My daughter is a junior at Columbia University. Periodically, I’ve asked her whether she worried about antisemitism on campus. No, she says. And when I point to reports of protesters demonizing and harassing Jewish students, she holds her ground.
She has had arguments about Israel, but they have been thoughtful and fair exchanges. Accusations of a “hostile atmosphere” for Jews, she insists, have been wildly exaggerated. She’s a smart kid. But I know there is more to the story. I often remind her: You are not a boy with a kipah or a woman with a tichel. Remember that things might be tougher for classmates who wear their identity on their heads.
If you are finding it difficult to assess the scale of antisemitism on campus, welcome to the club.
It might help, though, to remember that campus protests have always been messy affairs. In the Vietnam era, students were accused of attacking veterans, villifying the United States and glorifying murderous communist regimes. Sometimes it was true. Most of the time, it wasn’t.
The majority of protesters kept their focus on a senseless and unwinnable conflict. Students were driven not by hatred of America, but fury at the indiscriminate bombing of civilians. They demanded accountability from their government and their universities, which they saw as intertwined with the “military industrial complex.” No doubt some students lost their moral compass, letting extremists grab the megaphones and call for Maoist revolution and other nonsense. But the movement was never reducible to its radical fringe.
There are many parallels today. Campuses have experienced a political awakening as well as an upsurge in antisemitism. The awakening is rooted again in anger and dismay at the relentless bombing of civilians. The antisemitism draws from hoary prejudices about “Jewish power and influence.” It can be hard to distinguish the two.
Many Jewish students are deeply invested in their Zionist identity so that criticism of Israel, particularly when it questions the idea of a Jewish state, feels like an existential threat. But anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and recognizing the distinction is essential to the health of political expression on campus and, possibly, to the survival of free speech in America.
Certainly, my students at Webster University would be shocked to hear that their rejection of a Jewish state somehow stamps them as antisemites. They believe in democracy and equality before the law.
Last year, they heard a lawyer from the Palestinian legal aid organization Adalah describe how Israeli Arab communities were systematically discriminated against in housing, land use and water policy. It is a situation that would be unimaginable under conditions of true legal equality.
At the same time, my students wondered how the obsession with preserving a Jewish majority in Israel can justify the disenfranchisement and confinement of 5 million Palestinians in territories that Israel has controlled for more than 50 years.
Why not create one republic, they reason, “from the river to the sea?” What could be more American, after all, than the idea of a secular democracy that privileges no ethnicity or culture above any other?
A fantasy, perhaps. Maybe a dangerous fantasy at that. But is this antisemitism?
I don’t know how many of the protesters at Columbia are as humane and well-intentioned as my Webster students and how many have embraced anti-Jewish hatred and violence. There is plenty of evidence of protesters glorifying the murderous attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, advocating for the expulsion of Jews from Israel and targeting Jewish students merely for asserting their identity.
There is no doubt that Columbia failed in its basic responsibility to protect the safety and well-being of its Jewish students. There should be no compromising with antisemitism.
But there should also be no compromising with the widening assault on free speech across America. Today, the Trump administration is using accusations of antisemitism to challenge long-held principles of academic freedom. Students are investigated for participating in the protests or just expressing their support. Noncitizens are arrested, detained and threatened with deportation.
Missouri, meanwhile, is debating a bill that requires public schools and universities to adopt a troublingly vague and exceedingly broad definition of antisemitism. The law effectively mandates the punishment of students for statements that are anti-Zionist or depict Israel as a “racist state.” If this sounds reasonable, consider the implications. Even a Jewish student who loves her community and is proud of her identity could be punished for antisemitism because she calls out examples of “systemic racism” by the Israeli government. Such a law at such a time will inevitably add to the repressive climate for free speech and debate.
The support of Jewish organizations for the Missouri law is disheartening to say the least. American Jews have traditionally understood that our biggest safeguard against antisemitism is our country’s commitment to liberal values. Only where there is a robust “marketplace of ideas” are we guaranteed the opportunity to expose antisemitic lies and challenge specious arguments. Only where the rule of law is supported unqualifiedly can we be confident that antisemitic persecution and violence will be punished.
We do ourselves no favors by joining forces with the enemies of civil liberties in return for vague promises of “combating antisemitism.”
The fact is that our best educational institutions are sometimes engines of chaos. Good chaos, bad chaos, we should demand better of them, and always while respecting their mission as bastions of free speech.
