Fight, Not Flight

The Optimist Edition

Posting will be light the next couple of weeks, as we are heading to Prague and then to Israel. Following an epic rebooking experience when Lufthansa cancelled our flight to Tel Aviv just one week before we were scheduled to depart, we managed to rebook on El Al, not only the most dependable airline for travel to Israel, but also the safest. Their planes are outfitted with an advanced missile defense system, which automatically deploys flares that are decoys for heat-seeking missiles away. Is this cool or what? Am Israel chai!

In the spirit of the upcoming holidays, we dedicate this post to optimistic, action-focused items.

But First — A Joke:

What is a difference between Jewish pessimist and a Jewish optimist? A Jewish pessimist says: “Things are so bad, they couldn’t possibly get worse.” The Jewish optimist says: “Sure they can!”

A Shout-out to the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFrg) at UCLA

We are not helpless! A faculty-led group at UCLA, JFrg, provides inspiration and an example to follow. From their newsletter:

JFRG was born out of the tragic events of October 7 and the subsequent rise in antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric and activities at UCLA. JFRG’s mission is to protect and support Jewish and pro-Israel faculty, staff, and students as they traverse this difficult time. This work is close to my heart, as a psychiatrist and UCLA faculty member who has both witnessed and experienced the continued antisemitic harassment and struggles at UCLA.

What started as a small grassroots organization has grown into a team of passionate volunteers who are relentless in pushing back against discrimination. Despite their full-time careers, they invest countless hours documenting incidents, drafting reports, speaking at UC Regents meetings, leading support groups, organizing community-building events, and advocating for affected faculty, staff, and students—giving voice to those who might otherwise be silenced by fear or intimidation.

Recently, JFrg put up a full-sized billboard with the following message: “Jewish Students, You Are Not Alone.” We need more such billboards—and more acts of active resistance to campus antisemitism.

The Old World Is Not Coming Back (Bari Weiss, The Free Press, November 22, 2024)

Bari Weiss is another inspirational example of resistance. She has channeled her frustration with woke capture of the legacy media into action, starting her own media outlet. The Free Press enjoys well-deserved recognition and popularity (if you are not yet a subscriber—consider taking advantage of their Thanksgiving special offer). Even before October 7, Bari was an outspoken critic of woke antisemitism. As we wrote here, her coverage of post-October 7 events in Israel and the US has been invaluable. On November 12th, Bari gave a speech to the annual conference of the Jewish Federations in Washington D.C. A recording of the speech and the transcript are available here. In her speech, she does more than expose the craziness of the current situation. She calls for action. Listen to her words and get inspired:

The task for the rest of us in this moment is to learn this state of mind: the resilience, the vigilance, the mental strength, the courage, and the pride not just to survive but to thrive in this new world. …

And that begins with articulating first to yourself—and then out loud—what you know. Because only then can we get serious about what this new world requires.

If you find yourself often asking the people around you, “Can you believe . . .,” then you need to ask yourself why reality is still catching you off guard. What little lies, what lies of omission, or lies told in the name of being polite, are you telling yourself even now? 

Here’s one of them: We told ourselves that multiculturalism and immigration were good, because we had benefited from both—because they had made our own lives possible. But we need to get serious about their limitations. Because what we are seeing right now in Europe is that people from profoundly antisemitic countries do not check their belief systems at the border of the Western world. 

Want to see what happens when people are too embarrassed to discuss that problem? When they are too cowed to say plainly that some cultures are more tolerant and more inclusive than others? Look at Amsterdam. Look at London.

If you see what just happened in the Netherlands and think, That can never happen here, I urge you to take a very hard look at our history.

We need to get serious about who our allies really are. And to be able to say that some of the best defenders of our community, like New York Rep. Ritchie Torres and Free Press columnist Douglas Murray, are not Jews. And some of the biggest sellouts are. 

We need to level with ourselves and acknowledge that many of the institutions that have turned on us were funded by members of our own community. Walk through a museum whose staff would never hire a Zionist curator and look at the names above the galleries. Walk in a university and look at the names on the buildings. Look at what’s being taught there. How did this happen? We need to ask and answer that question as we build new institutions to make sure it never happens again.

We need to say out loud what we know to be true, which is a worldview that measures fairness by equality of outcome rather than opportunity, a worldview that thinks merit and excellence are suspicious, is one that is fundamentally hostile to us and all that we stand for. 

We need to be able to say that the politics of the mob will always be very dangerous for us. And that those who insist that the voice of the people are the voice of God are wrong. …

We need to say out loud that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, full stop, and the idea that we should continue to have esoteric “panel discussions” to debate it in the Jewish community is perverse. 

We need to take the phrase “globalize the intifada” seriously. It is not a fun rally chant but a call to violence against our community.

What this moment requires is the truth. The hard truth. The uncomfortable truth. It means not backing down from telling it—to yourselves and to others. It means holding your leaders to account when they fail to deliver—and not just following them blindly out of convenience or convention. It means realizing that good ideas and good people don’t just win on their own—they need others to defend them and to promote them and elevate them….

My hero—and I’m sure many of yours, Natan Sharansky—says that there were two kinds of Jews in the Soviet Union. The Jews who wanted to save the world. They became communists and ended up enslaved, their ideology enslaving millions of others. And then there were Jews who wanted to save themselves—to save other Jews, to save their families. They ended up refuseniks, the dissidents we rightly honor as heroes. They were the ones that ended up helping bring down the Soviet Union—and saving the free world. 

History is back. The Old World is not coming back. It is on us to build the new one—and to ensure that it is free.

10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go to College (Blake Flayton, Bourgeois Nationalist, November 19, 2024)

Some of our readers may remember, that after the Rose Ritch affair, USC Hillel hosted a panel, chaired by Bari Weiss, which included Rose and two students from other universities who spoke passionately and candidly about their personal encounters with antisemitism. Blake Flayton was one of the panelists—and he is also one of those brave souls who are willing to fight back. Blake has written a book, 10 Things Every Jew Should Know Before They Go to College (forthcoming), which he co-authored with Israeli-American journalist Emily Schrader. He describes the book on his Substack:

Both Emily and I witnessed firsthand when we were college students the new form of antisemitism that has taken academic spaces by storm. We were so shocked by the climate that we both decided to pack and move to the Jewish homeland. We are therefore uniquely positioned to offer an analysis of the madness, and to offer solutions, which include Jewish empowerment, engagement with Israel, and countering lies and misconceptions either from classmates, professors, or the media with truth and reason.

This book is exactly what we need at the moment, in the aftermath of the encampment craze when ordinary Americans saw the radicalization of the educated youth with anti-American, anti-democratic propaganda. The strength of this radicalization shows no sign of abating, as student protestors are still terrorizing Jewish students outside of Shabbat dinners both on and off campus, using social media to sow hatred and conspiracy theories, and introducing resolutions to boycott Israel in student government boardrooms. The time is now to educate and mobilize as many young Jews as possible to confront this genuine danger and to embrace the ideas and ideals that have given life to Jewish civilization for millennia.

So far, the mainstream Jewish community has failed to offer its young people content as useful as this book. Information on how to stand up for yourself is increasingly stratified by social media, fragmented by spokesmen with their own agendas, and suppressed by a well-funded, well-organized (far better organized than us) drumbeat of misinformation. This is what motivated us to put pen to paper.

What Can We Do About Our Corrupted Universities? (P. Carl Salzman, PJ Media, November 22, 2024)

Carl Salzman, a retired professor of anthropology, has penned an op-ed describing how western universities have betrayed their truth-seeking mission in favor “Social Justice.”

The Enlightenment-inspired higher education that I encountered during my 1958-72 studies at Antioch College and the University of Chicago, and at McGill University for much of the time when I was a professor there beginning in 1968, was conceived as a quest for the truth. The means for this quest was an evidence and argument process in which questioning and debating evidence and inferences were meant to elicit the soundest, the nearest-to-reality understandings about the world. 

But in the latter decades of the 20th century, the Enlightenment quest eroded and was superseded during the first decades of the 21st century by a new vision, which was labeled “social justice.” Setting aside the quest for truth through evidence and argument, “social justice” was a moralizing approach, asserting allegedly known moral truths that must be indoctrinated and implemented, and never questioned or challenged. The new “woke” university was devoted to changing society according to its new moral vision through internal structural changes at the university and outward-directed activism. No more ivory tower: into the streets, corporations, and governments they would spread “social justice” enlightenment. …

My own Department has Palestinianized, focusing on destroying, among all in the world, the Jewish state of Israel, and colluding with the extermination of the Jewish people. Students across many universities have been burning American and Canadian flags, and chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Canada,” as well as celebrating Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the atrocities they carry out against Jewish people. 

Medical schools and law schools cut back on the study of medicine and law to indoctrinate their “students” with “social justice” fervor. Weak students are admitted because they have the right skin color or sexual preference. Good luck in the operating room or driving over the newly built bridge. But the greatest damage is done by so-called faculties of education, which relentlessly rail against the countries in which they are located, against capitalism, and against white people, males, Christians, Jews, and heterosexuals. They have guided school administrators and teachers not to teach their pupils how to read, write, and understand science and civics, but what races and religions to hate, how to transition to imaginary sexes, and how to demonstrate in favor of abortion and against Israel, and, in so doing, have destroyed our entire school system. 

Salzman then follows up with concrete recommendations of how we can reclaim our universities and right their course. It will not be easy, but neither is it hopeless.

Avoiding an American Kristallnacht (Ian Oxnevad, CounterCurrent: Anti-Semitism Edition, November 18, 2024)

On this side of the Atlantic, colleges and universities have become a primary source of anti-Semitism. Earlier this month, Republicans on the House of Representatives’ Education and Workforce Committee released a 325-page report documenting the extensive anti-Semitism at eleven of America’s top universities. Congress found that universities not only favored anti-Israel encampments, but also declined to condemn the October 7 Hamas attack and failed to discipline anti-Semitism among students. Unlike professors in the Netherlands under Nazi occupation, professors in today’s America openly support anti-Semitism. 

Congress found that faculty assisted anti-Israel students in pressuring trustees to advance boycott measures against Israel related to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. At Northeastern University, provost Kathleen Hagerty supported protestors’ demands. At Harvard, Congress noted that professor Walter Johnson led chants at the university’s campus encampment, while 300 separate faculty signed a letter to Harvard’s administration to urge negotiation and capitulation to the protesting students. At Columbia University, professors from the university senate’s rules committee served as “faculty marshals” at the campus’ anti-Israel encampment. Columbia’s Kayum Ahmed, a professor teaching public health, even integrates anti-Israel activism into his curriculum.  

Unsurprisingly, this Congressional report did not go over well in academia. The president of the American Association of University Professors, Todd Wolfson, decried the report as an effort to “delegitimize American higher education in the minds of the public.” As it turns out, Congress did not need to do much to erode academia’s legitimacy. Donors at places like Harvard and Columbia are retreating, and the trust in universities is decreasing among the American public. 

Preventing modern American pogroms means attacking anti-Semitism at universities and delegitimizing it before it escapes the campus and becomes normalized in other American institutions. College graduates who are indoctrinated into hating Israel, Jews, and the greater West, will ultimately use their credentials to enter positions of authority in the public and private sector and bring their views with them. Having developed the sense that anti-Semitism is legitimate, today’s elite college graduates can become tomorrow’s storm troopers. 

This fear is not unwarranted. Last November, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) from the group “Coalition Against Apartheid” (CAA) disrupted classes and harassed Jewish students on the anniversary of Kristallnacht. CAA staged a “blockade” of MIT’s main campus entrance and even offered an $800 “bounty” for identifying a Jewish student who dared to challenge them. After Jewish professors at MIT sought to take action, the administration invited pro-Hamas speakers to campus for a lecture on Islamophobia. According to the pro-Israel group, the MIT Israel Alliance, the administration refused to take action on anti-Semitism for fear of “losing faculty support.” A Congressional investigation found multiple MIT faculty espoused anti-Semitic sentiments, such as stating “Zionism is a mental illness,” and that Jews want to “enslave the world in a global Apartheid system.” MIT’s Women and Gender Studies Program hosted a speaker that stated Zionists have an “unquenchable thirst for Palestinian blood.” The similarities between the ideas espoused by contemporary university faculty and the blood libel of old are impossible to ignore. Such statements and sentiments would lead to the end of careers in the business world. In academia, these statements are tolerated and lauded. 

A toxic combination of cultural self-deprecation and tolerance of the anti-Semitism in Europe’s immigrant population explains what happened in Amsterdam. Here in the United States, the anti-Semitism is largely being produced by the nation’s elite academic institutions. The reason academia’s anti-Semitism is arguably more dangerous is that it is produced with a coating of legitimacy from professors and administrators. Once graduated and in positions of authority, the students tainted by this anti-Semitic indoctrination will be emboldened to act without shame and will have been conditioned to discriminate without a fear of accountability. Preventing an American Kristallnacht means holding colleges and universities accountable before it is too late. 

Why have we included Salzman’s and Oxnevad’s pieces in a supposed optimist issue of our newsletter? Because we hope that the abundance of examples—such as the cited reports—will cause more people to shed their denialist attitudes and accept reality. As Bari said, the first step is to be honest with yourself. The actions will follow.

4 University of Rochester Students Arrested over 'Wanted' Posters Targeting Jewish Staff Members (Minyvonne Burke, NBC News, November 20)

According to Hillel International:

Police Arrest Four Students at University of Rochester for 'Wanted' Posters That Targeted Jewish Faculty and Staff: Four students were arrested for defacing buildings at the University of Rochester with ‘wanted’ posters targeting Jewish faculty and staff. The arrested students have been charged with felony criminal mischief, with a fifth student still under investigation. University President Sarah Mangelsdorf condemned the incident and said, “I want to underscore that antisemitism will not be tolerated…. I want each of those who were targeted to know that they have [the University’s] wholehearted support.”

Optimism? Yup, because the university took concrete steps to punish the hooligans. If Rochester can do it, so can USC.

‘Enough is Enough’: Foxx Introduces Bipartisan Bill Prohibiting Aid to Universities That Boycott Israel (Lexi Boccuzzi, SPME Newsletter, November 29, 2024)

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), the chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, unveiled a bipartisan bill that would prohibit federal aid from flowing to universities that boycott Israel.

Foxx unveiled the measure, the “Protect Economic Freedom Act,” alongside Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D., N.J.) on Tuesday. It would amend the Higher Education Act to bar universities that engage in the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement from receiving federal student aid. Under the legislation, universities must submit annual certifications to the Department of Education, showing they are not engaged in a commercial boycott of Israel.

“Enough is enough. Appeasing the antisemitic mobs on college campuses threatens the safety of Jewish students and faculty, and it undermines the relationship between the U.S. and one of our strongest allies,” Foxx said in a statement. “If an institution is going to capitulate to the BDS movement, there will be consequences—starting with the Protect Economic Freedom Act.”

Resources from the Academic Engagement Network

AEN is another organization that helps with community-building and offers resources to help fight campus antisemitism. From their recent newsletter:

We would like to share some new resources with you to support your work on campuses!

First, we have just released our 10th pamphlet, "Revisiting the Boycott Campaign at the American Anthropological Association: A Divisive and Destructive Effort to Delegitimize Israel and Undermine the University Mission," by Cynthia Saltzman. A faculty member at Rutgers University, Saltzman focuses on the AAA's academic boycott against Israel that reflects part of a growing trend in the academy to isolate Israel in the international community of scholars. You can read this and AEN's past pamphlets on our website.

We also recommend you revisit other resources we have developed recently, such as the three "one-pagers" by Connecticut College faculty member Andrew Pessin, which refute common libels about Israel, such as "settler colonialism," "genocide," and "apartheid."

Finally, we wanted to remind you of the opportunity to participate in a new Survey of Faculty Attitudes About Antisemitism on Campus, which is being conducted by Rutgers University, having been developed in collaboration with the University of Ottawa in Canada. The results of this survey will help us understand how faculty are experiencing antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on their campuses, what forms this takes, and how it affects them. In turn, this information will allow AEN to develop more effective strategies, programs, and resources to support our faculty network in this critical time.

Need More Inspiration? Check Out These Previous Articles on Our Substack:

• A Jewish Emigré from Russia Experiences Deja Vu at an American University

• A Clarion Call by Natan Sharansky

• To Be Anti-Antisemitic

• Together Let Us Learn to Sing Again