Lara Kollob | First One Through

The Los Angeles City Council was rocked when a secret recording was released of various Hispanic members of the Council making highly offensive comments about various groups. They ranged from calling the Black child of one of the other council members a monkey, to lambasting ‘Jewish power.’ President Biden and various community members called for their resignations which were tendered in short order.

It is unclear whether the push to expel the bigots was due to the desire to not have racists represent the city, whether there were concerns that such bigots would actively harm groups because of their prejudice or a combination of both.

The motivation for terminating a racist was more clear in 2019, when an Ohio doctor, Lara Kollab, was fired from her position at the Cleveland Clinic after it was revealed that she posted many anti-Semitic tweets for the whole world to see. Beyond the various insults about Jews, she posted that she would “purposely give all the yahood the wrong meds” using the Arabic word for Jews. This was a woman who broadcast that she was in the Jew-killing business.

*Anti-Semitic doctor, Lara Kollob and one of her tweets*

In 2021, a teaching assistant at Johns Hopkins said that she would lower the grades of pro-Israel students. After the tweet, she polled her followers as to whether marking down Zionists’ grades was a good idea. While the Office of Institutional Equity investigated the TA, Rasha Anaya, it is unclear if there was any action taken against her.

A similar situation occurred at the University of Vermont where a TA publicly taunted Jewish students by asking on social media whether “Is it unethical for me, a TA, to not give zionists credit for participation??? I feel like its good and funny“. The students protested for her censure and removal, but to no avail. The president of the university, Suresh V. Garimella, sent a letter to the school community that there didn’t appear to be evidence of harm, so decided to take no action. The Brandeis Center For Human Rights Under Law and Jewish On Campus, two non-profits issued a strong rebuke to Garimella’s inaction and complacency in the face of blatant anti-Semitism. The Department of Education is now looking into the matter.

Society has clearly taken a range of actions in dealing with bigots in power. While there are laws in place to protect people from unfair bias, they are typically enforced after an incident happens.

Yet in the case of the Los Angeles City Council, the president of the United States got involved even though no action happened or was even threatened. For the Ohio doctor, no one wanted to wait for her to kill a Jew, and it was easier to fire her immediately as the threat of violence is a crime as well.

But what of the Jews on university campuses today? They are publicly threatened by teachers and student groups, and administrations are loathe to take any action under the guise of free speech – even though threatening to lower the grades of Jews is a threat of the powerful over the weak, with serious personal long term consequences, which has nothing to do with free speech.

President Biden has allowed this anti-Semitism on college campuses to flourish, waiting until after midterm elections to decide on applying the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to Title VI. Such move could protect the Jewish students from both the bigots and complacent university leadership.

There will always be bigots and racists but society has moved to protect the persecuted with a variety of laws. It is time to finally check the anti-Semites as well.