Should there have been a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic National Contention? That was the question on everyone’s mind last week, and frankly, the answer seems obvious — yes. 

To say that there shouldn’t be “a Palestinian speaker” is like saying that there shouldn’t be a Black speaker, or a Jewish speaker, or a gay speaker. Whosoever would oppose a speaker’s presence at the DNC solely on account of their race or eth-nicity would seem to have no place in the party. 

And yet, this framing of the question is misleading and incomplete. The Uncommitted Movement — the main Democratic caucus pushing for a Palestinian speaker — does not exist in a political vacuum. Their main goal is to steer the Democratic Party towards a radical arms embargo on Israel.

And so a more honest question would have been: Should the Democratic Party put a promoter of a cruel, misguided, and reckless policy on the main stage at the most important party event of the year?

A more honest question would have been: Should the Democratic Party put a promoter of a cruel, misguided, and reckless policy on the main stage at the most important party event of the year?

From where I sit, the answer is no. 

Israel is still under attack by an alliance of malign actors shared by the United States as enemies. These include Iran and its many proxy armies such as Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis in Yemen, whose slogan, lest we forget, is “God Is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.” 

Let’s not misinterpret what an arms embargo means. Those who want an arms embargo are those who want to see Israel defenseless against enemies sworn to its destruction; who want the Iron Dome to run out of ammo as Hezbollah rockets continue to destroy buildings in the north and push farther towards Tel Aviv; who long to see what would have happened to the Jewish state if the Jews were too weak to repulse Hamas’ invading army on Oct. 7.

Let’s not misinterpret what an arms embargo means. Those who want an arms embargo are those who want to see Israel defenseless against enemies sworn to its destruction.

On Sunday we woke up to news that Israel had thwarted a major Hezbollah attack that could have caused serious damage and loss of life for innocent Israelis. Those who want an arms embargo are those who wish Sunday’s headline was different, telling of death and destruction instead of resilience and self-defense. 

Most Democrats, to their great credit, still find such a policy abhorrent.

One Palestinian speaker pushed by the Uncommitted Movement was Georgia State Rep. Ruwa Romman. Her undelivered speech was published in Mother Jones. 

In it, she refers to the war in Gaza as “the massacres in Gaza.” Obviously, this is a mischaracterization of the war itself. It is also a slap in the face to Joe Biden, who endorsed and shaped that war, and to Kamala Harris as well. Are we shocked that they didn’t want to platform this perspective at an event designed to drum up enthusiasm for the VP-turned-presidential hopeful? 

In a pathetic imitation of evenhandedness, Romman calls to “free all the Israeli and Palestinian hostages.” But Israel has no hostages, which are definitionally people seized for the purpose of extortion. Israel has prisoners. Many of them are guilty of perpetrating the most gruesome of Oct. 7’s crimes. Hamas has hostages. Young women, children, elderly, and the disabled. According to Romman, Yahya Sinwar himself would be considered a freed hostage. 

When Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, parents of the Israeli-American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, took the stage at the DNC, they were right to acknowledge the great tragedy that this war has brought upon the people of Gaza, and right to pray for the war’s speedy end. 

The suffering of Palestinians is not to be ignored, and it was important to make space for it at the DNC. But as for empowering the Uncommitted Movement — a group that openly despises the policies of the current candidate and her predecessor — it seems fairly obvious that saying no was the right and only choice for the Democrats to make.

Matthew Schultz is a Jewish Journal columnist and rabbinical student at Hebrew College. He is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (Tupelo, 2020) and lives in Boston and Jerusalem.  

If you saw it you would understand. The heartbreak. The utter heartbreak.

Right before she begins her speech at the DNC with her husband Jon at her side, she hears tens of thousands of people chanting “Bring Them Home.” Rachel Goldberg puts her hand on her forehead and then collapses on the lectern, her body convulsing as she begins to cry. Jon helps her stand and says to her gently, “You’ve got this.” And then, “Let’s go.”

And she starts to speak: “At this moment 109 treasured human beings are being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. They are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists. They are from 23 different countries. The youngest hostage is a one-year-old, red-headed baby boy. And the oldest is an 86-year-old mustachioed grandpa. Among the hostages are eight American citizens. One of those Americans is our only son. His name is Hersh. He’s 23 years old.”

She tells us that Hersh is a happy go lucky young man who loves soccer and music, and is obsessed with travel, his room at home filled with atlases and travel books.

If the impassioned plea by Jon and Rachel on behalf of their child and the rest of the hostages doesn’t open your heart, I can’t imagine what would.

This is an issue that, no matter our politics, every American should be fighting for, along with every person of conscience in the world.

Jon referenced this directly when he said, “We are heartened that both Democratic and Republican leaders demonstrate their bipartisan support for our hostages being released.”

At last month’s RNC gathering, Orna and Ronen Neutra, the parents of Omer, age 22, another Israeli-American being held hostage in Gaza, spoke and there as well we heard the convention participants chanting in one voice, “Bring Them Home.”

Empathy should be bipartisan and, yes, empathy should extend to the innocents in Gaza who suffer mostly because of the intentional cruelty of the Hamas leadership. 

Jon and Rachel demonstrated powerfully their own empathy by acknowledging that the agony they feel is not unique. It is shared of course by the families of the other hostages and it is experienced as well by millions of others in the region, Israeli and Palestinian alike, who are affected by the awful war initiated by the terror attacks of Oct. 7: the tens of thousands of Israelis who have had to evacuate their homes; Gazan families who desperately seek safety in the middle of a war zone; survivors of the Nova music festival who struggle with the horrific trauma they witnessed; soldiers who are asked to do hard things so that terrorists might be brought to justice, hostages might be rescued, and whole communities kept safe.

There is so much agony on every side. As Jon put it: “There is a surplus of agony on all sides of the tragic conflict in the Middle East. In a competition of pain there are no winners. In an inflamed Middle East we know the one thing that can most immediately release pressure and bring calm to the entire region: a deal that brings this diverse group of 109 hostages home and ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza.”

We need to bring Hersh and Omer home, now, along with Kfir and Ariel, Carmel and Liri—every last one of them including the dead so that we might bury them properly.

It’s been far, far too long. 

The masking tape on Jon and Rachel’s shirts made this clear, noting exactly how many days have passed since the hostages were taken: 320.

It’s been almost a year since these sons and daughters, mothers and fathers and grandparents were stolen from their lives and their families — almost a year of unimaginable agony.

Our broken hearts must remain open. We must hold on to our capacity for empathy.

Our broken hearts must remain open. We must hold on to our capacity for empathy. 

Last week’s Torah portion Eikev points the way.

“Cut away the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more. For the ETERNAL your God is God supreme and Sovereign supreme, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, providing food and clothing. You too must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:16-19)

Our Torah calls us to stop being hard-hearted, stubborn and stiff-necked, to see the pain of the orphan and the widow, the agony of the stranger, of the other.

Our Torah calls us to stop being hard-hearted, stubborn and stiff-necked, to see the pain of the orphan and the widow, the agony of the stranger, of the other. 

These verses remind us that empathy is divine, a Godly attribute that as God’s creations we can actually hope to attain.

We can do this. We are capable of seeing the agony of the other. We can cut away the “thickening of our hearts” and love even the stranger. 

And then, regardless of race or religion, political affiliation or ethnic background, we will someday experience justice, liberty and peace together.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.

Dear American Jewish Parents, 

Let’s face it: Worrying about our kids is just part of our collective DNA. It is an integral part of who we are. But this anxiety has reached new levels since Oct. 7. 

For centuries, blacksmiths would forge metal to make things that were stronger and more durable. The process is deliberate, uncomfortable, and very effective. People too, were put through their own “forging” process – through wars, famines and pandemics. Our children today are being forged by rampant Jew-hatred. 

The question facing every Jewish parent in America today is not “Where do we go so we can protect our children?” The question is: “How do we ensure that our kids can withstand their own forging?” This is our sobering reality.

As much as we stress over current events, this is still the best time to be a Jew. Raise your hand if you’d rather be a Jew in 1920. 1800s? 1500? 11th century? Exactly. Not only do we have a Jewish state and a Jewish army, but Diaspora Jews have full rights. We are completely integrated in the societies where we reside and have freedoms even our grandparents could not have dreamed about. 

But I digress — let’s get back to our anxiety-inducing reality. 

Recently, a Jewish mother expressed disbelief when her daughter’s school refused to take action after her instructor wore a keffiyeh while teaching – a “symbol of resistance” for the pro-Hamas mobs after Oct. 7. 

Her daughter had the courage to bring the matter to the attention of the administration. Instead of taking action against the teacher, they gave the Jewish student suggestions on how to “manage her feelings.” Imagine if a school gave suggestions to an African-American student on how to “manage their feelings” after seeing a teacher with a KKK tattoo. 

Rutgers University freshman orientation got interrupted last week by pro-jihadists, criminals who were yelling and distributing flyers. And this is not just happening in higher education. Children all across the U.S. educational system – even as early as preschool – are facing anti-Jewish rhetoric. Just as disturbing, Jewish individuals are being targeted as well as Jewish institutions. The proverbial excrement is hitting a very real fan, and no one is left untouched. 

With school starting in just a few weeks, it’s understandable that we’re all feeling anxious. 

However, my experience as a Jewish mother of a 10-year-old and 27-year-old and as a Jewish professional working with teenagers over the past decade has taught me that there is another side to this coin. By teaching kids individual empowerment – allowing teens to speak up and have a voice – and communal leadership – the understanding that we are working on training the leaders of our Jewish community – students are more likely to feel secure in who they are, where they belong and how to handle themselves. 

We need to stop putting a ridiculous expectation on our teenagers to “speak out and stand up for Israel” without first inspiring them to speak out and stand up for themselves. We must teach them how to expect and demand respect from authority figures – as Jews!

We are not asking for anything more, and we won’t accept anything less. Only when our children see themselves as Jews, as makers of Jewish history, as future matriarchs and patriarchs of their own Jewish families, only then will they understand the honor, the privilege and the blessing of the current times. 

This is our mission and yours. Just as metal is forged through a process of stress, pressure and heat to become something even stronger, Jewish teens are being put to the test every day. I believe that the pressure our kids are under has the potential to transform them into grown adults with vision, courage and confidence. Into leaders, who will create a hopeful and resilient future for us all.  

As part of my ongoing passion for Zionism and Israel, I speak to Jewish high school and college students who spend time learning and gaining the necessary skills to confront this reality, and it is with confidence and out of this direct experience that I tell you: They are not afraid. Quite the opposite. Looking at these kids, it’s clear that we are the strongest we’ve been in 2,000 years. How? Because they are confident in who they are, proud of their Jewish identity, secure in their place in the Jewish story, and strengthened by their connection to one another. 

A teen who was looking forward to his freshman year at an Ivy League school shared with the group, “We don’t find ourselves in that fight. We fight because we found ourselves.” 

And indeed, when encountering this fight, our children are no longer deers-in-headlights. They stand up and take action:

A high school student in New York recently identified numerous inaccuracies and anti-Israel bias in Princeton Review’s AP World History Prep book. She penned a letter to the organization, detailing and disproving every false claim: “Princeton Review should hold itself to the highest standards of accuracy. It is deeply concerning that millions of students have been exposed to this skewed material. I look forward to your response in ensuring these inaccuracies are corrected for the next edition.” (She has not yet received a response.) 

Another group of teens recently addressed a school-wide faculty meeting with 200 people to discuss the antisemitism they and other Jewish students have experienced for years, and especially since Oct. 7. Though they were about to graduate high school, they wanted to speak up for those students who remain voiceless and lay the groundwork for change, explaining that “we’re here to make sure we leave [this school] a safer and better environment for other Jewish students.”

Jewish kids who received strong, unapologetic, and nuanced Israel education and advocacy training continue to empower and engage on college campuses, like the remarkable students at UNC-Chapel Hill who stood united in protecting the U.S. flag from being removed by pro-Hamas protesters. 

Where do these Jewish students gather the strength to take such actions? It is a combination of their education, an empowered sense of identity, and one of the most important factors – which means the world to me as a mother, as I am sure to you – THEY ARE NOT ALONE. NEVER ALONE. 

These teens have shown that adversity gives them strength and the opportunity to build an identity. It provides them with the unique perspective that they are living through Jewish history, standing on the shoulders of giants who came before them. 

My fellow Jewish parents, I understand these are unprecedented times. But take a breath. Look at our history. Then look at your kids. Have they been prepared? Do they know who they are and what people they belong to? If you are not sure, here is your call to get busy. 

Make Israel and being Jewish a part of your everyday lives. Don’t assume that your Hebrew school, Jewish high school or Jewish summer camp can do it. Of course, all of the institutions are trying their very best. But you cannot outsource identity building to someone else. That one is on you. And once you know you’ve raised a strong Jew, then you will know with certainty that they will rise to this challenge and prevail, just as our ancestors have done for thousands of years.

When we give them the tools they need and the inspiration they crave, when we have their backs no matter what, they can become the most glorious generation we’ll see in our lifetime.

Our kids will be alright. No. Better than alright. When we give them the tools they need and the inspiration they crave, when we have their backs no matter what, they can become the most glorious generation we’ll see in our lifetime.

Masha Merkulova is the Chief Zionist Officer of Club Z, an unapologetically proud Jewish Zionist space for teens to connect to each other, Jewish history, and Zionism. 

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. 

It’s back-to-campus time and the vibes aren’t good. Since the Oct. 7 murderous Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s war in Gaza, there have been tens of thousands of lost lives, ongoing violence, famine and starvation of innocents, and the catastrophic threat of regional war with nuclear weapons.  Universities across North America have been the eye of the storm of hatred, intolerance and violence – and doing anything but fulfilling the mission of higher education: learning and fostering civil debate and intellectual growth. Even books, as I experienced last week in New York City, have been weaponized. My appearance with Joshua Leifer at a Brooklyn bookstore was canceled on the grounds that I am a Zionist.

Even books, as I experienced last week in New York City, have been weaponized. My appearance with Joshua Leifer at a Brooklyn bookstore was canceled on the grounds that I am a Zionist.  

Divisions have become so extreme that college classrooms – even where the course content has nothing to do with the Israel-Hamas war – are now staging areas for leveling the incessant drumbeat charge of racism, colonialism and genocide against Jews. With students, faculty and administrators returning to campus on the eve of the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, there is an opportunity for brave leadership to counter these destructive and hateful trends.

Campus Hillels, interfaith centers and mosques — spiritual homes for university communities seeking meaningful connection and the sustaining waters of learning and faith — need to step into this breach.  Rabbis, priests, pastors and imams must dig deep new wells of inspiration by honoring the shared religious and historical connections between Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Despite the personal pain and anguish of war, they must model resilience, dialogue and the possibility for peace.

But if past is prologue, then it’s worth looking back in order to chart a new path forward for this generation of students who are understandably dismayed, distraught and disillusioned by the seeming intractability of a daunting range of challenges:  global warming, income disparity, the persistence of the hatred of difference and, since Oct. 7, the as yet unresolved hundred years’ war between Israelis and Palestinians to live peacefully in a land that each people claims as their national homeland.  

It would be a mistake to think, as some have suggested, that the attention span of the iPhone generation will soon move on from the Israel-Hamas war, just as other mass movements of the past decade have arisen and flamed out: from globalization riots in Seattle and climate change marches across the globe to Black Lives Matter and women’s marches in cities across America.  We are not prisoners to an attention deficit, but to a deficiency of dialogue; and my own experience as a college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison comes to mind.

A generation ago, while my own campus was often the scene of protests over U.S. foreign policy, the Israel-Lebanon War, the First Intifada, the British war over the Falklands and much more, I found refuge not only in university classrooms, where learning was still valued and respected, but at my Hillel as well.

Each Sunday morning, without fail, the Hillel, run by then-director Dr. Irv Saposnik of blessed memory, was a center for students, faculty and community members to gather over bagels and The New York Times.  The open space, with morning light pouring in, was a sacred sanctuary for discussions led by professors and graduate students from across a vast expanse of disciplines. Here were impromptu seminars which held at the center the shared value for argument, respectful disagreement and learning.  “Canceling” someone was a completely foreign concept.  Even when tempers flared, Irv, who had a Ph.D. in English and was also a professor of Yiddish literature, was ready with a joke or a laugh, to lower the temperature. It’s what he modeled in his staff and students, training a generation of future leaders to do very much the same.  To this day, I remain proud to call myself his student.

Today’s campuses need a similar movement led by those willing to step into this toxic breach and model what an education should be. While university presidents and campus security apparatuses continue to necessarily and urgently address issues of safety and outside agitators on today’s campuses, we need interfaith leaders to create sanctuaries for dialogue and learning and asylums of enlightenment, so that students, faculty and administrators can gather in community settings founded on dialogue, listening, learning and peace.  

When the Roman Empire destroyed Jerusalem in 70 C.E., leading to the exile of the Jewish people from their homeland for two millennia until the rise of Zionism that created the modern state of Israel, the rabbis of the Talmud did not blame the Romans for their demise but rather themselves. They taught in the Talmud that the Second Temple was destroyed for wanton hatred.  Factionalization, demonization, othering, canceling – in whatever language it’s dressed – is hatred at the core.  And a society overcome by the saturation of a culture of hate is a culture that cannot withstand pressures from outside or within.

There is another story in the Talmud about the great sage Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai, who had to be smuggled out of Jerusalem by his students to escape Jewish assassins who wanted him dead for being willing to negotiate with the Roman authorities.  What did Yohanan want?  Houses of study away from the burning center; places of learning so that the eternal values of Judaism could survive the bloodshed of war; sanctuaries of argument and even disagreement – for the sake of heaven – so that word of God could be heard.

One path forward for our college campuses, in the midst of this dreadful war, is for an interfaith movement to transcend differences, building houses of study that value the aspirations of all those who seek truth, justice and peace. 

That word of God would give rise to both Christianity and Islam.  Therefore I say that one path forward for our college campuses, in the midst of this dreadful war, is for an interfaith movement to transcend differences, building houses of study that value the aspirations of all those who seek truth, justice and peace.

Rabbi Andy Bachman is founder of the Center for Midwest Jewish Communities and a Senior Consultant for the Jewish Community Legacy Project.