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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired for reading anti-slavery novel to students

Today's modern witch hunt
Burning witches: What St. John’s university wished it could do
to a Jewish professor.

They’re coming for you next: Hannah Berliner Fischthal, a professor at St. John’s University in New York and the daughter of Holocaust survivors, was immediately fired because she read aloud in her literature class a selection from Mark Twain’s anti-slavery book, Pudd’nhead Wilson, that included the “N-word”.

On March 3 she was called into a meeting with HR about her use of the N-word in class, the subsequent discussion of it and a comment she allegedly made about a Black student’s hair. Fischthal said she only made a remark about a student’s head being wrapped up during class and it had nothing to do with her hair.

She said she was also criticized for mentioning her family’s experience in the Holocaust during class.

On March 5 she was suspended pending an investigation she had violated the university’s policy against bias. On April 29 she was fired.

The school had been alerted to her terrible crime of reading accurately from an accurate book portraying the actual culture of the pre-Civil War south by at least one of her students, who apparently was so weak-minded that even hearing this word that-shall-not-be-named was ““unnecessary and very painful.” It didn’t matter to this brainless student that the book was written to condemn slavery and bigotry. All that mattered is that a word of six letters was spoken aloud and she or he was forced to hear it.

I am certain that if the teacher had used obscenities routinely during her lectures no one would have complained. In fact, I would not be surprised if her superiors congratulated her for being “edgy.”

Trying to teach actual literature properly however cannot be allowed. The school moved to fire her forthwith.

Based on all the information available I’d say Fischthal would win big if she sued. She was supposedly fired for “racial bias,” but nothing she did fits that description. Before she read the Twain text she explained why she was doing it (as teachers should do) and hoped the students would keep an open mind and not be offended. When that one student was offended she made a sincere and open effort to alleviate that student’s “pain,” apologizing and starting an online discussion about the use of “insensitive language.”

In other words, she reached out both before and after to all her students to hear their perspective while explaining her own. At no point is there any evidence she treated anyone unfairly because of their skin color.

In addition, she apparently had consistently good performance reviews from her superiors and her students — over a twenty year career — which seems very consistent with her actions as a teacher described above.

The school denies that it fired her for reading Mark Twain aloud in her class, but refused to elaborate. Based on the intolerance of modern academia and its willingness to blackball anyone who dares express any idea it does not like, we would be quite justified in considering the school’s denial to be a lie.

I would also not be surprised that, given the anti-Semitic nature of much of today’s leftist-dominated academia, she was also fired because she was Jewish. That the school objected to her mention of the Holocaust in class is evidence of this, since you can’t find a better example of evil ethnic bigotry than the Nazi effort to kill all the Jews. How dare she mention this during a discussion of bigotry and slavery? Gotta get rid of those uppity Jews.

Genesis cover

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16 comments

  • Noah Peal

    A Jewish academic? More likely than not her sentiments fall on the same side of the liberal spectrum as her detractors. This is one of the sad ironies of life.

    Another irony: Anytime a word is forbidden to be spoken, it grows in strength.

  • Cotour

    THEY TRANSMIT JUST HOW SCARED THEY ARE OF THE TRUTH

    Listen to this unhinged and angry screed by MSNBC’s talking head, Joe Scarborogh.

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1395767379980861445

    Very, very telling, Joe knows exactly where this is all going. What is the big deal, Joe?

    Scarborough basically is saying that to be an acceptable American in his eyes you are never to question the results of an election, or the honesty of our election system. And if you dare to do so, you should just leave the country!

    What country does this man live in?

    And the idea that our election system is never to be questioned or even looked into is on its face offensive to any American.

    If one of the two sides in our politics can not ask for an audit at any time during any election, then the exact opposite of what Scarborough alleges is true.

    Coming it is, no matter what the talking heads on corporate “Woke”, “Politically Correct” mass media says.

    These completely and rationally justified audits started in Arizona and it has now spread to Georgia. I suspect it will go much, much further and these examinations will secure the massive defeat of one of the political party’s in the 2022 midterm elections.

    That is a good bet IMO.

  • Edward

    Noah Peal noted: “Another irony: Anytime a word is forbidden to be spoken, it grows in strength.

    That word certainly had a lot of strength in this case. It was strong enough to get her fired.

  • Prester Kahn

    To Coutour:

    Joe Scarborough’s position is that you can’t question a Democrat’s election – he spent 4 years bemoaning our “illegitimate” President Donald Trump.

  • Cotour

    Scarborough is but a paid corporate talking head, and the corporation he is paid by and speaks for is now, like many others “Woke”.

    Translation: These corporate entities no longer see their corporate interests in America as formulated, they see their corporate interests in the international / Global model and their expansion market, CHINA.

    And who is the major threat to that corporate / Globalist self interest model?

    Donald J. Trump and the movement that now closely associates with him and empowers him.

    The yelling and screaming has just begun, this is a fight in many respects to the death for these two now diametrically opposed interpretations of America.

  • Around Black people, ALWAYS TIPTOE CAREFULLY. And NEVER treat them equally, but always give them a break, when you would hold others to a high standard, because you WILL be called a racist if you upset them.

  • Lee Stevenson

    @Jeff Wilson, now that IS a racist statement! I would suggest that instead, if you happen to meet a black guy or gal, you strike up a conversation and ask their opinion on all this bullcrap. I can tell you that 99.9% will give you the same answer…. It’s bullcrap! More specifically, it’s bullcrap originating from some “woke” white girl. Ok, we don’t have quite the cancel culture over here that you do over the pond… But I can tell you that my black and brown friends here and in the UK are proper peed off with the bullcrap that is slowly leaking over. At some point the pendulum will swing back, and we will have some sanity again. Use and quote (often!) The phrase “try hard not to offend. Try harder to not be offended!)

  • Edward

    Lee Stevenson Wrote: “But I can tell you that my black and brown friends here and in the UK are proper peed off with the bullcrap that is slowly leaking over.

    The atmosphere is different, here, in the U.S. Becoming offended has become a national pastime, if not a national sport. One team cannot lose, and the other cannot win. The joy to the game of becoming offended is that the First Amendment only applies to the offendee, not the offender, and the offender cannot be rightfully offended by the offendee, either. It only goes one way.

    It is so bad that there is a specific word that cannot be uttered at all, except by the offendees, who use it constantly in an apparent attempt to get a professor to use it in an historical context so that she can be fired. “Giant super duper Jenga, I WIN!”

    It is just amazing how far the Constitution has fallen.

  • Well, now
    A student heard the N-word
    Let me ask
    What kind of music they’ve heard?

  • What kind of music they’ve heard?

    Cardi B’s? Their view of her music would speak volumes about their judgment of what is more offensive …

  • wayne

    Blair–
    you mean, something like this?

    N.W.A. –
    “Straight Outta Compton”
    https://youtu.be/TMZi25Pq3T8
    4:21

  • @wayne: why, yes.

    I have that album, and others by NWA and Public Enemy. The ‘N’ does not stand for ‘Negro’. I would submit that ‘urban nusic’ today is more dependent on offensive language than was the case 30 years ago.

    ‘Don’t need no (Whitey) disrespectin’ me
    While I practice semantic hypocrisy’

  • Cotour

    Related: IN GEORGIA

    Source: John Fredricks: In Georgia, 2020 presidential election.

    A sample of 950 military 2020 votes analyzed.

    950 votes FOR Joe Biden, Zero for Trump. And, they were all in sequential order, and I believe they were folded. What are the implications here? You can figure it out.

    Q: How likely is that? A: Its not, its impossible. In an honest election anyway.

    https://americanmilitarynews.com/2021/05/judge-allows-audit-of-145000-trump-biden-ballots-in-georgia/

    The one thing about hard physical evidence is undeniable. When it is found there is a real threat that those involved are in jeopardy of going to jail. (Georgia election official, Gabriel Sterling?)

    Why is the MSM, Democrat politicians and RINO Republicans so pumped and so vociferously bad mouthing any attempt at physically examining ballots? And to be clear, any hard evidence will not be changing the results of the 2020 election.

    That is up to the people in the next election to rectify any bad acts executed all over the country.

    ITS COMING. One way or another, ITS COMING.

  • Cotour

    ” and I believe they were folded. ”

    Should have read, “NOT FOLDED”.

  • Craken

    Jewish
    Female
    Professor
    …of literature.

    Scientifically speaking, that ensures a 99.7% chance of her being a Leftist. If she votes for circular firing squads, then it’s poetic justice that one came for her.
    Considering how vastly over-represeneted Jews are in America’s most elite universities, it’s a bit odd to claim that “much of today’s leftist-dominated academia” is “anti-semitic.” Jews are the greatest beneficiaries of the affirmative action system they devised for the university system. They are counted as white. Yet, like Asian-Americans, they have higher IQs than whites. In a system not designed by Jews, they would be a separate racial category like Asian-Americans.

  • Craken: There is no contradiction to say that leftist-dominated academia is also anti-Semitic, since the many Jews there are non-practicing secular leftist Jews, almost all of whom put their religious passions not into religion but into their political agendas. Thus, they are blind to the anti-Semitism that surrounds them, thinking it is solely being expressed for political reasons that they agree with.

    When it comes for them (as it surely will), they will be shocked, SHOCKED, to discover it exists.

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