This week, the Anne Frank House has come under fire for preventing a Jewish employee from wearing his kippa for six months. The Anne Frank House, a nonpartisan museum dedicated to preserving the memory and writings of its namesake, denied Barry Vingerling, an Orthdox Jew, from wearing this essential symbol of the Jewish faith as it was worried it would infringe upon their efforts to remain “neutral.” “We wanted first to know if a religious expression would interfere with our independent position,” managing director Garance Reus-Deelder told the Daily Mail. Vingerling was told to remove his kippa when he showed up for his first day of work, and was then informed he would have to put in a special request for permission to wear it while working at the Anne Frank house. The process and debate surrounding Vingerling’s request took the Anne Frank House’s board of directors six months to complete. During the interim period, Vingerling was told he could wear a baseball cap with the museums logo on it as a compromise. The Anne Frank house eventually decided that allowing the skullcap would not constitute a break in its neutrality, and gave Vingerling permission to resume wearing it on the premises. Rules and regulations that put limits on Jewish cultural displays and practices are quickly becoming the norm in Western Europe. Recent attempts to ban Kosher slaughter in Poland, to ban circumcision in Iceland, and now to disallow the wearing of religious garb at a site dedicated to preserving Jewish culture and heritage are all par for the course. This incident is particularly telling of the atmosphere currently taking hold in the Netherlands. A recent study by the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, an independent Dutch foundation, found that incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism have risen by 40% in the Netherlands since 2016. This is not the first time the Anne Frank house has courted controversy concerning its role in promoting this surge of anti-Semitism. As recently as last week, the Anne Frank Foundation, which oversees the museum, has signed a partnership with an organization that has made grants to groups that support BDS. The Anne Frank House, a museum dedicated to a young Jewish woman murdered simply for being Jewish, has its board of directors debating whether or not Jewish religious garb on their premises would make them appear “partisan,” all the while allocating funds to organizations that demonize the one Jewish state. The rising tide of anti-Semitism in Western Europe, from which the Netherlands is not exempted, is rendering any place of Jewish suffering, whether they be the Anne Frank House or Auschwitz, an ideological battleground where history is being purposefully rewritten and obscured.
On Tuesday, April 17, Amanda Berman will address students at UC Berkeley on the topic of of the exclusion of Jews in progressive spaces. Ms. Berman is the Director of Legal Affairs at The Lawfare Project. In addition to her role as an attorney, she liaises with the American and international Jewish community on behalf of the Lawfare Project and maintains relationships with LP supporters, donors and clients. Ms. Berman writes extensively on lawfare and counter-terror related issues and is a media contributor across various mediums and outlets. She has spoken and presented before diverse audiences ranging from small groups to large auditoriums. Amanda received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2007, with a major in diplomatic history. At Penn, Amanda submatriculated into the Fels Institute of Government, where she received her Master of Governmental Administration in 2008 with a specialized focus on public policy and nonprofit management. After spending a year doing political and campaign work, Amanda was offered a Dean’s Merit Scholarship and a Public Service Scholarship at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.
The Weekly Standard Acrimony and spite are nothing new in Washington, but we don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything like sheer visceral animosity many left-liberal commentators and Congressional Democrats have for Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Perhaps they view her as a stand-in for her boss, or perhaps they bear a special loathing for her policy views. Whatever the reason, Senate Democrats have taken obstructionism to a new and unlovely level: They’re now deliberately thwarting the Department of Education from functioning. A year and a half into the Trump administration, the Cabinet agency still can’t get confirmation votes on a number of high-level appointees—making it nigh impossible to perform some of the department’s basic functions. The qualifications of the nominees isn’t in question. Here are three: Mick Zais is the secretary’s pick for deputy secretary of Education. He’s a former college president and was South Carolina’s education superintendent for a four-year term. He’s also a West Point graduate and a former brigadier general in the U.S. Army. Zais was nominated in October of 2017. Kenneth Marcus was nominated to head the agency’s Office of Civil Rights in October of 2017. He held the same job under George W. Bush, so it’s reasonable to assume knows how to do the job. Marcus, a Berkeley law graduate, has also been staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and held an endowed chair at CUNY’s Baruch College School of Public Affairs. Just as impressive is Frank Brogan, nominated in December of 2017 to be Assistant Secretary of Education for Elementary and Secondary Education. Brogan was most recently chancellor of Pennsylvania’s public universities. Among the highlights of his remarkable career as a teacher and administrator: In 1985, as an assistant principal of Murray Middle School in Orlando, Brogan risked his life to stop a student from firing a handgun at police officers—hence almost certainly saving the young man’s life. None of these offices should need Senate confirmation, but the lawmakers who wrote the legislation creating the Department in 1978 foolishly included confirmation requirements for a host of non-secretary positions. In the past, the Senate education committee simply passed these nominations to the full Senate, and the Senate confirmed by unanimous consent. No longer. Democratic members of the Senate HELP committee (Health, Education, Labor and Pensions) now require votes on every one of the appointees—committee hearings being valuable opportunities to exhibit one’s disapproval for President Trump and his administration. Since the committee’s Democrats all vote “no,” chairman Lamar Alexander can’t schedule a vote until every Republican member can be present. After that, Senate Democratic leaders won’t agree to unanimous consent votes—with the result that Messrs. Zais, Marcus, Brogan, and others can’t start work at the department. Indeed, they don’t even know if they should move their families to Washington. Except in extraordinary circumstances, Cabinet agency nominations should not be controversial. The president, or the Cabinet secretary, should be permitted to assemble his or her own team. Increasingly, however, Democratic senators are using uncontroversial nominations as excuses to fulminate against the president and stymie the administration. Having so far deprived the Department of Education of its leadership, congressional Democrats will no doubt criticize the agency for the failures that result from their obstructionism. We hope Democratic donors are impressed by their nastiness. Corrected 4/17/18, 12:44 PM:The article originally claimed that the Department of Education could not get confirmation hearings for some of its nominees; it should have said votes. It also claimed that Mick Zais served two terms as South Carolina’s superintendent. He served one term.