September 9, 2025

As an economist who made a career out of analyzing data, I am always on the lookout for an interesting study.  And I just found one, summarized in “Performative Virtue-Signaling Has Become a Threat to Higher Ed,” published on August 12 in The Hill. 

Over the past three years, researchers conducted almost 1,500 interviews with undergraduates enrolled at two highly selective schools, Northwestern University and the University of Michigan. Their aim was to examine dissonance between how students feel about current issues, and what they say publicly.

The findings are unlikely to shock anyone familiar with higher education today.  Seventy-eight percent said that they self-censor with regard to their beliefs around gender identity; 72% with regard to politics; 68% with regard to family values. And, most disturbingly to this veteran teacher, 80% said that they misrepresented their views in an effort to better align with those of their professor. As you might expect, the students weren’t trying to ingratiate themselves with the faculty by posing as conservatives!

The primary takeaway from the study was that 88% of undergraduates pretended to hold more progressive views than they actually do. They did this in order to succeed socially and academically. The authors praised the students for being adaptive, but lamented that rather than develop a true sense of themselves, they conform, learning to “rehearse what is safe,” with potential long-term negative consequences for their personal growth.

And imagine how challenging it is for Jewish students, when a litmus test for fitting in is how vocally you denounce Israel.

According to the authors, “Authenticity, once considered a psychological good, has become a social liability.” We are creating “a generation confident in self-righteousness, but uncertain in self.”

I suspect that what the authors refer to as an “instinct for academic and professional self-preservation” is prevalent well beyond America’s campuses.  

How many times have you self-censored in a social or work setting? When you are with pro-Trump friends and colleagues, do you speak somewhat differently than when you are with those who are proud to label themselves “progressives”? I bet most of us do.

Sociologists and psychologists inform us that friendships are in historically short supply.  And with all the economic uncertainty, why risk alienating business associates or clients? Perhaps that is why we temper what we say and do.  Or maybe during an age of extreme polarization, we recognize that there isn’t much chance of convincing anybody to reexamine his or her views, so we don’t even bother trying.

Being “diplomatic” is thought to be a positive, but if you expend so much time and effort accommodating others, there may come a point when you lose sight of what you actually believe.  “Who am I, really?” you may ask.

The Torah shows us that it isn’t always easy to determine a person’s motivation in shading the truth. In Deuteronomy 1:22, Moses praises the people for coming up with the idea to send out scouts to explore the promised land.  However, an earlier passage, Numbers 13:1, makes it very clear that it was G-d – not the Israelites – who told Moses to send emissaries into Canaan. Was Moses trying to make his audience feel good about themselves? Was he telling a relatively harmless falsehood in order to curry favor?  Perhaps Moses, like the undergraduates in the study, was so eager to ingratiate himself that he became “uncertain in self.”

As millions of students embark on their higher education journeys, I implore them not to allow the understandable desire to be accepted to hinder their personal development. Of course, they should be careful to avoid being cancelled – nobody wants that.  But they should also be careful that in their effort to conform to the prevailing campus culture, they don’t lose who they are.  

The authors conclude that higher education “must give back to students what it has taken from them: the right to believe, and the space to become.”

Don’t all of us deserve as much?

And let’s not forget that while business associates may come and go, true friends are there for you regardless of whether or not your views always align with theirs. And if they reject you due to your beliefs, ask yourself, were they friends in the first place? ■

 Morton Schapiro served for more than 22 years as President of Northwestern University and Williams College.  He taught almost 7,000 undergraduates over his more than 40 years as an economics professor.

Recently, a rare occurrence took place at the Laugh Factory Comedy Club in Reno, Nevada.  I was booked alongside Avi Liberman and Howard Nave — a three-man lineup of funny Jews. In the late 1960s and ’70s, this was anything but rare. Time Magazine once estimated that 80% of stand-up comics back then were Jewish. Today, that number is down to maybe 30–40% — but still well above the 2–3% of Jews in the general U.S. population.

One significant difference I’ve noticed, though, is that Jewish comics of that earlier era often discussed being Jewish on stage. Today, that’s a rarity. Most of the old guard were secular, but they still seemed to know more about being Jewish than many of today’s comics. 

Today, comedians born in the U.S. — or who come from India, Russia or Muslim countries — often discuss their cultural backgrounds and what it’s like living in America. Black comics, Asian comics and LGBTQ+ comics share their experiences openly. But unless the comics are from Israel and have an accent, most Jewish American comics stay quiet about being Jewish.

If the silence is about fitting in, we don’t need to go back far to see where fitting in got us. Europe didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat when we attempted to fit in. And look what’s happening today at colleges like Columbia and Harvard — schools where many Jews try to blend in, only to find out they never really will.

So off I went to Reno for six shows with Howard and Avi. The day before Avi arrived, he had already prepared his chicken for Shabbos. After I got there, we walked to a nearby supermarket to pick up a few remaining supplies. That’s when Avi asked if I wanted to walk to Chabad on Shabbat morning. “We can have lunch with the rabbi and his family,” he said.

“How far is it?” I asked.

“About an hour each way.”

Now, it was in the mid-90s in Reno, and most of the walk would be in direct sunlight. I declined faster than if he’d asked to borrow 10 grand until he got his memory back. I had no interest in ending up like one of those desert carcasses with the bones picked clean. I said, “Since God is everywhere, I’ll see him in the casino.”

I asked if he was at least going to carry water. “Can’t,” he said. “There’s no eruv.”

That night, I asked how the walk went.

He said one word: “Brutal.”

Later that night, thanks to Avi, I found that even a comedy club can become a holy place. On Saturday night, after Shabbos, Avi asked if I wanted to do Havdalah at the club. I said yes. We invited Howard, and he agreed, too.

While Avi went to retrieve his Havdalah kit, I was approached by an elderly woman using a walker. (No, I didn’t ask her out — I’m married.) She came over to say how much she’d enjoyed the show. Her speech was a little slurred, like someone who might’ve had a stroke. Then I noticed she was wearing a kippah.

“What’s with the kippah?” I asked.

“I always wear it,” she said. “I wear it everywhere I go.”

She was a proud Jew.

Then I heard a voice — God’s, I’m pretty sure — telling me to invite her to the front of the stage for Havdalah. The moment I suggested it she— excuse the expression — lit up like a Christmas tree. She called over her non-Jewish caretaker and another man who was Jewish. When she told him about Havdalah, he lit up too.

Standing at the front of the stage, we handed her the candle to hold. When Avi took out a little bottle of grape juice and began pouring, the man asked, “Is that just grape juice? I don’t drink.”

“You sober?” I asked.

“Yeah, 26 years.”

“Forty for me,” I told him.

After Havdalah, the woman said how meaningful it was to her, and the man agreed. “This made the trip extra special,” they said. We all hugged goodbye. I later wondered if, when they went back to gamble, God had a little extra mercy on them. 

Mark Schiff is a comedian, actor and writer, and hosts, along with Danny Lobell, the “We Think It’s Funny” podcast. His new book is “Why Not? Lessons on Comedy, Courage and Chutzpah.”

It’s been said that the worst number of political parties to have in a country is one. But the second worst number of parties to have is two. As we see every day, the unnatural binary nature of a two-party system forces false choices, extremism, tribalism and a growing necessity for both parties to kowtow to their most ideologically extreme members. The result is increased polarization, continued gridlock and a growing populist anger and resentment from voters toward the entire political system.

But while the Democrats and Republicans are not very effective at most things, they have demonstrated an immense talent for protecting their mutually beneficial duopoly. Their primary elections and conventions are held at taxpayer expense, reforms such as open primaries and ranked choice voting that would increase voters’ options are strongly discouraged, and the legal and financial barriers to a new party are stultifying. In spite of these obstacles, support for new political options continues to grow, especially among the youngest generation of voters.

It would be understandable if Jewish Americans were to decide to lead the battle for new political options, especially given the way we are being treated by the two major parties. The situation has gravely deteriorated over the 23 months since the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, but the increasing animosity toward Israel and Jews has been swelling among the most ardent loyalists in both parties’ bases for years.

Gaza has unquestionably made a bad situation far worse. The recent Democratic National Committee annual meetings were the scene of nasty internal warfare over a resolution that called for a suspension of all military aid to Israel and the immediate recognition of a Palestinian state. Efforts by party leaders to make the resolution less harsh by limiting the arms prohibition to only offensive weapons, calling for a release of the remaining Israeli hostages, and emphasizing the need for a two-state solution that specifically mentioned Israel were unsuccessful.

The symbolic measure was defeated and beleaguered party leaders scrambled to pass a more subdued alternative, which combined the call for the hostages’ release and a two-state solution with an immediate ceasefire and increased humanitarian aid for Gaza. But after that compromise was passed, angry opponents confronted DNC chair Ken Martin, who then actually withdrew his own resolution and instead promised to appoint a task force to study the issue further.

The result was an unavoidable reminder of how the historical political home of most Jewish voters was turning away from them. The question is no longer whether younger progressives will ultimately steer the party even further from its longtime support of Israel, but rather how much longer the dwindling cohort of older Democrats can forestall the inevitable.

But if one were to think that the Republican Party was positioned to take advantage of this opportunity to attract large numbers of American Jews into their tent, one would be gravely mistaken. While Democrats were tearing each other into pieces over Gaza last month, Republicans continue to display a peculiar ambivalence toward Jewish voters that prevents their ostensible  Zionism from having more of an impact. 

Last week, the Republican-controlled House Appropriations Committee proposed cutting off funding for colleges and universities that fail to address campus antisemitism and requiring schools to specifically implement anti-discrimination policies regarding antisemitism as a precondition of federal funding. But the federal budget they passed earlier this year cut hundreds of millions of dollars for security grants for nonprofit organizations, money which synagogues, schools and Jewish community centers heavily rely on to protect their members from antisemitic violence. This fuels the suspicion of many Jewish leaders that the Trump administration’s crackdown against antisemitism on college campuses is actually cover for unrelated efforts to force universities to make unrelated changes in student admissions and faculty hiring.

One party is compromising Israel’s safety and security. The other is putting American Jews at risk. The Jewish community has a decision to make: do we continue to put habitual partisan allegiance over our safety and welfare? Or do we begin to explore other alternatives altogether?

Dan Schnur is the U.S. Politics Editor for the Jewish Journal. He teaches courses in politics, communications, and leadership at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine. He hosts the monthly webinar “The Dan Schnur Political Report” for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Follow Dan’s work at www.danschnurpolitics.com.

There’s a story I remember reading as a kid. In it, a boy is given a silver ball with a magic thread inside. Whenever he pulls on the thread, time leaps forward. A little pull and suddenly the bell rings and math class is over. Waiting in line? Pull the thread and your wait is over. Monday blues? A slightly more forceful tug will whisk you to the start of the next weekend. Want winter to end and spring to arrive? Pull the thread. 

By the end of the story, the boy is an old man. He’s raced through his childhood, adolescence and adulthood in what felt to him like a matter of weeks. Somewhere, hidden in all those unpleasant and tedious moments, was life itself.

Much of the allure of smartphones is that they give us the power of the magic thread. Life is filled with tedious moments: waiting for the bus, washing dishes, walking to the store, waiting for your dinner companion to come back from the restroom. Turning to our phones allows us to opt out of experiencing these moments by hitting our brains with a wave of endlessly novel and momentarily captivating images and sounds. 

It feels harmless enough. I’m not talking about ignoring your kids on a rare vacation or scrolling through dinner with friends. Those are life’s best moments, and it’s obvious why trading them for a dopamine hit is a bad bargain.

But what about the forgettable moments — the ones that barely register. What do we miss if we scroll instead of staring out a bus window? What do we gain by thinking while we do the dishes instead of listening to another podcaster drone on? Are our thoughts really that profound?

Most often, they aren’t. But that’s not the point. The point is that, like the little boy from the story, we will eventually discover that checking out of life’s tedious moments means checking out of life itself. 

Research shows that people who have regular small interactions with strangers — chatting with the store clerk, holding a door — are happier than those who don’t. We think our happiness comes only from our closest relationships, but these brief connections with strangers make us feel seen.

Maybe our ultimate satisfaction depends just as much on the moments we dismiss as pointless and dull — the ones that most tempt us to pull the thread.

This, increasingly, is my suspicion. As a hopeless phone addict, who regularly scrolls through these moments, I feel that something vital is being lost — that my life is less rich than it could be — than it used to be. 

I also sense that there is a dangerous feedback loop at work. The more I scroll through dull moments, the less tolerance I have for boredom, and the more moments seem intolerably dull. The more you pull the thread, the more you want to pull it and the faster you pull. 

For years now, I have been wondering what I can do to escape this cycle. Mostly, I have tried to pursue a policy of moderation. This policy has largely failed. 

Back when I smoked cigarettes, I had a fantasy that if I could only manage to become a light smoker, I would never have to quit. This fantasy kept me trapped in addiction far longer than I needed to be. I only became free when I realized that moderation with an inherently addictive substance is impossible. 

This realization is slowly dawning on me again in regards to smartphones. A technology that is designed to keep us hooked is not one that most people will succeed in using moderately. But with smartphones, the situation is perhaps worse. In the course of about two decades, we have remade our world into a place where it is nearly impossible to function without this technology. 

Smartphones once promised us convenience if we used them. They now threaten isolation and irrelevance if we desist from them. I don’t have a tidy solution. But I am not giving up. I don’t want to be that boy with the silver ball, tugging at the thread until nothing is left. I’ve already let too much of this one irreplaceable life slip through my fingers. We all have.

In the coming weeks, I’ll devote these columns to trying to break free — while still living in a world where smartphones are nearly compulsory. I’ll share what works, what doesn’t, and whatever small moments I manage to reclaim, in the hope others might reclaim them too.

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.