Over the last weeks, we have seen a disturbing rise in antisemitism on college campuses.
One of the early incidents that brought this issue to the forefront of the national consciousness occurred at Cornell University, where a student allegedly made a series of online threats, including promising to “shoot up” a mostly kosher dining hall. The student was quickly taken into custody and brought up on federal charges, but similar incidents have occurred at schools across the country.
Several college presidents have decried the presence of antisemitism and taken measures to protect Jewish students, and local law enforcement authorities indicated that they would intervene to prevent violence against Jewish students. Meanwhile, representatives of the federal government have met with Jewish leaders and instituted a series of programs to minimize campus antisemitism.
These are all steps in the right direction, but they are not uniform, nor are they adequate. They treat the symptoms of antisemitism, but not the root cause.
I sympathize greatly with Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley School of Law, who wrote in an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times that since the attack he has experienced overt antisemitism for the first time in his life. Even so, Chemerinsky appears to be naïve about what has been brewing on college campuses — including Berkeley — for decades.
Harvard University President Claudine Gay acknowledged as much when she addressed a group of about a thousand Jewish students, as well as alumni, donors and members of the faculty, at a Shabbat dinner the week after the attacks. According to The New York Times, Gay told the assembled crowd that she had learned that week about “the pain and grief that many of you’ve been experiencing on our campus for years.”
Under the rubric of intersectionality or moral relativism — the concept that in every major conflict there is an oppressor and an oppressed, and the oppressed should always be supported — college campuses became fertile ground for a rise in antisemitism. Such arguments can create dangerous narratives — in this case, that Israelis are the oppressors or colonialists and Palestinians are the oppressed.
The conflict in the Middle East is incredibly complex and cannot be boiled down to such simplistic absolutes, yet many professors and students have been equating Palestinian calls for justice (which often, usually subtlety, include calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of its citizens) with incidents of racism and ethnic hate in the United States. Colleges must immediately implement changes so that terrorists are not hailed as civil rights heroes, while the right of Jews to live securely in Israel is dismissed.
Some of the blame comes from the trend toward ensuring comfort for all by instilling mechanisms inside the classroom experience that allow students to bypass subjects that they find objectionable or troubling. In doing so, we conflate comfort and safety at the expense of a well-rounded education.
In fact, we have a responsibility to teach students ideas and perspectives that spawn discomfort by challenging them, forcing them to consider alternative points of view; this process expands their knowledge and develops resilience.
The line, of course, is crossed when professors or classmates espouse hateful attitudes or even violence and terrorism, to the point where students — be they Jewish, Palestinian or any other religion or ethnicity — believe their physical safety is at risk.
Earlier this month, Columbia University suspended two student groups, Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, until the end of the fall semester, for what it said were violations of the university policy, including “threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” The move comes on the heels of Brandeis University’s decision to ban the local chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. I applaud these actions and encourage others to follow suit. At the same time, colleges must disassociate with members of the faculty who reflect the predilections of a radical fringe divorced from truth and American values. There are limits to academic freedom, and college leaders should not let political correctness render them silent.
Combating the rise in antisemitism on college campuses requires a sincere and massive effort by college leaders and members of the administration and faculty. But if it becomes necessary to pledge to protect our students, we’re already too late. Instead, institutions of higher learning must return to their original purpose: teaching, with a commitment to bringing unabridged context, reasonable discussions, and moral clarity into the classroom. And, of course, hate and its by-products, violence and terrorism, must be condemned immediately and without exception.
If we can’t agree on that fundamental human value, we have nothing of value to offer our students.
Alan Kadish is president of Touro University, the nation’s largest Jewish-sponsored institution of higher learning.
