Joel Pollak poses with his wife Julia and two children. Courtesy | Times of Israel
To honor his mother-in-law’s legacy as a leading anti-apartheid feminist in South Africa, Joel Pollak endowed a scholarship in the name of Rhoda Kadalie at the end of last year and shared her story in a talk Sept. 3 in the Elizabeth Hoynak Archive Center.
“The Christian legacy of Rhoda Kadalie is the understanding that the principles of the Bible are deeply relevant to liberty,” Pollak said. “They are revolutionary when they need to be, and they help us find our way again when change threatens to overwhelm us. How fortunate you are here at Hillsdale College to have started from those foundations and to have preserved them.”
Pollak is the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart News and the author of several books, including “Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order!’: A Biography.” He is an Orthodox Jew who was born in South Africa and raised in Skokie, Illinois.
He said he and his wife Julia started the scholarship as a way to create a legacy for Kadalie that would reflect her values: a fierce commitment to the truth, intolerance of any form of bigotry, and a deep love of her Christian faith.
“She also became aware of the poor treatment of women within so-called liberation struggles,” Pollak said. “She began challenging not only racial inequality under apartheid, but also gender inequality within the anti-apartheid movement and the academy as well.”
Kadalie was appointed in 1994 to the Human Rights Commission by the newly elected South African President Nelson Mandela. She eventually resigned in protest of the ruling party’s attempts to ignore the commission’s work. Throughout her life, she continued working in the nonprofit sector and also became one of the country’s leading opinion columnists.
Kadalie was critical of the United States at times, especially during the George W. Bush administration, according to Pollak, but she supported Donald Trump and predicted he would win the 2016 election..
“She championed his candidacy, seeing in him a kindred spirit, a plain speaker who could sweep aside political complacency,” Pollak said.
Kadalie died of lung cancer in 2022. Pollak and his wife wanted to donate money to a university in her honor. Despite both being graduates of Harvard, they did not want to donate to their alma mater.
“We have both become increasingly disturbed by Harvard’s shift toward the radical left, which has caused severe damage to student life and academic discourse,” Pollak said. “The radical anti-Israel and frankly antisemitic protests that exploded at Harvard since Oct. 7 were a long time coming.”
Kadalie was an avid reader of Imprimis, according to Pollak, and the college’s history of admitting women and black students evoked Kadalie’s own values and work, making it the right fit.
Junior Catherine Maxwell is the first recipient of the Kadalie scholarship.
“As a Christian interested in opinion journalism, I’m honored to learn from and participate in her legacy through this scholarship,” Maxwell said. “Mr. Pollak gave me a copy of Rhoda’s biography, and I’m excited to learn more about her.”
Kadalie was invited to appear for her swearing-in as an American citizen on April 25, 2022, but she died nine days before the ceremony. Although never a U.S. citizen, she loved this country and believed in its potential, Pollak said.
“I think Pollak offers a unique perspective on why civil liberty matters and why education on the founding matters,” said Mary Ann Powers, executive assistant to College President Larry Arnn. “To have an outsider come in and offer a story about his mother-in-law’s life that bears witness to the importance of fighting for those truths and the way they play out and actually liberate people — I think that was eye-opening for a lot of Hillsdale students to hear about.”