Jewish Students Should Boycott Universities that Coddle Antisemites

It’s time for Jews to begin their own BDS movement against every college and university that cowers and equivocates in the face of virulent antisemitism on campus. Time to walk away from institutions that have failed to protect them over months and even years as emboldened, brazen Jew-haters on campus have enjoyed their “free speech” and safe spaces at the expense of Jewish students’ safety.

This notion may be a bitter pill to swallow for students and their parents. Jews have a longstanding love affair with higher education and are often star-struck by Ivy League names on diplomas. 

Many would reject the notion that Jewish students walk away instead of staying and standing proud. Stand With Us and Christians United for Israel on Campus do outstanding work battling collegiate ignorance and hatred, patiently fighting ignorance and hatred with fact-based programming and discussion with willing students. And Jewish students sometimes begin to explore the meaning of their religious identity when faced with antisemitism. We have been strengthened through such tests throughout our 3,300-year history.   

But we must also know when to say, “No more.” When Jewish students stay locked in a college library as the mob outside pounds on the glass walls, shouting “Globalize the Intifada!”; when Jewish students are physically assaulted and sent death threats; when professors at Cornell and Columbia write of being “exhilarated” by the “awesome” scenes of “resistance” from the Hamas massacres; and more than 100 professors from Columbia and Barnard sign a letter defending students who blamed Israel for Hamas’s carnage, all without any meaningful consequences, it’s time to divest. Let Jewish tuition dollars, youthful energy, and creative and intellectual aspirations flourish elsewhere.     

I have an undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern. Those degrees helped launch my career, but in the mid-1980s leftism hadn’t yet completely suffocated academia or fully normalized the teaching of the vicious antisemitism we see bursting from every victimization-studies corner today. By the time our four children finished high school it was clear that no top-brand secular university could provide a suitable environment for them. Identity politics had poisoned most of the humanities as well as the sciences. The social environment would also have been hostile to our Torah-observant kids and their traditional values.   

Ambitious, hardworking, smart kids can still become doctors, lawyers, psychologists, business leaders, or anything else they want while bypassing top-tier secular colleges for their undergraduate degrees. One of our three sons earned his bachelor’s degree in Talmudic studies from his yeshiva, followed by a master’s degree in education through Johns Hopkins University. Our eldest son earned his undergrad business degree from Touro College, a Jewish institution, and is a licensed CPA. Our youngest son and our daughter each earned undergrad degrees through a combination of credits earned through post-high school seminaries and yeshivas, combined with online courses administered through small private colleges. This son earned a dual master’s in tax law and law degree at Loyola and works for a fast-growing firm. Our daughter earned her master’s degree in education from American Jewish University and is a resource specialist in a private school. All have thriving careers. 

These workarounds are increasingly common, and not only among Jewish kids. Families with traditional moral, religious, and political values aren’t willing to pay bloated tuition dollars for intellectually bankrupt, leftist-driven group-think. While our kids did miss out on typical collegiate activities and clubs, some of which might have been broadening and enjoyable, they all found meaningful outlets for their interests. It helped that most of their friends were following a similar, non-“elite” college path.

Welcome pushback is rising against the coddling of the “From the river to the sea” set. A consortium of law firms has warned they won’t hire graduates who publicly engaged in overt antisemitic activities on campus, suggesting that avoiding top-tier schools where Hamas-booster clubs are trendy might even be a resumé booster. Major donors are closing the money tap at some of the worst-offending institutions. Brandeis University banned the campus chapter of National Students for Justice in Palestine. The UC Board of Regents refused to walk back its declaration of the Hamas attacks as “terrorism,” both “sickening and incomprehensible,” despite demands by the 300-member UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council to do so.

It will take decades to undo the damage inflicted by thousands of faculty members who teach that Israel—unlike every other nation on Earth—has no right to exist. 

Unfortunately, the antisemitic rot has grown thick on the vines of many Ivy League and other premier universities. It will take decades to undo the damage inflicted by thousands of faculty members who teach that Israel — unlike every other nation on Earth — has no right to exist. 

Avoiding these elite colleges will have many benefits. Parents will save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Upon graduation your children will still be recognizable as the same gender as they were a few years earlier. Having been spared indoctrination in critical race theory, they may still know how to think for themselves. 

Throughout history, antisemitism has barred Jews from many professions, schools, clubs, regions, and even countries. These barriers have never held us back. Boycotting institutions that have not taken our humanity and safety seriously isn’t a show of weakness — it’s a show of strength.

Judy Gruen is the author of several books, including “The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith.” Her next book, “Bylines and Blessings,” will be published in February 2024 by Koehler Books.