To the editor:
John Wilson is right (“No one is shooting you for you”, August 20, 2025), the word “gaslight” can be abused and manipulated in a tendency-oriented way, and can be empirically justified like many words and phrases.
However, this is not an argument against its reality as a social phenomenon and its harmful effects. One of the common characteristics of prejudice and discrimination is their denial. This does not make all reported prejudice and discrimination allegations accurate and true, but this denies its existence of prejudice and discrimination expressions frequently characterized. Is this form of discrimination and prejudice institutional or systematic? But even if they do not meet the definitions of these terms, when prejudice and discrimination are encountered repeatedly and widely and thus undermine the justice of equality, freedom and freedom, it is a disadvantage to respect and human respect and human rights, focusing on debating whether terms such as “Come on” properly describe and describe whether “institutional discrimination” properly describes and abuses.
Instead, investing should be made in correcting the prevalence and intensity of those suspected of violating rights, confirming human dignity, fairness and equality, and respect for diversity. Like many forms of discrimination and racism, anti-Semitism is also common in the United States. Sociological research shows that about one in four Americans have biased anti-Semitic attitudes, including reasons for discrimination and violence against Jewish Americans. Universities are not immune to these derogatory and harmful social prejudice and beliefs. They reflect them. Elite institutions, including Harvard, are not ivory towers of moral virtues. In college, gas lighting is as real as elsewhere, and is often experienced by ethnic minorities (including Jews). I have experienced my college experience repeatedly and generally from different departments of the university, including leadership. Our new Prime Minister is trying to improve our campus climate and culture to ensure greater inclusion and respect for Jewish students, faculty and staff, but this will require substantial will and leadership, investment in resources, and support from the entire university community.
The dynamics of aggressive behavior and behavior that enables abuse—including in contexts of domestic abuse but not exclusive to it—–are such that bigtry often manifests as a denial of empathy, care, trust and responsiveness to individuals reporting and experiencing its harms, and concurrent attacks on their character, honesty and rights and hostile claims that their reported experiences are fabricated, exaggerated or made with malicious intent.
This should never be our response to harassment and discrimination against civil rights laws, which violates civil rights laws and undermines the spirit of our universities and its ability to provide equal access education without discriminating against all.
