This is the article that appeared in the December 2023 edition of Catalyst, our monthly journal. The date that prints out reflects the day that it was uploaded to our website. For a more accurate date of when the article was first published, check out the news release, here.
Hating Jews is now the number-one sport in the world among left-wing activists. They may say they don’t hate Jews—it’s Israeli policies they find detestable. Don’t believe them: They hate Jews. Here’s the latest proof.
Thanks to a splendid piece by sociologist David Ayers in The American Spectator, Bill Donohue learned of an open letter titled, “Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People”; it was signed by more than 1,900 sociologists (and students pursuing a doctorate). After reading it, he’s almost embarrassed to be a sociologist. Almost.
Donohue stopped being embarrassed years ago about his fellow sociologists—he simply gave up on most of them. But he never gave up on sociology. They did. They are nothing but left-wing ideologues disguised as sociologists. Indeed, they don’t even know what sociology is.
“Sociology as a discipline is rooted in a recognition of relationships of power and inequality.” That’s how the letter begins. They are wrong. That is not an accurate definition. What they are describing is social stratification and political sociology, two areas of study within sociology (which happen to be the focus of Donohue’s own sociological work).
Emile Durkheim, who did more to make sociology a legitimate social science than anyone else, was proud to call sociology the “queen of the social sciences.” In capable hands, it still is. He wrote that “the object of sociology as a whole is to determine the conditions for the conservation of societies.” That is clearly not what motivates these charlatans. As left-wing activists, they are more interested in destroying Western societies than they are in conserving them.
Now for the Jew-hating part of the letter. “As sociologists and human beings [are there sociologists who are not human?], we unreservedly condemn the latest violence against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank at the hands of the Israeli regime.”
Throughout the letter, the Israelis are called “murderers” who are committing “genocide” against the Palestinians. Never once does the letter comment on the unprovoked assault on innocent Jews.
Children have been beheaded, women have been raped, hospitals have been bombed and yet not a word of protest. It’s as if October 7 never happened. Instead, the deep thinkers lash out at Jewish leaders who said they are “fighting human animals.” The sociologists labeled such language “dehumanizing”—not the savagery of Hamas.
These savants are also illiterate, and not just in the sociological sense. Here is Donohue’s favorite sentence. “As of writing, over 6,500 Palestinians have been murdered, including a staggering 2,360, and over 17,400 injured.”
Did they not notice that the word “this” belongs in between “of” and “writing”? More revealing is the bit about “over 6,500 Palestinians have been murdered, including a staggering 2,360 (our italic).” Only an illiterate would write such gibberish and only a dunce would sign such a letter.
Here’s another great part of the letter. They say that as educators “it is our duty to stand by the principles of critical inquiry and learning.” But as the letter shows, it more accurately reflects a groupthink mindset, one anchored in hate.
If these sociologists read more of Durkheim’s works and less of Marx’s, they might mature intellectually. In the meantime, they should at least learn how to write a coherent sentence.
