It's no wonder that University of Miami president Donna Shalala has brushed off her "humiliation" at the Ben-Gurion airport (on account of her last name, which is Arab-American). Shalala is dependent on conservative Jews for programs at the University of Miami, notably including the Miller medical school, whose expansion to Israel was a big reason for Shalala's trip.
The Miller medical school is named for the late Leonard Miller. He made his bucks in Florida real estate, heading the Lennar Corporation; Shalala is on the Lennar board. University of Miami obviously depends on Millers.
UM's Contemporary Judaic Studies program is also named after Leonard Miller and his wife Sue. The program has ties to the Likudnik Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and its director is an Israeli who is lauded by the pro-Israel group, Campus Watch. No wonder. Here is Haim Shaked:
Presently, there clearly is a mounting insidious, vituperative, consistent and forceful campaign, unleashed by mortal enemies of the State of Israel, to delegitimize Israel. This attack is not dissimilar to the systematic onslaught run by the Nazis in the 1930's against the Jews, but with similar objectives: to legitimize harming, even destroying Israel! This is a matter of grave strategic implications for Israel and the Jewish people!
The Miller medical school is crowing about Shalala's trip to Israel and saying not a word about her humiliation at the airport:
Led by UM President Donna E. Shalala, a delegation of Miller School officials recently concluded a successful week of high-level meetings in Israel aimed at identifying areas of collaboration and synergy with Bar-Ilan University as Israel’s largest and fastest growing university establishes the nation’s fifth medical school.
A research powerhouse with four regional campuses, BIU was chosen earlier this year by Israel’s Council for Higher Education to address Israel’s looming physician shortage...
In a series of July meetings with BIU’s leadership and Israeli President Shimon Peres, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials, President Shalala, Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., and a delegation of prominent UM faculty expressed their eagerness to collaborate with BIU
This sort of connection typifies the new partly-Jewish establishment in the U.S. Shalala served on the Gannett board alongside Douglas McCorkindale, who after retiring as Gannet's CEO and Chair in 2006. has been on the Board of Lockheed Martin, one of the defense contractors that has profited from arms sales to Israel.
Nice connecting of the dots, Phil. The military-industrial-governmental-academic complex, exposed in all its wart-faced glory.
With government serving as both its major source of research funding as well as the major financier of student tuition, academia marches to the tune of its funding sources, including wealthy private donors like Leonard Miller. As an ex-Clinton cabinet member, Shalala can schmooze both constituencies with practiced ease.
An unfortunate result of such institutional incest is that freedom of inquiry is a thing of the past. And like defense contracting and health care, academia has become an inefficient, overpriced realm of lazy cost-plus economics, poor performance, and vast overcapacity.
This very day, President O’Bomba is touting a goal of raising the percentage of college-educated young adults. O, the narcissism of the elite: the wish to replicate themselves. That is, to create more elitist fixers, who rake off a percentage from producers for redistributing their wealth. What’s ludicrous is that our vaunted higher educational system doesn’t even give most graduates the rhetorical skills they’ll need to save themselves from angry impoverished mobs with pitchforks.
Starting with O’Bummer himself — the Harvard toff who thought his ‘permanent tan’ (as Charley Pride used to say) would allow him to ‘pass’ as a friend of the working man. This impudent swindle has to rank as one of the greatest Madison Avenue deceptive marketing triumphs of all time. Except that it ain’t over yet …
An unfortunate result of such institutional incest is that freedom of inquiry is a thing of the past.
Haggai Ram writes in “Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession,”
I listen to a lot of C Span programming. Black people are frequent callers to Wash Journal.
It breaks my heart to hear their passionate defenses of Obama. They don’t get that he is being used, and that they were, and are being used to put and keep him where he is.
Was Obama blind to the Mephistophelian bargain when he signed on the to scheme? Does Harvard not read, The Devil and Daniel Webster?
So let me get this straight: shalala is lying about her feelings to get money. What else is she lying about and to get what? If she had been dipped in shit during the process would she then say she loved the rosewater bath?
What I wonder is whether these rich Jewish donors have contacted the Israeli embassy to protest the treatment of their girl.
Good and very informative story. Unfortunately, so many colleges and
universities in the U.S. (both public and private) are dependent on donations
from wealthy alums and other donors so it doesn’t surprise me at all that
Shalala changed her tune.
I remember when I was growing up in the 50′s in the fancy schmancy
suburb of Great Neck, NY that U of Miami was the party school that one
applied to when you couldn’t get in anywhere else. We used to joke that
the students majored in water skiing. I hope the school has improved
academically since then.
“I probably represent the right wing fringe”
Good to know now that it’s official..But tell me, is the Likud on your left, on you right or are you just standing on it?
TGIA- was this addressed to me? You can’t even put it on the right post. Take a quote out of context, huh?
I don’t know how or why it ended here..I made a mistake..I’m crushed…I deserve death..
Bla, Bla, Bla. Present evidence. This is not evidence. This is guilt by association, and the associations are tenuous.
In the first, you argue that Shalala kept quiet because Miami’s Judaic Studies program has ties to the JCPA. Then you argue that the Medical School “is crowing” about Shalala’s trip, citing a press release. Talk be me about crowing when you can site an article by an actual journalist.
I had to read the last paragraph a couple of times to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. You actually argue that because Shalala served on a board with a guy who later became the President of Lockheed Martin, she would refrain from criticizing Israel.
Your arguments are getting more desperate by the day, Phil.