Ten Secrets to Academic Success | Turn It Off! Managing Social Media, Middle East Minefields, and Political Difference

Others in the series:

#1: Remember Why You’re Going to College

#2: Give Yourself the College Orientation You Deserve

#3: Great Debates About Great Books Yield Deep Knowledge, Sharp Minds and Constructive Citizens

#4 Make for Yourself a Teacher – Acquire a Friend

A prominent 30-something journalist triggered a social media firestorm. Unfairly bullying her for expressing what once was a mainstream, reasonable opinion, the Woke Cancel Culture Commissars kept pummeling. Reading one hateful tweet after another (this was pre-X), she described feeling so overwhelmed, she spent the weekend in bed.

Reading her account, I shouted into my iPhone – “turn the darned thing off.” That’s really the best advice I can give modern students. It’s also a great advertisement for Judaism’s Sabbath restrictions – the “thou shalt nots” that are actually “thou shalts” too: opportunities freeing us for the unexpected by banning the habitual.

“Turn it off” – returns the power to you, while exposing the digital world as an artificial and, frequently, a delusional universe. We let social media sway us, bewitch us, even browbeat us, without realizing how freeing it can be to avoid it – or minimize it, at least.

“Turn it off” – returns the power to you, while exposing the digital world as an artificial and, frequently, a delusional universe. We let social media sway us, bewitch us, even browbeat us, without realizing how freeing it can be to avoid it – or minimize it, at least.

“Turn it off” – challenges you, as my previous installments have urged, to plunge into mind-expanding, soul-expanding books, seek life-changing teachers, and make forever friends. These are the timeless experiences of student life. And these should be your priorities at university.

Spurning social media also gives you a chance – admittedly just a chance – to approach the Israel discourse and political discussions overall more civilly. It’s lazy only to blame social media for our polarizing politics. Hopefully, you’re already learning to doubt single-causal explanations. Life is complicated. Still, the medium’s brevity and anonymity coarsen politics – especially when compounded by manipulative mechanistic algorithms feeding our biases and fomenting conflict. 

Moreover, tragically, regarding Jews, Israel, and Zionism, hundreds of millions of people worldwide feed a systematic campaign flooding social media with anti-Israel assaults. The fake news and modern blood libels bombard critics of Israel and supporters. Jeff Morris, Jr., a high-tech investment whiz, reported in late October 2023 that after analyzing “the tactics and data,” he saw “that much of TikTok is being controlled by anti-Israel bot farms, paid commenters/likers/sharers – much of which is paid for by Hamas’s supporting organizations.” 

For skeptics claiming Jews are paranoid, consider this. If Australia’s anti-Israel government just exposed Iran’s worldwide manipulations by expelling Iranian operatives for violently attacking Jewish institutions, could the Iranians and Palestinian terrorists possibly restrain themselves from attacking Jews, Israel and Zionism on social media? Perhaps Jews aren’t paranoid but nara-poid – thinking people are out to get them … because they are!

Tragically, the anti-Israel insanity is just an extreme case of a widespread problem.  Traditionally, students sought students and professors with different viewpoints, wanting to learn from a range of perspectives, while benefiting from healthy debates. Today, surveys by FIRE and other organizations find students skittish – for good reasons. Fifty-six percent of students fear damaged reputations because someone misunderstands something they say, while 26% report feeling pressure to avoid addressing controversial topics in their classes. Perhaps most heartbreaking, a quarter of enrolled students say they are more likely to self-censor, after spending time in college, than when they first enrolled.

The fish stinks from the head down. Years ago, Woke professors started treating speech they detested as violence – and rationalizing violence against those who deviate from the party line. Twenty-one percent of students find their administration’s stance on free speech unclear, with 27% doubting administrators would defend speakers’ rights to speak freely if others silenced controversial views. And, as I noted in earlier installments, many professors today are rewarded for committing educational malpractice. They politicize their classrooms – with many spreading mind-numbing, doctrinaire posts too. 

Fortunately, a backlash is developing. Northwestern University in Chicago just received a $20 million gift from Jennifer and Alec Litowitz for its “Center for Enlightened Disagreement” to “promote constructive engagement and discourse in an increasingly polarized world based on the interconnected pillars of research, curriculum, outreach and conversation.” 

Hmm: Isn’t that every educator’s mandate? 

Similarly, the Trump Administration demands “viewpoint diversity” – we used to call that a balanced curriculum. 

I’m stuck. What’s crazier, needing to liberate the liberal arts from a simplistic orthodoxy, or trusting the government to impose a range of opinions rather than standing by to let free thought flourish?

That’s where you, today’s students come in. You can wait for the institutional change – which will take years. You can trust your professors – and careful shopping helps. But, please, be the change – for your sake. It’s a process. We often only quote Ethics of the Father 1:2 partially — to “make for yourself a teacher, acquire yourself a friend.” Its conclusion, like a good equation, states: “and judge every person favorably.”

Great books, great teachers, great friends, introduce you to my two favorite “Ts” – humiliTY and complexiTY – while distancing you from my least favorite “Cs” – inconsistenCY and hypocriSY. Some of my closest friends-for-life are lifetime sparring partners. I learn from them how to sharpen my arguments but also what other, good people, equally smart and caring, think. 

Dwight Eisenhower warned his successor John Kennedy – whom he disdained – that only tough dilemmas end up in the Oval Office: easy decisions get made elsewhere. It’s unnerving today to see how sure people are, from both extremes, about really hard questions, in America, Europe, Israel. That makes them very unforgiving of others for being bad, not just coming to the wrong conclusions or having different political priorities. 

In 1975, the statesman and soon-to-beSenator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) said: “The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.” That insight is doubly valuable. First, it teaches to be less judgmental and more accepting, honing that ability to acknowledge complexity and recognize different people’s differing priorities and assumptions. But second, it still explains many tensions between left and right today, while challenging us all to break out of partisan shackles, conventional wisdom, and tired assumptions. 

Let’s generate new ideas – or even fresh alliances and new, enduring, cross-the-aisle friendships – starting now!

Gil Troy, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. Last year he published, “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream” and “The Essential Guide to October 7th and its Aftermath.” His latest, “The Essential Guide to Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism and Jew-hatred” was just published and can be downloaded on the JPPI Website.