Shaun Harper asks, “Why has no college or university ever been required or expected to pay $1 billion (or any amount close to that) for the racial discrimination and violence that Black people endure on campuses?”
Unfortunately, Harper misses the two painfully obvious answers: 1. Because universities are not the source of racism (or antisemitism) on campus and elsewhere — President Donald Trump’s right-wing white nationalist supporters are. 2. Because Trump and MAGA have cynically seized upon alleged antisemitism as a convenient tool to advance their actual agenda — to undermine the exemplary American higher education system, which generally supports pro-democratic, anti-racist and anti-authoritarian voices.
One must not forget McCarthyism in the 1950s with its demands for loyalty oaths from American universities, nor Nazism in the 1930s with its imposition of Aryan ideology on German universities. Universities have been the canaries in the mines of democracy and must be defended with unwavering determination.
Michael Perlman, Seattle
