Antisemitic Bullies at American Universities
An under-discussed aspect of the wave of far-left antisemitism on university campuses in the United States is the psychology of bullying. Anyone who was once a child (!) knows that a fair number of people really, really enjoy bullying others. Many more will join in, either because they discover that they enjoy it themselves, because they don’t want to become targets by objecting—or even just abstaining—or both.
The far left, which is responsible for most of the campus bullying of Jewish students, is not only susceptible to this dynamic; it thrives on it.
Recall the origins of the term PC, or politically correct, as it was used on the American far left. Show up at a meeting of your collective with coffee from Costa Rica instead of Nicaragua, and you might be publicly shamed by being told, in front of your comrades, that your choice wasn’t “politically correct.” (This actually happened to a socialist friend of mine at Brandeis.)
Mandatory DEI sessions requiring people to “acknowledge their privilege,” participate in “privilege walks,” and so on are, in many cases, forms of institutionalized bullying.
While the far left would love to focus its bullying on non-woke white people and other obvious targets, its capacity to do so is limited. There are simply too many such people to target on a broad scale. And on a smaller scale—say, at an elite university—groups such as evangelical Christians are relatively few in number, often do not feel the same need to belong to the dominant campus “in-group,” and have their own internal and external support networks.
Jews, on the other hand…
Jews are an especially attractive target for far-left bullies. First, Jews have historically identified disproportionately with the political left and are therefore often more emotionally vulnerable to ostracism from the left. Second, Jews tend to be concentrated in the same places where the far left is strongest—college towns, universities, and major cities—while nevertheless remaining a minority, and often a very small one.
Jews are also an exceptional target because they are vulnerable in multiple ways. They are emotionally vulnerable because of their longstanding attachment to liberal politics and their often mistaken belief that people on the left are, at the very least, well-meaning in a way that people on the right are not. They also tend to place trust in the very institutions that educate and empower the people who ultimately turn against them. And they are physically vulnerable because they genuinely face violent threats from multiple directions: Islamists, Iranian agents, far-left extremists, far-right extremists, and religious cults such as the Black Hebrew Israelites.
Other groups that are often at odds with the far left, such as evangelical Christians, generally do not face the same degree of physical vulnerability. One does not see attacks on evangelical Christian students on campus, nor do evangelical churches typically require armed security.
Jewish institutions are also embedded in the very environments where the far left is strongest. The campus Hillel building is an obvious target. The evangelical church in the suburbs—or an unpublicized prayer meeting in an off-campus living room—is not.
Look back at the events since October 7: mobs in New York City threatening and vandalizing Jewish-owned businesses; relentless antisemitic abuse and threats on social media; the expulsion of Jewish students from student governments and progressive student organizations; the exclusion of Jewish groups from LGBTQ marches; and so on. What you see is ideological extremism—but you also see people who are really, really enjoying being bullies.
