Intolerant bigots have seized control of our universities Jewish students are under attack. It’s time for donors to demand action Charles Lipson
The surge of open hatred of Jews on college campuses is unprecedented in modern American life. We saw it outside universities in the 1930s, when it was openly preached by Detroit’s Father Coughlin and published by Henry Ford. We saw it from the KKK during the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. The Klan targeted Jews, as a marginal group, as allies of black equality, and as vehicles to build solidarity in their target audience: poor, angry, Christian whites.
At universities we saw a different kind of prejudice. That bigotry was exemplified by quiet restrictions on Jewish students and faculty, referred to as “Gentleman’s Agreements”. Those agreements excluded Jews from fraternities and sororities at most schools. Harvard began the practise and stated their goal openly, while others followed in secret. This practice changed only when it was prohibited by civil rights laws.
These practices were obviously prejudiced, but they were a far cry from the open hatred, intimidation, and speech suppression we now see on campus. Some of that is an old mask stripped away, some is an increase in underlying hatred, and some is a collapse of any restraints on its public expression. The old mask was emblazoned with the coda, “We don’t hate Jews. We don’t hate Israel. We just oppose Israeli policies and support Palestinian rights.”
Well, if recent demonstrations are any guide, it turns out they do hate Israel. They want to see it wiped off the map. That’s the meaning of their constant chant, “From the river to the sea.” A Palestinian state that occupies all that territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean would extinguish Israel. That’s their “final solution” for the Jewish state.
Chilling as that goal is, the activists don’t stop there. They extend their hatred to all Jews, and they say so openly in campus meetings and demonstrations. That is led by extremist Muslims, who are part of the dominant coalition on campus. But it is embraced by their political allies. More on that coalition in a moment.
Decent Americans know something has gone badly wrong at our universities. This wider public recognises, quite accurately, that the attacks on Jews are only the latest, most visible examples of a more pervasive problem: the rise of intolerant, illiberal ideology on the far-Left. That has always been a problem on the far-Right, but they were never major players on campus or in elite media. The Left is.
Watching these latest instances of anti-Semitic words and violent demonstrations, average Americans want to know why it is happening and what can be done to reverse the damage. Parents and alumni have still more questions. Families want to know where their children should go to college, where they will be encouraged to grow and learn, not bullied for their views or their faith. Those questions aren’t limited to Jewish families. Most parents want their children to live and learn in a safe, tolerant atmosphere. They are deeply worried, and they are right.
Their anxiety is shared by many alumni. Until now, wealthy donors have been content to turn over millions, see their names on a building or professorship, and attend cocktail parties with the university president after football games. No more. Many are saying our leading universities are not worthy of their support. They want to oust the leaders who encouraged this decline, stood silent as it grew worse, and then were surprised – and speechless – when it broke out into the open.
It won’t be easy to enact change – university leadership is self-perpetuating and campus bureaucracy is deeply entrenched. At Yale, for example, when alumni wanted a few dissonant voices on the board, the existing members changed the rules so that only they could nominate new members.
These disturbing events on campus are the bitter fruits of trends that have been developing for years. A few concerned faculty tried, in vain, to halt this ideological frenzy and moral collapse before it sank their institutions. They failed. The number of bureaucrats employed has ballooned and now approaches the number of students on campus. Over these students, they exert enormous control.
Students themselves have contributed mightily to this illiberal, intolerant atmosphere. That culture now begins in elite high schools and has seeped down to middle schools. Surveys now show that only about half of college students support free speech. Many tell survey researchers it is perfectly fine to shout down opposing views. A non-trivial minority think it is okay to use violence against people with different views. They never answer the hard question, “who decides?”
It is hardly surprising that Jews are the targets. That has been true historically when illiberal ideologies gain political clout and look for scapegoats. That is exactly what is happening on American campuses today. It began with hatred of Israel, damning them as “settler colonisers” rather than a people associated with that land for three millennia. It quickly metastasised to vilify anyone who supported the Jewish state and then to Jews in general.
This movement is shaped by the dominant ideology, which divides the world into oppressors and victims. The oppressors are “privileged whites,” whose only hope of redemption is to accept their guilt and support the “oppressed” and “colonised” victims. The result, which dominates campus politics, is an angry, oppositional ideology grounded in identity politics.
It is easy to speculate how this fragile and at times nonsensical coalition might break upon contact with reality. True, you occasionally see students marching with signs like “Queer = Free Palestine.” That idea, to put it mildly, is not endorsed on the ground in Palestine or any majority-Muslim state. It shouldn’t take more than a moment’s reflection to realise that those activists would return home in boxes if they marched with that sign through Gaza. But it’s far easier to signal virtue by proclaiming their alliance with the “oppressed” and assuming it is reciprocated.
This dominant ideology and the coalition that supports it have undermined what should be the most basic values at our universities: free and open inquiry and a safe environment to express them. Those are essential for real learning, the creation of new knowledge, and human flourishing. The result is worse than a gloomy environment on campus. It is a hostile one for conservative students, pro-Israel students, Evangelicals, and others who dare to depart from the approved line.
None of this will get better on its own. It will require a concerted movement of parents, alumni, and donors. They must demand systemic changes to restore sanity, safety, and free expression on campus. It won’t be easy: but action is long overdue.
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