Summer of Antisemitism Goes Back to School
Antisemitism is headed back to school. The summer recess was well spent, with Middle East faculty militarizing their lesson plans and pro-Hamas coffers re-supplied by Qatar and Iran. Students have been practicing their anti-American, anti-Israel, antisemitic slogans. There are so many to learn nowadays, and being out-of-sync is uncool. Many took time away for intensive flag-burning weekend retreats.
Back-to-school shopping this year includes a wide selection of Kevlar vests and an assortment of paramilitary gadgets and gear. Pepper spray is positively de rigueur. Keffiyeh scarves are being sold at student bookstores, each one embossed with the college’s colors and team mascot. The one for Notre Dame is especially fetching. Go figure: Catholics wearing keffiyehs.
Student activism is now an official major within the Illiberal Arts. Genocide, Post-Colonial, Anti-Racist, Gender, Queer Studies is a mandatory course—even for math majors, although the math, science and engineering curricula are all being re-evaluated for racial bias.
Last year’s nationwide campus turmoil, where the Hamas savages of Gaza were shown more love than college football teams, convinced students, and especially faculty, that college is nothing but a progressive playpen—a laboratory for the undoing of democracy. Twisted notions of academic freedom and “shared governance” means that henceforth, university life will provide a safe haven for bored students demanding advanced credit in socially-acceptable antisemitism.
If you thought last year’s pro-Hamas encampments and building takeovers were bad, in all likelihood, it will get worse. The lesson of last year is that nearly anything can be done in the name of Palestinian liberation. All will be forgiven—no disciplinary measures, no forfeiture of degrees, and surely no jail time.
Antisemitic prodigies have now matriculated to a new level of unabashed Jew-hatred. And no one within the academy seems the least bit interested in putting a stop to it.
Just last week, the president of Columbia University resigned. Three of her deans left their posts over the summer, flagged for text messages that trafficked in antisemitic tropes.
At least Columbia’s president lasted longer than her equally feckless Ivy League sisters from Harvard, Penn and Cornell. Those and other universities are facing civil lawsuits and Title VI civil rights investigations from the Justice Department for failing to safeguard campus life for Jewish students. Hard to fathom, but tuition dollars allowed pro-Hamas protesters to deny Jews access to classes and campus facilities—intimidating and harassing them along the way.
Over the summer, a California federal judge ruled that UCLA had permitted that very thing. The court issued a preliminary injunction prohibiting such overt discriminatory treatment, ruling that Jewish faith and Israel’s existence are inextricably linked, invoking the First Amendment’s Free Exercise of Religion Clause.
A federal judge in Boston delivered a similar injunction against Harvard, finding it plausible that Jewish students were afraid to attend classes while the university remained indifferent, holding to the absurd excuse that anti-Jewish activity is protected speech under the First Amendment.
Brown, Columbia and NYU settled similar cases over the summer. But did the caretakers of American colleges learn any lessons from these actions, or are these lawsuits mere nuisances—cheaper to settle with a check than to rein in tenured faculty and temper their own hatred of the Jewish state?
Here’s a shocker: college presidents don’t seem to be motivated by money. Ivy League universities lost hundreds of millions of dollars in endowed alumni support from Jewish donors who were appalled by the antisemitic spectacles at their alma maters. None of the money has been recaptured because the schools have done nothing to assuage their former benefactors.
Indeed, it has all gotten worse.
Student enrollment is down overall across the country. The value of a Bachelor of Arts degree has diminished in this age of groupthink indoctrination. College was supposed to teach open minds how to think, not close those minds with mass-produced dogma.
The value of a Bachelor of Arts degree has diminished in this age of groupthink indoctrination. College was supposed to teach open minds how to think, not close those minds with mass-produced dogma.
And fewer Jews are now registered at Ivy League schools. It’s not clear whether anyone misses them. For diversity purposes, Jews are no longer judged to be a minority class. They are simply privileged white students who should be treated like descendants from the Mayflower—with hostility. Besides, the equity obsessions that exist on campus are satisfied by slowing down the progress that Jews have made in America.
The breakup goes both ways. Ivy League schools have damaged their brand. Given all the antisemitic animus on campus, why would Jews choose them over a top-notch state school offering a full ride?
As for the perpetrators of violence, it is not as though they faced no consequences at all. Job offers were withdrawn from several Wall Street law firms. A doctor was dismissed from NYU Langone Health. Some students were banned from participating in graduation ceremonies. Others had their diplomas withheld.
But Harvard, predictably, was among the first to cave, reinstating the diplomas of 11 of the 13 students who had never formally graduated. The Muslim Law Review editor who took part in a mob that physically harassed a Jewish student is apparently enjoying the benefits of his Harvard law degree. Don’t be surprised if he turns up defending terror organizations.
Campus dining facilities should be interesting this week. “Mean Girls” has nothing on the kind of hate generated against Jews, financed by mischievous mullahs, and carried out largely by Muslims, many on student visas. They, along with some African-Americans and the aggressively genderless, have declared a turf war against Jews.
All of the mayhem is being orchestrated by promiscuous faculty members who are largely responsible for the uptick in Jew-hate, the corruption of curricula, and the teaching of ahistorical falsehoods about the Middle East. The academically lazy have become politically all-powerful.
University leaders would do nearly anything to survive a faculty senate no-confidence vote. Taking charge of their institutions and protecting Jewish students is a far lesser priority.
No one wants to get caught in the whirlwind of all this public antisemitism. Remember what happened in our nation’s capital this summer when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress? It was a show-stopper of ugly anti-Americanism, with “Death to America!” chants and the defacement of monuments.
Who would want to lead a university through such madness? So much time is being spent deciding when to call in the police, and how soon can all those Palestinian flags get taken down?
Let’s see how things unfold this week in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. It is expected to be a coming-out party for angry progressives demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an embargo on arms sales to Israel, and divestment from companies doing business in Israel.
Kamala Harris may be aiming for the White House, but she will be made to feel like an ordinary college president. She’s just hoping that her party’s convention withstands the political unrest better than have our nation’s campuses.
Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Is Israel Fighting a Just War in Gaza?”
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