Dartmouth should divest

The vacuous rationale put forward by the Dartmouth College administration for refusing to divest from the repressive machinery upholding the Israeli apartheid state brings to mind the warning of Kurt Tucholsky during another moral emergency that true depravity is losing all sense of how low you have sunk and are still sinking. How else to characterize this shoddy evasion of historical responsibility at a time when such distinguished American and Israeli scholars of the Shoah like Omer Bartov and Amos Goldberg reluctantly concede that the unbridled assault we have been witnessing live-streamed in Gaza meet all the criteria of a plausible genocide, even if it does not yet measure up to the absolute criminality of an Auschwitz?

So dire is the unfolding catastrophe that we are now actually debating the fine gradations of whether 16 years of a punitive blockade and 19 months of systematic slaughter have finally transformed Gaza from a pedestrian KZ or concentration camp for slowly attriting a captive race into a full-throttle ‘Todesfabrik’ or death-camp geared up like Auschwitz to expunge an entire enemy people from history.

For the Dartmouth Corporation and its powerful donors to remain in lame lockstep with our deliberately obtuse bipartisan consensus on Gaza can only redound to their everlasting disgrace when it is no longer possible to disregard the world-historical horror being perpetrated on their watch.

Patrick Flaherty

Hanover

Vermont should uphold DEI

Our local schools are now being asked to sign assurances that they will prohibit DEI activities in order to receive federal funding. DEI: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, concepts that most of us consider a polite way to interact in our daily lives. Even children understand this. A strange order that if complied with, will encourage bullying, exclusion and make discrimination acceptable.

I hope our towns can courageously take a stand against this. If so, then we must consider property taxes. Currently, we receive very little help for education from the feds, which can make it doable if we consider becoming independent. It can be done with fundraising, reorganizing, best practices. It will take strong leadership and community involvement. I hope we can find a way to reject this demand.

Nancy Wightman

Cornish

Reality TV as blood sport

We are told that a new TV game show is in the works — one featuring foreign-born individuals desiring U.S. citizenship. Although the details are sketchy, it appears that participants will explain both to viewers and a live audience why they wish to become American citizens and why their experiences, accomplishments, attitudes and beliefs qualify them for such. It is unclear whether the “candidates” will be interviewed individually or engage in group discussions. It is also unknown whether the winner(s) will be determined by audience/viewer vote or by a panel of judges. The proposed program, we should note, is reported to have found favor in the eyes of the White House.

But what makes one individual more fit for citizenship than another? Personality? Level of education? Ethnicity? Religion? Belief in a given economic theory? One fears that individuals will be judged not by their understanding of civics or the Constitution but by their wealth and marketability. A poor person seeking asylum and humble work is no less deserving of citizenship than a well-heeled immigrant.

Given the appetite of American TV audiences for violence and conflict, one also fears the candidates will be set against one another, like a Saturday Night Smackdown featuring 10 or more wrestlers in the ring. Since the primary goal of the show’s producers will be to attract viewers, the candidates must be turned into competitors. The aura? Somewhat like the dehumanizing atmosphere in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man” — in which a southern black teenager, ostensibly invited by a white men’s group to give a speech that will gain him scholarship money for college, is first required to participate in a battle royal with other African American youth. It is the blood spilled that entertains the audience.

Christopher L. Chase

Hanover