The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights last did a comprehensive examination of antisemitism on college campuses in 2006. Back then, the commission found that “many experts agree that anti-Semitism on college campuses is often cloaked as criticism of Israel.”
That cloak now has been completely thrown off. In the wake of the October 7 terrorist attack and ongoing hostage crisis, many students, faculty, and administrators have dropped any pretense that they’re “only” criticizing Israeli governmental policy. Instead, they’re expressing virulent hatred of Jewish people (as well as the State of Israel). A few of the more widely circulated examples:
- At Cornell (my alma mater), an individual posted threats on the university’s Greekrank student forum. One post had the subject line, “gonna shoot up 104 west” (104 West is Cornell’s kosher dining hall) and included the phrases “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! glory to Hamas!”[sic]. Other posts on the forum threatened to slit Jews’ throats, rape Jewish women, and behead Jewish babies.
- At Stanford, a lecturer reportedly “asked Jewish students to raise their hands, separated those students from their belongings, and said they were simulating what Jews were doing to Palestinians.”
- At Columbia a student was beaten with a stick while posting flyers of Jewish hostages taken by Hamas.
- At Cooper Union a staffer locked Jewish students in the library to protect them from pro-Palestinian student demonstrators shouting, “Free, free Palestine,” while pounding on the library doors and windows.
The historical parallels are sickening. They are shameful.
Hate crimes against any group are a symptom of a moral rot in society. They are far too toxic to be the stuff of political one-upmanship. Professors, politicians, and the media knew that once. Not anymore. Contrary to statements by certain irresponsible, ill-informed media personalities and some Biden administration officials, anti-Jewish hate crimes far exceed hate crimes against any other group. For example, in Los Angeles alone 104 anti-Jewish hate crimes were recorded by LAPD as of October 21, compared with three anti-Muslim hate crimes. In New York City, as of September 30, NYPD has recorded 155 anti-Jewish hate crimes and seven anti-Muslim hate crimes. Based on copious anecdotal reports, the number of anti-Jewish incidents likely will now spike even more significantly before the end of the year.
It’s hardly surprising that the antisemitism that’s been incubating on college campuses for the last several decades has become unabashedly public. Rather than stifling, if not eliminating it, the purported adults in the room have promoted or ignored it. They have a responsibilty to scrub it utterly from their schools, which have metastasized into a clear and present danger to the American experiment.