When the Plaques Say “Respect” and the Wall Says “Jews Don’t Belong”

A colleague stopped me earlier this week, only a few feet from a wall where someone had spray-painted, in thick black letters, “ZIONISM IS RACISM + GENOCIDE,” “F–k NORMALIZATION,” and “FREE PALESTINE.”

As a Jew and Zionist, I don’t broadcast my politics when I teach and I don’t engage in activism on campus. My classroom is grounded in scholarship rather than ideology, and my views remain private. But I do feel a responsibility—as an educator, not as a partisan—to speak when any group of students is targeted or dehumanized. The message on the wall targets me and many of my students who are young, far from home, and still forming their Jewish identities, and they are devastatingly forced to absorb these messages where they are trying to live, learn and thrive.

My colleague smiled, asked how things were going, and launched into small talk, as if we were standing beside a student mural instead of a wall declaring that people like me, and many of my students, are inherently guilty of crimes against humanity.

What made the moment even more surreal were the plaques bolted directly above the vandalism: “Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech” and “Express Yourself; Respect Your Community.” The college had literally mounted its values on the wall. Someone then painted hatred underneath them, and faculty walked past as if the contradiction were invisible.

The same colleague had proudly signed a faculty letter proclaiming that “our community thrives when we listen and learn from one another,” that the college “is committed to dialogue across difference,” and that “every student deserves to feel respected and included.” It was a well-written letter—and completely empty. It read like an institution talking bravely about everything except the one form of hatred it is afraid to confront. And I should note: I was not invited to sign it. I was not asked for input. A statement about “community values” was drafted without colleagues who have spent months raising concerns about rising antisemitism. That exclusion alone says everything.

I have written before about Sarah Lawrence’s widening gap between rhetoric and reality—how the college celebrates “dialogue” in theory but retreats from it the moment a Jewish student is involved. What happened this week is not an anomaly. It is the operating system. The graffiti was not critique. It was delegitimization. And not just any delegitimization: the “Zionism = racism” slur has a long and ugly pedigree, from the 1975 UN resolution equating Jewish self-determination with bigotry to its formal repeal in 1991. Seeing it reappear on American campuses is not political disagreement. It is the revival of a lie designed to brand Jewish identity as inherently illegitimate.

It told Jewish and Zionist students that their identity itself is criminal, that their connection to Israel, which is foundational for the overwhelming majority of American Jews, places them outside the moral community. Any institution serious about inclusion would have said so immediately and clearly. Instead, there was silence. Not a note from leadership. No response from the faculty who penned the letter calling for respect and inclusion, and not even a glance from the colleague making small talk only feet away from the hate.

And let’s speak honestly: If that wall had targeted Black students, Asian students, LGBTQ students, or any other minority community, the response would have been swift and overwhelming. There would have been statements, vigils, mobilization and faculty insisting that silence is violence. But when the target is Jews, especially Zionist Jews, the vocabulary changes. Moral clarity becomes “complexity.” Urgency becomes “nuance.” Condemnation becomes “context.” Faculty who have moral frameworks for every injustice suddenly have nothing to say. Jewish students feel this double standard in their bones, and they are forced to navigate it daily.

Jewish students feel this double standard in their bones, and they are forced to navigate it daily.

This silence is not confined to Sarah Lawrence. Jewish students across the country report the same reality. They are now the least likely of any major student group to feel safe expressing their identity, and antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed nationally. More than half of Jewish students avoid certain parts of campus. Many have been directly harassed for being Jewish or for having a connection to Israel. The American campus—once a place where Jewish students thrived—has become one of the most hostile public environments for young Jews today. And when institutions hide behind euphemism, they are not calming tensions; they are signaling that Jewish concerns are uniquely negotiable. Silence is not neutrality. Silence is permission.

Silence is not neutrality. Silence is permission.

Universities love to announce their values. They print them on posters, banners, and webpages. But commitments are not revealed in PR materials. They are revealed when hatred appears in plain sight. This was that moment. The college could have said, simply and clearly, that dehumanizing language about any student is unacceptable, and that Jewish students belong on campus fully and without condition. But it did not. The faculty who signed that glowing letter about “courageous conversation” avoided the one courageous act required: telling the truth about antisemitism on their own campus. They drafted a “community statement” while excluding the colleagues who have been honest about the climate. And my colleague’s breezy small talk next to the graffiti was the final symbol: well-meaning people choosing comfort over responsibility.

At some point, Jewish families must hear what campuses are actually saying: If you’re Jewish—especially if you’re Zionist—you’re on your own. That is the quiet truth behind the plaques, the graffiti, and the silence. Jewish students don’t need another call for “dialogue.” They don’t need faculty who mount values above a wall of hatred and pretend the two aren’t connected. They need the one thing elite campuses now seem unable to muster: a clear sentence of moral courage. Hate against Jews is hate. Say it. Mean it. Enforce it. Or stop pretending this institution has the moral confidence to protect the students in its care.

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