George Washington University Bans Jewish Student Over School’s Stupid Mistake
This student may actually be expelled over a misunderstanding on the university’s part.
PR Log reports. Hat tip to Instapundit.
George Washington University Makes Racist Mistake, But Blames and Bans Student
George Washington University officials made a racist or religious mistake but, instead of promptly correcting it, they have blamed a Jewish student for “bigotry,” banishing him from the campus, threatening him with arrest, keeping him from Passover services, and also threatening to expel him at a hearing next Monday, says John Banzhaf, a senior law professor at the University.
Campus officials, mistaking an ancient Indian symbol representing peace, prosperity, and other virtuous qualities for a Nazi swastika symbolizing racism and hate, blamed the Jewish student who posted it on the bulletin board of his own largely-Jewish fraternity, claiming incorrectly that it was in fact a swastika which expressed “bigotry and hatred,” and strongly suggesting that his act might constitute a “hate crime.”
But even ten minutes of investigation on the Internet would have revealed that the Indian religious symbol posted by the student was as different in appearance, as it is in its symbolism, from the Nazi swastika.
“The one Jewish student who saw the symbol could, of course, be excused for temporarily mistaking it for a Nazi symbol signifying racial hatred for Jews – although, once the facts were pointed out to him, he and the Jewish brothers in his fraternity no longer feel that the student who posted the symbol had any malicious, much less racist, intent.
But there is no excuse for a major university, with vast resources including professors who teach Eastern religions, not only to make the same initial mistake, but then to not only refuse to correct it as the truth undoubtedly became known to them, but also to keep punishing the student, says Banzhaf. To this day they are still referred to the symbol as a swastika, which it clearly it is not.
George Washington University Makes Racist Mistake, But Blames and Bans Student (prlog.org)
Comments
Show me the swastika in question. If it rests on the flat of one side and opens to the left, it’s Buddhist or ancient Greek. If it rests on a corner and opens to the right, it’s National Socialist (although people in some parts of Europe wrote it at the bottom of letters as a wish for good luck back in the 19th century).
Long ago, one of my Chinese professors in college got into trouble over the same sort of thing. He got a jade Buddhist swastika for his daughter, and had the neighbors up in arms. The symbol is very common wherever the Mahayana Buddhist tradition has a presence. In one old Hong Kong ccomedy film I saw, which was set in China during World War II, one of the gags was that the two German agents pass by a Buddhist temple, see the swastika on it, and go into the Nazi salute.