ah ha ha ha
AH HA HA HA

Damn, where are the 'ROFL' emoticons for this site?

What did I tell ye about Hahvid just yesterday, Phil? That it's the "university" [sic] which granted an MBA to one George W. Bush. I REST MY CASE!

"He's gone crimson, lookit them boots!"

http://boston.indymedia.org/feature/display/204023/index.php

Are those people I see, protesting the Iraq war in Harvard square this past week, with Iraq Veterans Against the War?

Shouldn't they be doing that in a less public place? With a representative of General Betrayus there to provide balance?

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=515322

"…

A frequently cited case of Harvard’s slavery ties is that of the original benefactor of Harvard Law School (HLS).

The school was formed in 1817 “with the money left to Harvard by an Antiguan slave owner and planter, Isaac Royall,” Boston College law professor Daniel R. Coquillette said in a 2001 speech at HLS.

Royall had sold his slaves and plantations in the Caribbean in order to move to Medford, Mass., according to Coquillette, now a visiting professor at HLS.

Royall’s Medford estate—which includes the only remaining slave quarters in the northeast—is now a museum.

[MM: MY FAVORITE BIT FOLLOWS!]

HLS has also continued to award the Royall chair to its professors.

…"

"A frequently cited case of Harvard’s slavery ties is that of the original benefactor of Harvard Law School (HLS)."

Oh boy, that's a big can of worms you're opening there, Professor MM. An even bigger picture is provided in the book, "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, Volume One" (Nation of Islam, Boston, 1991). It asserts that "Jewish slave traders procured Black Africans by the tens of thousands and funneled them to the plantations of South America and throughout the Caribbean."

Despite the hundreds of footnotes, critics say that it's just an antisemitic screed written by authors with a bias. But in the era before wire transfers and letters of credit, is it really so far-fetched to assert that a network of Jewish traders had a major hand in the slave trade? Why are the oldest U.S. synagogues located on the Rhode Island and South Carolina coasts, anyhow (not to mention the ancient synagogues in northeast Brazil)?

It's remarkable how slave OWNERS are held up to obloquy in the victor's histories which followed the War Between the States, yet there's only silence about the slave TRADERS. Who WERE those masked men, anyway? Just one of history's mysteries, I reckon. ;-)

I'm curious about what bothers you most about the "Breaking the Silence" display. The site change, the reasons you understood for the site change, the presence of those describing different perspectives at the site, the presence of "officials"?

I wanted to see it. If you have any contact with the organizers, can you request that they send it to a college near my way.

There would be MANY interested in my region.

I couldn't get to Boston.

Ibero-Berger refugee Jewish communities were disproportionately involved in financing the Arican slave trade, but the contribution of German Jews comes in the pre-Civil period when German Jewish immigrants brought a fairly sophisticated understanding of finance, retail and wholesale trade in association with management of feudal and semi-feudal estates that existed in parts of Germany and recently Germanized Polish regions, which still had fairly large serf populations.

The US Founding Fathers assumed that slavery would die out because of decreasing profitability. The knoweledge base that German Jews brought to the USA helped to make the system work when the Philadephia and Boston finance industries may have been developing qualms about investing in Slavery. (One could argue that gentile firms left this sector not because of moral reasons but because of lack of expertise.)

http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/10/origins-of-modern-jewry.html

http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/12/les-origines-des-juifs-actuels.html

Contrast this with Steinberg's position. For Steniberg, the important thing is not monolithic Jewish unity, which he recognizes as impossible, but that the Jewish/pro-Israel community retain control over the discussion. For ZOA, it would be better if the BTS exhibition, if it had to appear at all, would be in a non-Jewish space. Steinberg realizes that presenting in a Jewish space, surrounded by contrasting voices, actually diminishes its impact, as well as allowing Hillel to control access–limited hours and so on. Ideally, the visitor to Hillel will walk away thinking "this subject is really controversial" rather than "the way Israelis treat Palestinians is really terrible." The idea that you need an IDF escort to see an exhibition is an embodiment of this strategy.

The whole thing reminds me of the shift in the creationist movement from old-school six-day, biblically based creationism to "intelligent design" and "teaching the controversy." Steinberg represents the future of pro-Israel advocacy, ZOA the past.

Am I misreading your statement, or did I characterize it accurately?

How did the original view that Jews had had enough of persecution originate in your view?

It doesn't ring true to me that it was without substance.