The House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce. has spotlighted surging campus antisemitism in the wake of October 7
November 7, 2024 10:42
Amid the past year’s many outrages and disappointments, one hopeful exception has been the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and the Workforce. Led by North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx, this committee has spotlighted surging campus antisemitism in the wake of October 7.
Last week, the committee published a 324-page report on their investigation, sharing details about 11 campuses. The report reflects the Committee’s four hearings, interviews and “more than 400,000 pages of documents”.
Among the major findings is that universities made “shocking concessions” to their “students who established unlawful antisemitic encampments” and university leaders created campus risk by shirking their leadership responsibilities. University leaders “intentionally declined to express support for campus Jewish communities”. “Universities utterly failed to impose meaningful discipline for antisemitic behaviour that violated” laws or campus policies. And university leaders bristled at oversight, while treating campus antisemitism “as a public-relations issue and not a serious problem demanding action”.
The antisemitic rot runs so deep even this lengthy report isn’t exhaustive. Will Sussman, immediate past president of MIT GradHillel (a Jewish community of MIT graduate students), who testified about MIT, was “somewhat underwhelmed” that “only half a page of exposition was dedicated to MIT”.
Sussman had submitted 54 pages of written “testimony against the MIT Graduate Student Union” and “the amended Title VI [civil rights] complaint against MIT is 133-pages long.”
However, Sussman was interested to learn that MIT is one of the six schools mentioned that suspended no students.
As for Columbia, which has epitomised extreme antisemitism, assistant professor at Columbia Business School Shai Davidai told me the report offered “two groundbreaking revelations”.
First, Columbia’s administrators know “the Faculty Senate is working in cahoots with the pro-terror student organisation on campus” but they’re “unwilling to act”.
Second, Davidai described as “just shattering” the recounting of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “completely sticking sticks in our wheels, telling the previous university president not to worry, that this will all pass. So, while I and Jewish students are out there fighting the antisemitism, calling it out, and I am paying a personal price for this, Chuck Schumer is colluding with the Democrats at the university to not do anything.
“For me that just shows utter and complete betrayal, both by the administration at Columbia and unfortunately by the leader of the Senate.”
The report also illustrates that antisemitism isn’t limited to elite private universities. It infects public universities too.
Andrew Getraer, who previously led the Hillel at Rutgers, New Jersey’s state university, told me, “Nothing that Congress found is new. It’s just that now it’s been exposed.” Getraer explained: “The attitude toward Jewish students and antisemitism expressed in the House report comports exactly with what I observed and experienced in my 20 years as executive director of Hillel (2001-2021). Antisemitism and anti-Zionism were constant, chronic issues throughout that time. The incidents of anti-Jewish bias on the part of the faculty and administrators are frankly too many to recount. If the antisemitic bias wasn’t overtly right-wing, which was occasional but relatively rare, it was near impossible to get the university to acknowledge it, much less take it seriously.”
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Centre, who represented a student suing Rutgers for discrimination, added: “Rutgers is a prime example of the kind of retaliatory claims we are seeing across the country. Jewish students complain about real antisemitism and are then accused of a conspiracy to intimidate and silence others,” which Goldfeder called a “classic prejudice pivot”.
Poor leadership can exacerbate a campus’ antisemitism problem. Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, says, “It’s been clear for a long time that a key problem on campuses is the failure of university administrators to clearly convey and enforce reasonable and content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions on protest and demonstrations. The new House report shows that if anything we underestimated the problem, with those violating rules and policies time and again being let off the hook.” Elman also says: “We need to double down on antisemitism awareness education for administrators and training for their staff.”
The House committee has done important work documenting campus antisemitism, while the Senate and executive branch have largely ignored glaring problems. Even harder will be rectifying those problems, and Tuesday’s election will determine whether – and how – that happens.
Melissa Langsam Braunstein is a writer based in the Washington DC area
@slowhoneybee
