Protests Are Only the Beginning of the Deep Problem of Campus Antisemitism

As colleges and universities reopen over the next few weeks, the tensions around the Israel-Hamas war will likely re-emerge almost immediately. The dangerous ideology driving the violence and protests that transpired last spring did not disappear over the summer break. In fact, it has only grown.

At Columbia University, only moments after former president Minouche Shafik announced her resignation and her successor was named, Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine threatened to remove or force out the new president from office if she did not pay heed to their demands. In lower Manhattan, NYU students’ anti-Israel People’s Solidarity Coalition professed its support for “armed struggle” and is prepared to use violence in their fight to “dismantle” NYU’s “involvement in settler-colonial occupation, genocide and imperial wars.”

There is little doubt that demonstrators will be back this fall, louder and more determined than before. This time, they will be on more campuses, better organized, well-funded, and will have legal counsel and media by their side. How will college presidents, administrators, trustees and the broader higher education community respond? 

Certainly, anti-Israel groups have had considerable time to organize, coordinate resources and strategize and will come to campus this fall ready to support them. At the same time, the national mood of disdain after the spring chaos was unequivocal: Most Americans opposed the vandalism and building occupations, and supported punishing students who participated in the pro-Palestinian encampments. 

Should encampments, violence and protests once again become the hallmark of campus life, the fact that the world has changed dramatically in the past six months means colleges and universities can no longer claim that they were caught off guard and unprepared. College presidents and administrators have seen Congress hold numerous hearings, they have watched numerous high profile presidents resign in disgrace, they know that Title VI complaints and private lawsuits are plentiful and moving forward, and they must now be aware of the powerful and forceful legal decisions that have been rendered against schools for their failure to protect Jewish students. 

A decision by a federal district court in California correctly ruled in favor of Jewish student plaintiffs who sued UCLA declaring that, “In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.”

Large scale protests and organized calls for Israel’s destruction are easy to spot as they have become very public. We have seen that they can in fact be shut down and dismantled, and administrations that do not do so will draw national attention and thus force the hands of college presidents to act. But there is another challenge for the Jewish students and college communities. 

There are many more subtle but equally problematic cases of hatred toward Jews that are far less visible to the outside world but must be addressed urgently. These cases do not involve closing down large scale political disruptions or the regular antisemitic graffiti that has become commonplace on campuses nationwide. They involve tackling deep-seated, endemic hate that cannot be solved with law enforcement or court orders removing masks and checkpoints for entry as was the case in at UCLA or Columbia. This task will be daunting. It will involve working with faculty, alumni and countless administrators and student groups to address cultural and curricular problems found in the dorms and dining halls, classrooms, student and community centers, and in the offices of the many administrators who see Jews as oppressors and Israel as a colonial power. Many of these fiercely independent groups will assert academic freedom when asked to account for their antisemitic behavior and may be nearly impossible to reform.

There are many more subtle but equally problematic cases of hatred toward Jews that are far less visible to the outside world but must be addressed urgently.

Sarah Lawrence College, where I teach, is one example of an institution where college presidents must lead to dismantle antisemitic groups and impulses well beyond protests. A number of my students recently sent me the updated “by-laws” of the Sarah Lawrence Socialist Coalition (SLSC). This group is open about their views for this “coalition” and posted them proudly on their social media pages where they were “liked” by members of the faculty. This group added to its manifesto “fourteen principles of unity” for this academic year that they “believe are crucially important to provide an ideological bedrock for the SLSC.” They maintain that, “These fourteen points will act as our framework for the coming year as we enter a time of both pressure and opportunity.” 

The principles are a laundry list of ideas typically expounded on by progressive activists. This is a student group that, on August 9th, during the “International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples,” declared that the College “is built on land stolen from the Monsiyok Lenape people who lived here for thousands of years before European colonization. The Lawrence family, for whom the College, is named were early European colonists, descending from English 17th-century colonists who stole the land of indigenous peoples in Massachusetts and Long Island.” But, as is typical among many progressive groups, they offer no position as to how to actually and pragmatically address such a “grievance.”

The document is full of similar leftist language and positions without any reasonable or useful guidance forward. The Socialist Coalition makes many predictable claims including, for instance, that capitalism is evil. The document asserts that “Capitalism is an inherently exploitative, alienating, and murderous system in which the bourgeoisie, being those who control capital, extract the value generated by the labor of the proletariat and return a tiny portion of it through wages.” The document continues to note that “Capitalism is violent, coercive, and a threat to human progress and the existence of the species. It must be dismantled.” Decades of research have demonstrated that such a claim is false but this is a position that is still open for debate and collegiate life is exactly where that can and should occur.  

The list of principles continues by invoking familiar tropes of Chairman Mao, imperialism and colonialism which, again, are all ideas that are worthy of both study and debate. The expansive by-laws then talk about socio-political matters that are not related to economic systems including the police and queer liberation. Unsurprisingly, the piece then declares that “Zionism is racism” and—like Hamas, whose very charter makes “clear the terrorist organization’s commitment to destroying Israel”—members of this group are “in favor of the complete abolition of the ‘Israeli’ state.” This position has nothing to do with socialism, a worldview with a lengthy history in Israel, and is purely political and blatantly antisemitic. How the College administration chooses to react to this document will be critical since the school currently faces a Title VI federal investigation for systematic discrimination against Jewish students on its campus. 

Notably, this student group readily admits that it is subject to the school’s governance mechanisms because it is a “Registered Student Organization at Sarah Lawrence College,” which means that it adheres “to the College’s Non-Discrimination Policy” and yet calls formally for the destruction of a sovereign state deeply connected to many if not most Jewish students and their families. This position is both dangerous and chilling and was a deliberate choice; the Sarah Lawrence Socialist Coalition did not advocate for a cease-fire, a change of leadership away from Netanyahu, or offer any other legitimate or debatable critique. Rather, it opted to promote the wholesale destruction of an entire nation. Followed to its logical end, such a position would result in a Holocaust-level event involving the eradication not only of a nation but also its people. The group’s social media pages make it unquestionably clear that they hold beliefs that are illiberal, antisemitic, and that call for overt illegal discrimination against individuals who are Jewish and see Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.  

Followed to its logical end, such a position would result in a Holocaust-level event involving the eradication not only of a nation but also its people.

What happened on March 28th of 2024 offers a potent illustration of this antisemitism. The socialist group posted a video and text showing one of the co-chairs leading a protest against the “the presence of Zionist Jodi Rudoren on campus” in response to her “invitation to the Bozeman Lecture.” The text of the post declares “SAY IT LOUD AND SAY IT CLEAR: WE DON’T WANT NO ZIONISTS HERE!” This is an explicit call for discrimination on the basis of one’s faith and heritage. NYU recently explained that “for many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” which thus makes such calls a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and university policy on religious discrimination. NYU further noted that “excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a ‘no Zionist’ litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., ‘Zionists control the media’), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate” does fall into the Title VI category.

The correct logic at NYU fully applies to Sarah Lawrence but the College did not react or release any statement in reaction to such problematic public calls for exclusion by a group that is part of the College community. In fact, the “Sarah Lawrence Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine” even praised these claims by commenting with praise emojis and the words, “Fire. Thank you,” followed by a watermelon emoji. 

This new call for the destruction of Israel from an official school group leads to a host of questions and problems regarding how the College will respond to this group and such a statement. After intense pressure, the College’s president—who has shown almost no support for Jewish students—eventually declared that “there is not, nor can there be, any place for antisemitism or hate speech of any kind on our campus.” However, calling for the abolition of the Israeli state—particularly given no calls against any other state or nation are ever made by this group—is antisemitic and Jewish students are being targeted specifically by this call.

How does the College president intend to react to such a statement? How do the College and its president explain the purported commitment to diversity, which holds that “people from different backgrounds and with different views be prepared to treat one another with mutual respect and honest curiosity so that they can engage and learn from one another,” in the context of failing to act when this standard is blatantly challenged? Official offices of the College—the Office of Student Involvement and Leadership, for instance—along with faculty members follow this group online and cannot claim to be unaware of these principles that violate the school’s ethos, yet these deeply problematic ideas are neither challenged nor even addressed by the school’s leadership.   

In such environments, Jewish students are not free to engage intellectually with others when they know that members of an officially recognized campus group have publicly called for the destruction of what many of them regard as their ancestral homeland. Hateful declarations that Zionists are unwelcome make it impossible for Jewish students to engage fully in academic life. Students are also aware that faculty and administrators support such positions. Quite understandably, Jewish students at Sarah Lawrence are scared, intimidated and feel threatened; they saw the socialist group call for overt discrimination against a visitor on the basis of the guest’s faith and ethnicity and painfully watched the silence of their administration. They see hate filled professors and administrators supporting students who make anti-Jewish statements. They know that faculty will make absurd, hateful claims, as did one well known visiting antisemitic public policy professor at the College who referenced the “media controlled by Israeli and Zionist institutions.”  

Hateful declarations that Zionists are unwelcome make it impossible for Jewish students to engage fully in academic life.

They’ve also learned that no administrator will listen to their concerns or accept that there is a problem. Even more troubling is that this problem is not unique to my campus. Comparable political groups, faculty and administrators have crossed the antisemitic line not only at Sarah Lawrence, but also at many other schools including Haverford College, which received far less notoriety than UC or Ivy League schools.

In the case of Sarah Lawrence College, I suspect that the school president will do nothing to change the climate of Jewish hate on campus or demonstrate leadership by holding accountable a school group that is calling for the destruction of Israel this fall. The only “good” news for Sarah Lawrence is that the truths about this group and others as well as faculty and administrator behavior will finally surface in the impending federal investigation of the school’s “persistent and pervasive” antisemitic climate. 

The broader significance is that the case of Sarah Lawrence presents a window into the deep set of antisemitic problems that so many colleges and universities will have to address as they reopen this fall. Higher education is plagued with hatred toward Jews and schools can no longer claim to be unaware or suggest that this movement caught them off-guard. Not all schools will have to contend with violence or encampments; they may look more like Sarah Lawrence with deep hatred embedded into so many facets of the campus that an entirely new strategy is necessary.  

The broader significance is that the case of Sarah Lawrence presents a window into the deep set of antisemitic problems that so many colleges and universities will have to address as they reopen this fall.

Regardless of how hatred manifests, and it could be from student groups or faculty and administrators who are teaching or influencing students, the forces of antisemitism are going to be stronger than before and the consequences for failing to protect Jewish students and allowing hate to run rampant are now known to college presidents who must act. Some will have the fortitude to hold their ground. But, tragically, many will capitulate to the leftist mob, fold in front of faculty, and will face devastating results from legal and political challenges. The only question now is which path schools and their presidents will choose.

The path that should be taken by colleges and universities is one where schools are unequivocal in taking steps to end campus antisemitism and commit to staying politically neutral. Schools must finally enforce their various rules and values that celebrate diversity and promote equality of experience and opportunity. They must stop administering punishment only to rescind it later. And they must confront faculty and administrators and demand answers and action when discrimination and hate are disseminated in the classrooms and on campus.

The path that should be taken by colleges and universities is one where schools are unequivocal in taking steps to end campus antisemitism and commit to staying politically neutral.

Threats against and violence toward Jewish students must stop and the hate directed at them must be confronted and challenged. Jewish students cannot be omitted from the promise of free and open education; it is difficult to enjoy college life and have equal experiences and opportunities when Jewish students are subjected to dangerous environments of deep hate, calls for their harm, and the destruction of their homeland. This will be a huge task for it involves reexamining nearly all facets of collegiate life and focusing on the sources of this hate, which can be found in almost every corner of the university. The Jewish community must help ensure that all schools take steps to remedy their toxic environments and remember that, yes, UCLA, Columbia, Harvard and others have been awful for Jewish students, but the hate sadly runs much wider and deeper.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.