Jewish Students Shouldn’t be Expected to Share Campus with Those Wishing Us Harm
Something I don’t think has been taken into account by my school, the University of Denver (DU), and many other institutions are the consequences of their attempts to return to the status quo. It seems like many universities perceive the end of the previous academic year last Spring to be the climax of antisemitism on their campuses.
My own experiences at the University of Denver indicate to me that the administrators simply hope that this atmosphere of antisemitism goes away by itself. It’s as if the administration at DU – and surely elsewhere as well – spent the lifespans of the encampments throughout the previous year thinking to themselves: “Yes, a large chunk of the student body is demanding the forced removal of another chunk of the students and faculty based on their ethnic or national origin, however they’ll surely get bored soon and give up. Right?”
Well, let’s say that those students did get bored and give up on their demands; then what? Things don’t simply return to normal because those students gave up on their demands of removing a specific group of students and faculty. Regardless of whether or not these misinformed and/or bigoted protesters regret their decisions, there’s no changing what they did, what they said, or what they supported.
After DU’s encampment disbanded, there were no visible consequences for anyone who was involved. I won’t claim to know the outcome for each specific individual who participated in the campaign to harm Jewish life at DU, however I can say for certain that many of those individuals – students and faculty alike – were allowed to return to the classes that they share with Jewish students as if nothing ever happened. Even now, there remain absolutely no protections in place for the victims of the recent antisemitic vitriol and/or harassment. I don’t understand why I, as a Jewish student, am forced to share campus spaces with individuals who tried so hard to remove me from the university for no reason other than my perceived identity.
I write this article having recently left a class which I am forced to share with a proudly antisemitic individual who was significantly involved in DU’s encampment and fought hard to ensure that Jewish spaces like Hillel and Chabad would be removed from our campus. Immediately afterwards, I arrived at my campus job to find another individual who similarly participated in the encampment and who continues to publicly call for “globalizing the intifada.”
I can’t feel safe on campus if people are allowed to advocate for violence against me and others in my community. I don’t know how or why I and other Jewish students are expected to forget the fact that so many of the people sitting next to me in my classes – or even teaching those classes – are vehemently opposed to collective existence. A part of me wants to report these individuals out of fear for my own safety, but I already did so last year to no avail. To add insult to injury, I have no resources available to me this year unless I witness them commit more acts of antisemitism. And even if they do, I know because of last year that my reports will fall on deaf ears regardless of how much proof of wrongdoing is presented.
When administrators twist and contort their own honor codes to excuse students who quite literally distribute Hamas-written propaganda and then let them continue to indulge in such rhetoric, how can any Jewish student feel secure on our campuses? Would any other minority group be expected to deal with this? Or is it only Jewish people who are expected to put up with such hostile environments?
