Essentialism and the Death of Campus Dialogue

On October 22, 2025, former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert came to speak with Nasser Al-Qudwa, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Palestinian Authority, in front of the Yale Political Union (YPU). I stood up to ask a question, introduced myself, and before I could even ask my question, half the room erupted into hisses at the sound of my name. My being an unapologetic Zionist on campus seems to invite such automatic vitriol as well. This small moment is emblematic of a wider issue: there is a growing number in the academic community who preach liberal values while practicing the opposite.

I observed that many students, particularly on the left, who attended and spoke at the event did not come in good faith. If they had, they would have recognized that Ehud Olmert and Nasser Al-Qudwa together nearly brought about a two-state solution in 2008. At the very least, they would have acknowledged Olmert’s vehement criticism of Netanyahu and the war in Gaza.

Instead, the event intended to enrich campus discourse was mired with students hissing at the description of Hamas as murderers and rapists, speeches calling for the destruction of the State of Israel, and the simplistic naiveties of “why can’t we all just get along?”

That night, my optimism for peaceful and productive dialogue at Yale diminished greatly. Nevertheless, I still have faith that one day it can work, even in such a hostile environment.

It should be noted that the YPU has a tradition that the audience members stomp their feet when someone says something they agree with, and hiss when someone says something they disagree with.

The students who hissed at me did not come for nuanced debate. They came to perform their outrage and show allegiance to their darling cause. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that many of them do not want peace with Israel, but rather prefer to adhere to the infamous “Three No’s” of Khartoum – No peace with Israel, no negotiation with Israel, and no recognition of Israel. This way of thinking directly led to 10/7 and all the atrocities perpetrated in the name of Palestinian Nationalism leading up to it and after.

Psychological essentialism is the hypothesis that humans represent some categories as having an underlying essence that unifies members of a category and is causally responsible for their typical attributes and behaviors. When embraced, psychological essentialism can flatten the identities of individuals in a group into a uniform image that is easy to vilify. This can easily turn into internalized prejudice against a given group. In the case of the YPU debate, Olmert was flattened into the caricature of a Netanyahu clone — effectively demonizing him because of his nationality — and Qudwa, a veteran Palestinian peacemaker was flattened into a traitor and collaborator for supporting the idea of a two-state solution; I was flattened into a symbol of the “Zionist enemy,” complicit in a supposed genocide.

I completely understand why the anti-Israel crowd views me this way. I am one of the most vocally Zionist students on campus. There are publicly accessible images of me wrapping tefillin in an IDF uniform on a military base while volunteering for the Sar-El program. To them, I am a representation of what they despise. Once you have been turned into a symbol, the crowd feels no obligation to listen to you.

A key property of psychological essentialism is that the unifying and underlying essence of members of a group are assumed to be immutable. Once people see identity as immutable, they stop believing conversation can have any effect.

Of course, I’m giving them all the benefit of the doubt that it is in fact a psychological state rather than expressions of unapologetic bigotry. Now that the war in Gaza is slowing down, so are campus tensions.

So what should I do differently? We should stop hoping that one day we can change the minds of the hissing students. Instead, we should facilitate a healthy understanding among those in the middle. I wholeheartedly believe that this will lead these students to understand Israel’s fight for survival and commitment to moral integrity.