Tackling Antisemitism in Higher Education Requires Boldness, Not Moderation
We can’t stop the disturbing rise of virulent antisemitism on college campuses with incremental, watered-down half measures.
The Trump administration’s decision to halt federal funding for Brown University is the latest strong action, following previous cuts and threats to other Ivy League institutions, aimed at holding schools accountable for antisemitism.
Such boldness is necessary – and it works.
We know that, because last month, the administration withdrew $400 million in federal funding from Columbia, offering to restore it only if the university agreed to take steps to protect its Jewish students.
And it did.
Columbia agreed to deploy safety officers with the power to remove people from campus or arrest them. Wearing masks at protests will no longer be allowed, and protesters must present identification if asked. The university also said that it would implement anti-discrimination policies, which include the ability to punish groups deemed to be discriminatory. None of this is rocket science, it’s common sense.
Columbia appointed a new official to ensure that the Middle East is taught in a balanced fashion. The university will be guided by a definition of antisemitism that includes the celebration of violence against Jews and Israelis (a staple of the pro-Hamas demonstrations on campus) as well as the use of double standards against Israel (standard fare for anti-Zionists, who do not seek to criticize a government’s policies but to demonize an entire country).
While this definition of antisemitism is a good start, truly solving a problem requires a uniform definition. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism is that definition.
These steps are to be welcomed as the bare minimum of what we should expect from our institutions of higher learning. They should have been pursued the day these outrageous hate festivals began to crop up on campus.
Universities have been largely content to see masked brigades of hateful students and outsiders vandalizing property, taking over buildings, assaulting counter-protestors and school employees alike, and creating a hostile environment for Jewish students. Federal hearings, civil rights investigations, and impassioned calls for accountability clearly haven’t worked.
But some have criticized the Trump administration’s stronger approach as being too far-reaching.
Democratic Representative Laura Friedman (CA-30) argued that the threat to revoke federal funding is “not going to make antisemitism any better on campuses. In fact, it’s going to make Jews responsible for the defunding of programs to deal with cancer research, with science, [which] has nothing to do with antisemitism.”
Instead, she proposes incorporating education about antisemitism into diversity, equity, and inclusion programs – programs whose ideology itself purveys antisemitic vitriol, asserting as it does that Jews are privileged oppressors who support the genocide of Palestinians.
Such “lowest common denominator” action only kicks the can down the road, giving the appearance of doing something while not actually addressing the problem.
We cannot afford such an approach.
Antisemitism is a real-time issue with serious consequences. At Columbia, where the problem is at its most acute in the United States, it has reached the point where Jewish students are deciding not to enroll out of concern for their safety.
Far from overreach, the administration’s approach is long overdue.
The lack of urgency on the part of Columbia and other universities and colleges allowed antisemitism to metastasize for years. It empowered masked hordes screaming antisemitic slogans (“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and “Globalize the intifada”) to believe that they had the upper hand and that they could do as they pleased. Jewish students were made to feel uncomfortable and unwanted, and too many universities were content to make anodyne statements about the problem while sitting on their hands.
The fact is that every institution of higher education should start by implementing the policies that Columbia has now established.
There needs to be bright lines against incitement to violence and support for terrorism, which is par for the course for groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), paired with robust enforcement mechanisms. There must be concrete steps to report and monitor antisemitism on campuses, and to ensure that its perpetrators are fully held to account by university policy or, if required, law enforcement.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement recently launched the F.A.C.E. Action Plan, a blueprint that outlines specific steps for university administrations to take to ensure the protection of their students.
No one who sees what is happening should remain silent. This scourge of Jew-hatred cannot be addressed by more weak words and slaps on the wrist. The Trump administration’s unambiguous and forceful action is precisely what we need to cut through the recalcitrance of higher education institutions and guarantee the safety of students.
