Normally, after a podcast, we share a summary, highlights, and shownotes. The highlights and shownotes are below. Please take some time to listen or read through our interview with Adam Lehman, the director of Hillel International. It may not surprise you, but as we have said so many times, we must not look away. We must bear witness to the Jew-hatred that is becoming almost mainstream in America. See the flyer above, from Students for Justice in Palestine. They demand a boycott of Hillel International, a purely Jewish organization. That’s who they are. Believe them when they tell you that Jews are the enemy.
But today, with your indulgence, I’d like to say a few words about Holocaust Remembrance Day — Yom HaShoah —which falls Sunday-Monday, May 5-6. Last week, I wrote that too many are forgetting why we are here, why we are having these conversations in 2023 and 2024; October 7, 2023 is fading into memory, forgotten by too many in the frenzy of antisemitism. Imagine now to yourself how distant the memory of the Holocaust is. 79 years have passed since the end of World War II. 91 years have passed since Hitler came to power in Germany. Few are alive who remember those days, and their voices are fading fast.
Still, we are here. We are their spokesmen. We are the continuity of memory for every one who was lost, if we keep faith. But, you see, it’s so easy to let the memories slip away, to think to yourself that it’s more important to fight today’s political battles, to move on. Don’t think to yourself, ah well, she’s speaking to the Jews. Far from it. I am speaking to the good people, the righteous among us. There were all too few during the Holocaust, but we promised to ourselves that we would never forget. Now is the moment we are being tested. Are you the person you promised to be? That your parents and grandparents promised to be with the revelations of the true nature of the Holocaust?
What would the 16 million Jews who lived in 1933 have given to have had true allies 90 years ago? Don’t get me wrong, there were many; just not enough, and never with enough power. So now we need to recognize that we must face the enemies of the Jews, the enemies of decency, with power and with determination. Because this isn’t about Israel, or Jews, or friends of the Jews. This is about a hatred that has existed and flourished for millennia.
We have many tools at our hands: Education, the bully pulpit, rules and regulations. But they won’t be enough. We need enemies of Jews to fear the consequences of their hatred; and it is only new laws, the enforcement of existing laws, and good governance that will do that. It’s time to ensure there are people in power who can help teach, help bridge divides, and absent that, help punish those who seek to reanimate the spirit of Hitler’s Germany. Hitler never believed he would be given the latitude by the world to realize his final solution.
Don’t dismiss what is happening across America and in the heart of our Congress as an epiphenomenon related only to the war in Gaza. Far from it. Rather, Gaza has revealed what really lives under the facade. Jew haters are all among us, and like the Nazis before them, they must be revealed, and rooted out. Never again must mean something. It’s our turn to ensure it does.
HIGHLIGHTS
What is it like to be a Jewish student on campus right now?
AL: It is, for the most part, horrifying to be a Jewish student on campus right now. If we had talked even a month ago, I would've told you that we were seeing — as we were —unprecedented levels of anti-Semitism impacting Jewish students. Even at that point, we had more than a thousand specific reported instances of harassment, of intimidation, of assault, 50 assaults even a month ago. So it was rough, but I would've also told you that many Jewish students, fortunately, were finding that there was still space on campus for them to express their identities, and many students were kind of getting through the year okay.
At this moment, I was just at Columbia last week. Every single Jewish student I talk to is miserable and understandably so. They have been even further attacked in so many instances in connection with these encampments. And they're now paying the price for students who are completely out of control, non-students, because we're seeing classes canceled. We're seeing, at least in the case of USC, a full graduation canceled. So this is impacting Jewish students, it's impacting students from other backgrounds, and it's really an embarrassment and an outrage.
Why are Jewish students living in fear?
AL: I've been on the news, as you would expect quite a bit recently, and often get the comment, “we understand that Jewish students may feel fearful in this moment”, and it almost implies, well, they're just a little oversensitive or a little irrational. In talking to the Columbia students, again, from all different political perspectives, by the way, all different levels of religiosity, they are fearful because they have seen their fellow students who are visibly Jewish getting pushed. They have seen them being battered with a stick as we saw at the very beginning on 10/8 at Columbia. They have seen online, the student at Yale being stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flagpole. They have heard words that are really kind of bone-chilling.
You may have seen the sign, Al Qassam or Hamas' Next Targets pointing at Jewish counter protesters or the video that's now been widely released of one of the protest leaders at Columbia saying, "Zionists don't deserve to live." So the fear is real and the fear is understandable. As Jewish students, as you said, visibly Jewish or not, are encountering all of this hate, all of this vitriol, all of this intimidation and all this invalidation. That's something I think people are also not always appreciating in an age where, in particular on university campuses, we do so much to celebrate people's right to express their identity. Jewish students whose identities include an affinity for Israel, who shockingly, we just went through Passover, where in a Passover Seder, you're referencing the role of Israel in Jewish theology, Jewish history, Jewish community that dates back thousands of years.
So of course, many Jewish students see Israel as a part of their core Jewish identity. They are literally being silenced left and right from being able to express that identity fully. And it feels like often Jewish students are the only minority group that is pushed into that second-class status.
Are protesters holding Jewish students to a double standard?
AL: There is this enormous double standard where on the one hand, Jewish students are being held responsible and accountable for the actions of foreign state and government for which or over which they hold no control. And number two, that now for decades... I mean, obviously it's as intense as it's ever been, but for decades, there's been this obsession with Israel as the source effectively of all evil in the world, which just fits back into classic antisemitic tropes.
What if a Jew on campus is critical of Israel, are they still harassed?
AL: Of course, if you're a Jewish student, regardless of your views of the current government in Israel, regardless of how you might think about prosecuting a war in Gaza, following the obscene atrocities of 10/7, you are walking down the street or walking into a Hillel for Shabbat dinner and called a baby killer. And so where it comes from, I would say, is a few spaces. Number one, as we define classic antisemitism, it is identifying what is evil in the world as emanating from Jews and therefore focusing the correction on eliminating what is Jewish. And we've seen this play out over thousands of years. But in this context, what is the most visibly Jewish thing in the world today, the state of Israel.
And so therefore, you channel that antisemitism into the elimination of the state of Israel. And of course, we know it plays in perfectly with more meta intellectual or really anti-intellectual themes around oppression and so much else that is taught on campus. But I almost think it overstates the role, for lack of a better word, woke ideology to give all the credit there. I think there's a much deeper strain of antisemitism that has just been activated in that way. And if I can, I'll use one other description of this to actually credit to Sarah Hurwitz, a former Obama speechwriter who's really had an awakening during this period in terms of recognizing the way that anti-Semitism is plaguing not only campus, but for other parts of our society.
And as she rightly points out, the framework for often executing anti-Semitism is discerning between the good Jews and the bad Jews. So if it was Spanish Inquisition, you could be saved and cured by giving up your Jewishness. If it was mid-twentieth century America, you could move from being like a dirty, disgusting Jew by getting rid of your visible signs of Jewishness and assimilating. Today, the price of being a good Jew is hating Israel and admitting that Israel is in fact the source of evil in the world. So that's what students are up against.
Does Title VI permit universities to allow these discriminatory and hostile environments?
AL: Title VI does not permit universities to allow these hostile and discriminatory environments where there is unequal treatment of Jewish students. And so really, since 10/7, we have been aggressively advocating with the Department of Education and also working in partnership with other organizations to bring Title VI actions against universities. So even if we can't break the group think that allows for these obscene double standards and actual discrimination and harassment, we can at least hold universities accountable to do something about it. So that's one of the ways that this, again, getting to the deeper hearts and minds issue, I think is going to be even harder.
Are protesters only calling on Israel to stop fighting and not Hamas? And how are these protests coming together, who is organizing them?
AL: Is there not a really sad paradox in the fact that so many of these protestors are nominally calling for a ceasefire, by the way, as if it is only on Israel to execute and determine that ceasefire. And the mere fact of what they are doing is actually preventing and delaying a ceasefire because we're seeing Iran and Hamas say, "You guys are doing awesome on campus, keeping us from agreeing to what is already an overly generous ceasefire when it comes to the number of prisoners who would be let out of Israeli prisons," just so the poor souls who were abducted on October 7th can return to their country and their families, those at least who weren't slaughtered and otherwise killed in Gaza. So that, to me, is a story that, again, it's crazy to me no one points out the paradox and sickness of that.
Back to how this happened. You often hear from people who say, "Oh wow, look at these spontaneous demonstrations." Spontaneous, BS. There is what I call an anti-Israel industrial complex for this, remember the old Dwight Eisenhower use of that frame, that has been established and locked in for three decades. And that is why, and it's been centered around this group Students for Justice in Palestine, but that is why they are able to give a command and control implementation in this kind of example. And this is the good part, you can simply go to the National Students for Justice in Palestine social media and see them calling plays. "Okay, everybody, here's what we're going to do." It's what they did October 7th, I mean, eerily releasing their guidance within hours of the Hamas terrorist attacks and atrocities with their playbook for undermining Israel and Jews on campus at that point.
And we've seen it again with the encampments. One of the frustrating aspects of this is... Hillel is about supporting Jewish students through positive experiences with Jewish ritual, with community building, with community service, and all that. So we're not experts on tracking the flow of terrorist funding. We do know that Students for Justice in Palestine is tied to a group, AMP, which is tied to another holding company, which is pulling in funding, which appears to be coming from the same sources that are funding Hamas and Hezbollah. But again, Hillel that's above our pay grade. What is not above our pay grade is being able to understand just how well-funded, well-orchestrated, and unfortunately how effective these coordinated attempts and protests have been.
Material support for terrorism and operating at the direction of a foreign government in the United States are both against federal law. Are you working with law enforcement on this?
AL: We have raised these concerns at more administrative or regulatory levels. We have not seen any particular follow up. What we do know is, and this is part of the story, too, that I think is important to tell, there are universities that are actually well-run and taking the issue seriously and executing effectively. So for example Vanderbilt's definitely a wonderful best practice example of running a serious university, maintaining safety and positive conditions for students, and also with that disciplining students and organizations that cross lines in ways that create safety issues and other risks for students.
I was thinking in this example, too, of University of Florida, of Brandeis, of other schools that actually did kick off campus groups, like Students for Justice in Palestine, in part based on the rationale that they appear to be materially supporting terrorist organizations. Unfortunately, those kinds of examples are more the exception than the rule, particularly on that part of this equation. But I can hope that over time, as it becomes more and more apparent how coordinated all of this activity is, that we will see either real federal action prohibiting or making illegal activities being pursued by groups, like SJP, and coordination or better public recognition of this.
What’s going on with members of Congress, like Ilhan Omar, supporting these antisemitic protests?
AL: I was so both offended but also just demoralizing a US congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, talk about, under the guise of addressing antisemitism, talk about having both anti-genocide Jews and pro-genocide Jews. Going back to what I commented on earlier, that is just 100% straight ahead blood libel. Oh, right, there are these Jewish kids roaming around this campus who are those blood sucking, bloodthirsty, let's go kill innocent people Jews. Really? And by the way, not that students shouldn't be able to have very diverse and radically different political views, but when I talk to Jewish students and I do every day in this capacity, there's enormous empathy for Palestinians. We're not talking about an anti-Palestinian group. Has anyone ever seen a group of Jewish students get together and start chanting about, "Kill the Palestinians! No Palestinians allowed here! No, support Israel!"
Does the public seriously belive Jewish and pro-Israel students are “pro-genocide?”
AL: How do people not get the fact that the treatments here are so disparate? It is part of also beyond just the recognition is something we need to make sure at a wider understanding level, that we create space for, which is Jewish students, Americans for sure, you can be empathetic to Palestinians. It is really hard to see the impact of war in Gaza, just like the impact of war in so many other countries where civilians tragically are impacted. That does not then dictate what we hear from so many of these protesters, which is, "And therefore we should eliminate, often, violently the entire state of Israel," or, "We should discriminate against millions of Jews, both in Israel and elsewhere." Again, that the leap there is not only logically unnecessary, it's obviously morally bankrupt.
How can non-Jewish students show allyship right now?
AL: We're trying to figure out how to better equip Jewish students and their families, but I think we should also be looking at, for so many other students and families, how can they show allyship in a way that, when predictably a group of people are going to try to disrupt, try to take over graduations and turn them into political fodder in support of Hamas, and some of these other groups and causes. How can they respond? So that's part of what we are working on right now.
What can the federal and local governments do better to support Jewish students?
AL: For starters, the federal government, state government, they actually need to do their job when it comes to enforcement of Title VI and other civil rights protections. There have been violations left, right, and center. And while I've frequently applauded the Department of Education for initiating investigations more quickly in this period, going back to 10/7 and Catherine Lhamon, who oversees the offices civil rights there, we're now getting the point where we need to see actual results and outcomes from those investigations. Because litigation takes time, I know, and lawyers doing investigations, that takes time. But if we don't actually pull through to where we've got clear precedent around the outrageousness of not only the student behavior, but the insufficiency of the university response, universities are going to continue to be flaccid and actually not do their job. So number one, we need the actual throughput at the Title VI enforcement level.
Number two, we probably do need legislation that actually gets at everything from the way that funding sources may be impacting the entire picture of higher education, onto what so many other countries have, which is clear ways to delineate organizations within the country who are advancing terrorist causes and groups. So all of that, I think can be pursued at the legislative level. I will say too, people often don't see it, but we're coordinating with the Jewish Federations of North America, AJC, ADL, lots of other groups to try to advance that side of the equation at the government level.
At the university level, universities need to follow the school... You pointed out, Vanderbilt and several others who are simply doing what strong and thoughtful administrators are capable of doing, which is preserving their institutions for actual higher education, not allowing the inmates to run the asylum, and that means enforcing policies with suspensions, with expulsions, if necessary. No one wants to see that, but when students, faculty, and staff are running roughshod over the basic rules and policies, you have no choice, and literally you have no choice. You need to do it. And so many universities are not.
Another really underbelly of this is with faculty of universities. They're ungovernable, they are the permanent residents on campus who have in so many cases, bought a particular anti-Israel demonization lock, stock, and barrel, and that gets spattered through their classrooms. We've had, even in this moment, so many students come to us and say, "My professor just moved class to the encampment. I don't feel safe in the encampment. What am I supposed to do?" Or, "My professor just canceled the last class before my physics final. I need to do well in this final, but he canceled because he said, we all should go to the encampment," so we got to figure out a solution.
Are these protests protected under free speech?
AL: I don't need to be a free speech scholar to know something that apparently the faculty don't know, these students have enormous latitude in terms of free speech, as do faculty, but that doesn't mean you can violate every rule in policy, including reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions. That doesn't mean you can harass students and assault students and speak in terms that are just so far beyond the pale and so far beyond the parameters of free speech. We need an education bootcamp in free speech for faculty.
Moving on though, because I do want to hit a few things too that, again, I think are actionable at that university level. We actually do need to sensitize and educate people around the nature of contemporary antisemitism. I think a lot of the people we've talked about who are not standing up as allies who are frustrated by what they see, but they see it as a, oh, well, problems on both sides, they need to understand why dehumanizing a Jewish student based on the blood libel is wrong and why that reflects discrimination and bias. Simply having all this infrastructure that's been created for DEI actually used to educate student bodies when it comes to the nature of contemporary anti-Semitism, that I think is going to be an important step forward.
Then we do need, and I applaud the Kraft Foundation and others who are trying to do more broader public education when it comes to the nature of contemporary antisemitism because again, we have to name it. We have to shame. It's the name, shame, claim. When these issues are bubbling up, shame folks who are engaged in such shameful and harmful behavior and then claim reclaim space for an American society in an educational frame that actually does support all the basic principles that are embedded within our constitution and our traditions when it comes to education, but are not playing out on campus right now.
Read the full transcript here.
SHOWNOTES
Secret meetings, social chatter: How the Columbia protest sparked a student revolt (Washington Post, April 26, 2024)
How antiwar student protests are spreading across U.S. universities (Washington Post, April 24, 2024)
Jonathan Schanzer on antisemitic and anti-Israel protests on college campuses (Fox News, April 23, 2024)
Columbia protest leader banned from campus for saying ‘Zionists don’t deserve to live’ (Times of Israel, April 27, 2024)
Horror as GWU protester carries sign with Nazi ‘final solution’ call for extermination of Jews (New York Post, April 26, 2024)
Video from Columbia Encampment Leader (Daily Caller Twitter, April 26, 2024)
TGIF: Four More Years, Pause (The Free Press, April 26, 2024)
Pictures of Hezbollah Flags at Princeton Protests (Myles McKnight Twitter, April 25, 2024)
Video From NYU Protest (Open Source Intel Twitter, April 24, 2024)
Antisemitism on College Campuses: Incident Tracking from 2019–2024 (Hillel International, Updated April 22, 2024)
Our Letter to Slifka Students (Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, April 21, 2024)
Jewish Students Meet Hostility at Yale (Wall Street Journal, November 7, 2023)
Statement from Emory University President (Gregory Fenves, April 26, 2024)
USC cancels main commencement ceremony after protests, arrests (Axios, April 25, 2024)
Dozens of Yale Students Arrested During Campus Protests (New York Times, April 23, 2024)
Columbia to hold classes virtually as Jewish leaders warn about safety amid tensions over pro-Palestinian protests (NBC News, April 22, 2024)
Torres, Lawler push for federal antisemitism monitors on college campuses (Jewish Insider, April 26, 2024)
Former ICJ President clarifies court's ruling on South Africa's case against Israel (Jerusalem Post, April 26, 2024)
Hamas and Iran celebrate anti-Gaza war protests taking US colleges by storm (USA Today, April 25, 2024)
Tweet in Support of Protests from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Twitter, April 24, 2024)
The US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism (White House, May 25, 2023)