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Dan Friedman

ByDan Friedman, Dan Friedman

Analysis

Out of control? The truth about hate at US universities

April 14, 2016 10:46
Palestinian MK Haneen Zoabi speaking at an anti-Israel event at Columbia University, New York
4 min read

Anyone outside the US reading about Jewish American campus life will have come across a stream of troubling stories of late.

In just the past month, a Stanford University student senator suggested that an investigation into the way Jews control society was a "valid discussion"; the governing body of ultra-liberal Oberlin College condemned one of its professors for suggesting that Israel was behind 9/11; and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo threatened to withhold nearly $500m from the City University of New York until the state was satisfied that it had addressed the problem of antisemitism on campus.

These incidents were no mere flashes in the pan. Recently, antisemitic graffiti was daubed on the Jewish fraternity building at Brown, an Ivy League college. The David Horowitz Freedom Centre, a conservative think tank, released a list that ranked Columbia, Cornell and several University of California colleges among the most antisemitic campuses in the US. Meanwhile, at Connecticut College, philosophy professor Andrew Pessin had to take another sabbatical after his remarks about Hamas on Facebook led to a student outcry that, in effect, forced him off campus.

What is happening? Have American universities succumbed to the same anti-Jewish bigotry rife in many other countries' academic institutions?