Elon Musk expresses shock about the Holocaust after Auschwitz visit that was “incredibly moving, and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to humans.”

Elon Musk took a private tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in southern Poland on January 22 as he defended his social platform, X, against accusations of spreading anti-Semitism.

“It was incredibly moving, and deeply sad and tragic that humans could do this to humans,” the billionaire Tesla, Inc. chief and X owner said on Monday of the site where an estimated 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis during World War II.

Musk was seen carrying his son on his shoulders in a photo of the tour, as he stood alongside Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Holocaust survivor Gidon Lev, and Ben Shapiro, a controversial conservative media pundit. Shapiro later hosted a discussion with Musk organized by the EJA in nearby Cracow.

Full story here.

A Republic of South Africa High Court barrister has presented opening arguments at the United Nationas International Court of Justice in the Hague against what it claims is Israeli genocide being committed against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

South African High Court attorney Adila Hassim who has also served as a judge in the past told the hearing in the Hague Thursday Israel was in violation of at least four articles of the 1948 Convention for the Prevention of the Commission of the Crime of Genocide. She said it wasn’t incumbent upon the ICJ to pass an immediate verdict on the accusation and that preventative measures including an immediate cease-fire were needed.

Hassim was one member of a South African legation of eight, all of whom also gave presentations. Israel also sent at least one judge to the hearing. Israel is signatory to the Genocide Convention which grew out of the Nuremberg trials to address the new international crime of genocide as the world attempted to come to terms with the Holocaust.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–Harvard College president Claudine Gay resigned Tuesday amid plagiarism accusations and criticism over testimony at a congressional hearing where she was unable to say unequivocally that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.

Gay is the second Ivy League president to resign in the past month following congressional testimony. Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned December 9.

Gay, Harvard’s first black president, announced her departure just months into her tenure in a letter to the Harvard community, thus becoming the shortest presidency in the history of Harvard College.

Following the congressional hearing, Gay’s academic career came under intense scrutiny by critics who unearthed numerous and extensive instances of plagiarism in her 1997 doctoral dissertation. The Harvard Corporation, Harvard’s governing board, initially rallied behind Gay, saying a review of her scholarly work turned up “a few instances of inadequate citation” but no evidence of research misconduct. Critics posted long passages of verbatim copy/pastes of unattributed works from other authors from Gay’s academic papers and alleged dissertation.

Gay’s public troubles began when she gave testimony in the House of Representatives about Harvard’s bullying, harassment and code-of-conduct rules. Asked whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules by representative Elise Stefanik, a Republic from New York state, Gay equivocated and claimed it was a free speech issue which depending on the context–if it became conduct instead of speech–could be a violation of the rules. The public was quick to respond with an internet meme of a book purportedly authored by Gay called “Mein Context,” a reference to Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” Gay has not been a champion of free speech on campus in the past, approving bans of conservative speakers.

Full story here.