After having spent in total roughly two decades at academia, we used to take some pride in our continuous pursuit to keep offering our guests an academic level (it's just an offer, not a necessity, and in any case there's a wide spectrum for fine-tuning). Though our academic credentials aren't much, it seems the day has come to let go of them.
Today is December 5th 2023 and we aren't writing this easily, but several hours after having seen these testimonies and contemplated - what do we see?
If this is what almost 8 decades of post-war education amount to, then honestly, it was all in vain.
Don't get us wrong - academia didn't die today. It died on October Seven. But it's taken us 60 days to figure it out.
These are indeed very saddening times. On so many levels. As if reality itself is just too much. As if we were forced to "take the red pill". And no end in sight. But we can't just shut our eyes and pretend.
Not this time.
Update January 2024
Yes, we keep guiding groups from US universities. Yes, even Harvard, as it happens. After all, it's not their students' fault. Having said that, we obviously have a policy of zero tolerance of antisemitism, which we never had to apply and hopefully won't have to in the future.
Update April 2024
We are no longer accepting groups from Columbia University - what's the point of coming to Berlin in order to learn about things that are taking place on your own campus?
We will give the same answer to any other institution that passively order actively enables hatred against us. "Thank you but no thank you", or as we say in Yiddish: Moichel Toives.
If you ever wondered how a civilized nation can be overtaken by vile Jew hatred - it is unfolding right now, before our very eyes, across America. And just like in Germany 90 years ago, academia is again willfully playing a leading role in legitimizing and normalizing this hatred.