A Resignation, Prison, Hate, Endorsements, And A Great Fair
Former Congressman Heading to Federal Prison
George Santos, a former congressman from a district that encompasses portions of Nassau County and Queens, has pleaded guilty to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Santos resigned his post in January.
In federal court in Central Islip, Suffolk County, Santos was allocuted about his crimes, and he acknowledged the wrongdoings he agreed to plead to. This gives Santos the clearance he was seeking to avoid a jury trial on nearly two dozen charges – including money laundering, stealing public funds, and wire fraud – which could have yielded 22 years behind bars in a federal penitentiary.
Santos was decisively expelled from Congress last year, with two-thirds of the 435-member House voting him out, including more than 100 House Republicans. He is only the sixth congressman to be booted from office since the Civil War.
On the social media outlet X, Santos channeled the writings of a famous poet, Maya Angelou. “It may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from.”
He will be sentenced February 7.
Columbia University President Heading to England
Minouche Shafik, also known as Nemat Talaat Shafik and Baroness Shafik, served as the 20th president of Columbia University from July 2023 to August 2024. Shafik was head of Columbia University during the 2024 protests on campus. On April 17, 2024, she testified before the U.S. House Committee on Education & the Workforce regarding antisemitism on the Columbia University campus. While in Washington, D.C. testifying, the campus became occupied by pro-Hamas demonstrators. Shafik called on the New York City Police Department to clear an encampment established by protesters near the center of the university’s campus, and police arrested more than 100 students on April 22.
Shafik never survived the backlash from breaking up the encampments. She had been pressured to resign her position from student protests, congressional investigations, faculty, and lawmakers. She finally announced her resignation from the office on August 14.
In her resignation letter, Shafik wrote that she had time this summer to reflect and decided it would be best for Columbia if she moved on. “I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that – working together – we have made progress in a number of important areas,” Shafik wrote in a prepared statement. “However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. It has been distressing – for the community, for me as president and on a personal level – to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse. As President Lincoln said, ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand’ – we must do all we can to resist the forces of polarization in our community.”
In her 13-month tenure as president, Shafik faced a tumultuous period that saw the head of the prestigious Ivy League school in upper Manhattan face heavy scrutiny for her handling of protests and campus divisions over the Israel-Hamas war. The protests culminated in scenes of police officers carrying zip ties and riot shields storming a building that had been occupied by anti-Israel protesters.
The Egyptian-born economist previously served as president and vice-chancellor of the London School of Economics. Her other most critical roles were at the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the Bank of England.
Shafik said she will return to the United Kingdom to lead an effort by the Foreign Secretary’s office to review the government’s approach to international development. She said she was “pleased and appreciative that this will afford me the opportunity to return to work on fighting global poverty and promoting sustainable development, areas of lifelong interest to me.”
Senator Bill Weber (R – Montebello, Rockland County), a member of the New York State Senate Antisemitism Working Group, was part of a legislative effort to force Shafik out of office. Now he told The Jewish Press, “Good riddance. I’m glad she’s not going to another U.S. college or university. Maybe England should do a deeper dive into her background as to what she allowed to fester on a college campus here. Hopefully there will be better days ahead on college campuses such as Columbia.”
Jack Martins, chairman of the New York State Senate Antisemitism Working Group, told The Jewish Press, “Her resignation is long overdue. It should have been done immediately when she was unable to properly respond to the attacks on Jewish students attending Columbia University and when she lost control of her campus to pro-terrorist sympathizers. I’m hoping that the new administration comes in and reprioritizes all of those things that have historically made Columbia one of the great universities in the world. I hope they choose the person that is best capable of doing that job. If that happens to be a Jew, fantastic.”
The new president holding down the fort at Columbia temporarily until a permanent replacement can be found is a woman with many prestigious titles.
Katrina Alison Armstrong is an American internist and academic administrator. She is the chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. She is the first woman to lead Columbia’s medical school and medical center and is known for her work on cancer, genomics, and healthcare disparities. She was also the first woman to hold the position of physician-in-chief at Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital.
As an associate professor of medicine, obstetrics and gynecology, and biostatistics and epidemiology, Armstrong was appointed chief of the division of general internal medicine at the Penn School of Medicine in 2008, and co-created the Penn Center for Innovation in Personalized Breast Cancer Screening.
She is married to Tom Randall, a gynecologic oncologist. The two met while attending Johns Hopkins University in the Osler residency program. They have three children.
“As I step into this role, I am acutely aware of the trials the University has faced over the past year,” Armstrong wrote in her own email to the Columbia community. “We should neither understate their significance, nor allow them to define who we are and what we will become.”
Let’s hope the doctor can fix the problems and intolerance at Columbia University.
Antisemitism Alive and Well in Heavily Jewish Rockland County
An unknown guest imam at the Valley Cottage-based Islamic Center of Rockland County has lawmakers up in arms over antisemitic comments he made on Friday, August 9.
“I am deeply disturbed by the violent, antisemitic remarks espoused by a speaker at the Islamic Center of Rockland. I have visited the Center and have never encountered hostility or hatred towards anyone, but this rhetoric is shocking and deeply concerning,” said Congressman Mike Lawler (R – Pearl River, Rockland County). “The speaker praised Hamas, called for Allah to ‘guide their [Hamas’] shooting, prayed for Allah to ‘destroy the Zionist Jews,’ and advocated for the liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the ‘plundering Jews.’ That is totally unacceptable anywhere, but especially so in Rockland County.”
Lawler continued, “I will continue to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and those of all faiths, in Rockland County and across the Hudson Valley, in condemning hate and in unifying against antisemitism, Islamophobia, and other bigotry. There are ways to express concern over ongoing conflicts across the globe without resorting to calls for the extermination of Jews or any other population. I am hopeful that this sad chapter will serve as a lesson and an opportunity for growth for both Rockland County and the Hudson Valley.”
A Rockland County state lawmaker was also taken aback by the comments. “The imam’s claim during his corrosive sermon that his words are not racist shows a clear lack of understanding of reality and what hate speech, racism, and antisemitism are,” said Senator Bill Weber (R – Montebello, Rockland County). “If that’s not racist, I don’t know what is. Wishing death and destruction on an entire population simply for being who they are is, despite the Imam’s claim, unacceptable.
“As a member of the New York State Senate Antisemitism Working Group, I call for accountability and consequences for anyone who would speak in such an intolerable manner within my district, just like I called for the same during the antisemitic protests that endangered Jewish students on university campuses this past spring,” Weber said.
The institutional imam Moulana Mohammed Saleem Qadri at the Islamic Center of Rockland County, posted a statement on the ICR homepage, writing: “On August 9, during a sermon at our masjid, a guest imam (prayer leader) delivered several hurtful statements that included a prayer to G-d for the destruction of Zionist Jews as part of the conflict in Gaza. We unequivocally condemn these statements. The Islamic Center of Rockland stands firmly against anti-Semitism [sic] and any rhetoric that incites violence or hatred, as we have for the 35 years we have operated in this county alongside other faiths.
“Our faith teaches us the values of peace, compassion, and justice. We remain committed to fostering a community built on these principles, where dialogue and understanding can pave the way toward a better future for all. We sincerely apologize for any pain caused by these remarks and will ensure that our platform is not used to promote these types of harmful messages going forward.”
State Conservative Party Makes Presidential and Vice-Presidential Endorsements
No big surprise here. The New York State Conservative Party unanimously nominated former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator J.D. Vance for president and vice-president, respectively, at the 2024 New York State Conservative Party National Nominating Convention in Jericho, Nassau County.
“We have never seen the Republican and Conservative parties more closely aligned than they are this year in support of the Trump-Vance ticket,” New York State Conservative Party chairman Jerry Kassar said. “This is a critical election for the future of our nation and we are confident that American voters will reject the rank ‘wokeism’ of the past four years that has spread nothing but chaos and discord across the country. Vice President Harris’ radicalism would drive this nation into the ground, economically, militarily, spiritually and public-safety wise. It’s time for rational policies again and President Trump and Vice-President Vance will deliver them.
“The far-left policies of the Biden-Harris administration have made America more expensive, less safe, and hopelessly divided over the past four years. We look forward to a refreshing blast of common sense when they take office in January. Vice President Harris’ radical record is completely out of step with the values and beliefs of everyday Americans,” Kassar concluded.
Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan accepted the nomination on behalf of Trump and Vance. More than 30 law enforcement union endorsements were revealed and presented at the convention in support of the Trump/Vance ticket.
New York State Fair Opens
The New York State Fair in Geddes, a Syracuse suburb in Onondaga County, opened Wednesday, August 21 for a 13-day run. The first day is traditionally known as Governor’s Day. The governor usually attends to cut the ribbon on opening day and tour the 375-acre festival site. However, this year, Governor Kathy Hochul is playing politics in Chicago, attending the Democratic National Convention. There is no date scheduled yet for when she will visit the fairgrounds. Each year more than one million visitors enjoy the food, rides, and animals at the fairgrounds. The main Jewish event is the booth that is manned by volunteer shluchim and Rabbi Yaakov Rapoport, co-director of the Chabad of Central New York.
