In my last post, I discussed the increasing fissures across the political spectrum that are being exposed by multiple conflicts, including the Israeli-Hamas conflict. The latter issue continues producing profound division on the left, as young progressives are not in the slightest backing down from their rebuke by the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party’s largely overwhelming support of Israel. Young progressives have their oppressor-oppressed worldview deeply ingrained from the educational system (and the online world they live in), with the wrong-headed idea that if you have power you are the oppressor, and if you have no power, you are the oppressed. In this view, the oppressed can never be guilty, as any wrongs they do are the desperate attempts to stop their oppression. Intersectionality is trump, as the black, female, lesbian palestinian is the most oppressed, and therefore must be backed against anyone who has power.

Palestinians, to include Hamas, are therefore excused from responsibility, as their brutal murder of children, rape of women, etc., is fully justified as a response to Israel’s historical oppression. Calls for Palestinian liberation “from the river to the sea” are tantamount to the destruction of Israel as a nation, yet since Israel has power, no level of violence against them can be seen as off-limits.

But progressives’ vocal defense of Palestinian atrocities is resulting in anger, hurt and revulsion from many progressive communities, with the natural counter-reaction. It did not take long for some law firms to rescind employment offers for new law student grads. Steven Solomon, a professor in the law school at UC Berkeley suggested you should not hire his students:

I teach corporate law at the University of California, Berkeley, and I’m an adviser to the Jewish law students association. My students are largely engaged and well-prepared, and I regularly recommend them to legal employers. But if you don’t want to hire people who advocate hate and practice discrimination, don’t hire some of my students. Anti-Semitic conduct is nothing new on university campuses, including here at Berkeley….

Solomon continues with this advice:

If you are a legal employer, when you interview students from Berkeley, Harvard, NYU or any other law school this year, ask them what organizations they belong to. Ask if they support discriminatory bylaws or other acts and resolutions blaming Jews and Israelis for the Hamas massacre. If a student endorses hatred, it isn’t only your right but your duty not to hire him. Do you want your clients represented by someone who condones these monstrous crimes?

Writing in the New York Times, Ginia Bellafante insightfully documents how both sides of the young progressive conflict are demanding affirmation, as each side feels oppressed, and are frightened by the other.

Young people now arrive at elite colleges with the assumption that not only will they be seen, heard and meticulously cared for, but also that their own politics will broadly align with those of the institutions they have chosen to attend. They have been given little reason to think otherwise.

Suffice it to say that this oppressor–oppressed critical theory is it’s own quasi-religion, with its own morality and good vs evil. It has its own priests and its own dogma. It has inclusion and excommunication. It is, in short, yet another one of man’s religions, which ultimately worship the created rather than the Creator. It is not surprising that in this version of man’s religion, that good is called evil, and what is evil is called good. Or at least justified by historical necessity. The oppressor must be overthrown, at any cost. As I teach at a Christian university, it might be seen as self-serving to point out that the public conflict at universities is virtually all in so-called secular colleges and universities. But of course, there is no such thing as a secular university. Everybody is taught a worldview, everyone has their doctrines they consider essential as well as doctrines that they consider heretical. Only some of us explicitly acknowledge it, and indeed publicly proclaim it. The result? This dean of a business school can unconditionally recommend all of our outstanding graduates as men and women of godly character. I wish that other universities could say the same.