Is Last Year’s College Antisemitism, and Leadership Failure, Repeating Itself?

It took only a few small steps into Harvard Yard recently to pinpoint the campus climate Jewish students likely can expect as the fall semester unfolds.

“Harvard is committed to creating a safe and welcoming environment for all members of the Harvard community,” a prominent sign began in large lettering. It went on to list acts prohibited on Harvard property. But the restrictions were capped off by a distinctive wink: “The Faculty of Arts and Sciences may grant exceptions to these prohibitions.”

Reading like a permission slip to circumvent the rules, this welcome-back bonanza for pro-Hamas agitators has undergone a word change in the intervening three weeks but is no more comforting. It replaces the mention of exceptions with an altered closing statement noting in part, “Any requests for approval should be directed to Harvard Yard Operations…”

The signage is an unsettling glimpse into leaders’ thinking behind both the original that allowed for backpedaling and the update that continues to offer wiggle room in those listed prohibitions.

So much for clear-cut accountability after a school year punctuated by a sweeping leadership failure that enabled antisemitic agitators to wreak havoc at Harvard and many other colleges. Aggressively hostile protesters at US schools verbally and physically assaulted Jewish students, stalked them, surrounded them with a large human chain, even urinated on a Hillel center among countless other outrageous acts since the Oct. 7 massacre.

Shamefully, school leaders pulled back on punishment for students who clearly had broken already-established rules, abused and intimidated “frontline” staff doing their jobs, and caused millions of dollars in property damage. Instead of enforcing their codes of conduct, administrators granted diplomas and reversed suspensions by summer’s end. And in doing so, they amplified a message that with infractions come no consequences.

Violators also learned that lawlessness gets you a coveted seat with the university’s power brokers, as several colleges capitulated with concessions for transgressors. Brown University’s Corporation, for example, is slated to vote on divestment from companies affiliated with Israel at its upcoming October meeting.

So it’s hardly unexpected that anti-Israel protesters are back further empowered, primed by a summer of training with the National Students for Justice in Palestine and other groups. Last week at Columbia, they defaced a bronze statue with red paint and promised to ramp up activity. They vandalized Cornell’s main administrative building on the first day of school last month, protesters there vowing to “escalate… for all liberation struggles resisting imperialism.”

And as MIT’s first-year students entered orientation two weeks ago, activists distributed literature bearing the school’s mascot and containing resources the Anti-Defamation League has stated are antisemitic. Included was The Mapping Project, a website that names Jewish organizations and staff while spewing false claims of a sinister web connecting Massachusetts’ Jewish schools, synagogues and nonprofits with politicians, media, police and local governments that Jews supposedly influence. The project’s stated goal is “to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them.”

MIT newcomers greeted with this onslaught were left second-guessing their decision to attend the elite school.

“Shocking, but not surprising,” is the reaction I got from William Sussman. The MIT doctoral student prevailed in a just-concluded discrimination case against the school’s Graduate Student Union, which had denied him and others a religious accommodation that would exempt them from compulsory dues because of the union’s anti-Israel advocacy. The Graduate Student Union was listed, along with other organizations, under “Finding Community” in the same flyer that resourced The Mapping Project.

President Sally Kornbluth, in a letter to the MIT community, framed those mendacious “Welcome to MIT!” flyers as free speech while stating, “I believe the Mapping Project promotes antisemitism”—signaling that it is somehow open to interpretation despite the ADL and other Jewish organizations labeling it antisemitic, full stop. Nor was there any mention of potential consequences, even in general terms, for activists’ unauthorized appropriation of MIT’s branding or their apparent masquerade as orientation representatives.

If there is no stomach to hold student perpetrators responsible, the sudden rush by several schools to highlight existing regulations or update them—which Harvard professors already flouted —is an exercise in futility. The spineless coddling of rule-breaking bullies forced Jews to abandon dorms last semester, complete classes online, and in several cases take leaves of absence—a dereliction of colleges’ duty to provide for these students the safe, full college experience their parents paid ridiculous amounts of money to receive.

While Jewish kids at Emerson College fearfully fled to local hotels during that time, as did their counterparts from Harvard, Emerson—which launches many graduates into prestigious media jobs—posted bail for arrested students. Its president stated the college “will not bring any campus disciplinary charges against the protestors and will encourage the district attorney not to pursue charges related to encampment violations.” This, despite his statement just four days earlier that protesters “are engaging in targeted harassment and intimidation of Jewish supporters of Israel.”

Princeton University was exploring “restorative justice” for arrested students, whereby violators would “reconcile with people significantly affected by their actions.” But these well-organized, emboldened protesters are fixated on escalation not reconciliation, making their intentions abundantly clear in statements calling for “resistance” paired with “by any means necessary.”

We must take them at their word, even if college leaders who fueled their defiance apparently don’t, rather than indulge in feel-good fantasies.

A just-released survey of Jewish American college students and recent graduates by Alums for Campus Fairness helps quantify the gravity of the problem. It found that nearly 80 percent avoided places, events, or situations at school because of safety concerns as Jews. Fifty-eight percent said they or someone they know were physically threatened on campus for being Jewish. And 81 percent said they or their friends received threatening or antisemitic messages.

Jewish students around the country who bravely reported those incidents often were sidelined into counseling, says Dr. Elina Veytsman, a licensed psychologist at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine who recently conducted a national focus group of university-based psychologists devoted to assessing Jewish students’ support needs. The gaslighting intensified for those who sought counseling, Veytsman, co-chair of the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group at UCLA told me. Students were informed “their concerns weren’t really valid, and they were too stressed, or this is their perception of events.”

Significantly, 60 percent of student survey respondents said a faculty member made an offensive antisemitic remark to them or someone they know. But there is virtual silence regarding the imbalance of power between students and professors tasked with grading those whose identities they protest—namely Jews and Israelis.

Professors at several universities led teach-ins and held classes in encampments that were deemed Zionist-free zones, helped student protesters block access to parts of campus, and singled out Jews and Israelis in class.

A Columbia University professor, for instance, told a student who is a former IDF member she “should be considered a murderer,” according to the school’s Task Force on Antisemitism Aug. 30th report. And there were other similar incidents noted there.

The upshot: Columbia’s Jewish and Israeli students reported “avoiding particular majors and faculty.” That effectively limited the scope of their education. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine vulnerable Jews at other schools taking similar steps.

Over at UCLA, leaders’ failure to enforce their own longstanding rules has inspired little confidence that efforts will be made to safeguard Jewish and Israeli students consistently over the long term. And that’s despite a recent preliminary injunction ordering corrective action while issuing a scathing rebuke of school leadership for allowing protesters to establish checkpoints and require passersby to wear a specific wristband to cross them. This blocked students’ access to classrooms and caused some to miss final exams.

“If protesters use new tactics that aren’t as obvious as encampments, it’s uncertain whether the university administration is prepared to pivot and handle them effectively,” Dr. Kira Stein, a psychiatrist, assistant clinical professor at UCLA’s School of Medicine, and founder and chair of the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, told me. “This mirrors the administration’s struggles with antisemitic indoctrination and the demonization of Israel in the classroom, often disguised as political discourse.”

Notably, the explosion of antisemitism on US campuses is occurring as Jewish officials at many of those same schools have observed the number of enrolled Jews plummeting, both in undergraduate programs and in graduate professional programs like medicine. With fewer Jews, students who attend now must assume greater responsibility in both sustaining and bolstering a community under siege, all while carrying a heavy workload.

Maya Makarovsky, an MIT senior, is one of them. Her parents had fled to the US from the former Soviet Union after being chased while called “kike” and denied educational opportunities as Jews. Three decades later, Makarovsky’s classes have been disrupted by antisemitic chants like “death to Zionists.”

She sees the toll on academics and research, with several Jewish graduate students and post-docs leaving. Others are considering doing so, “unable to give 110 percent like they used to” because of an intolerable climate, she told me.

In the end, schools’ shortsightedness in allowing this mayhem to overtake scholarship will strike at the progress of all academic fields whose cutting-edge research and discoveries have advanced us nationally and globally. It is a federally funded march backward.

College officials’ insipid platitudes condemning antisemitism ring hollow right now. We all know that the disgraceful events of the past year, and even before, would have been utterly inconceivable involving any other historically marginalized group. Instead of erasing Jews from academia, colleges leaders would do well to excise the rot that is undermining their core mission to educate and excel.