Thoughts on How to Beat Campus Antisemitism

According to reports we have received from Jewish students at USC, radical faculty members are using their positions to indoctrinate students in the classroom.

In this newsletter we share several publications that have caught our eye. Shrier and Jussim answer the question “Why are our campuses full of screaming antisemites?” Chemerinsky, Jerema, and Levitt offer some actionable points. And something to make you laugh (or cry) at the end.

The Kindergarten Intifada, Abigail Shrier, The Free Press (October 31, 2024)

Image source: The Free Press.

First, the fearless and brilliant investigative journalist Abigail Shrier describes how our K–12 schools are being turned into antisemitic indoctrination centers.

In August, the second largest teachers union chapter in the country—there are more than 35,000 members of United Teachers Los Angeles—met at the Bonaventure Hotel in L.A. to discuss, among other things, how to turn their K–12 students against Israel. In front of a PowerPoint that read, “How to be a teacher & an organizer. . . and NOT get fired,” history teacher Ron Gochez elaborated on stealth methods for indoctrinating students.

But how to transport busloads of kids to an anti-Israel rally, during the school day, without arousing suspicion? 

“A lot of us that have been to those [protest] actions have brought our students. Now I don’t take the students in my personal car,” Gochez told the crowd. Then, referring to the Los Angeles Unified School District, he explained: “I have members of our organization who are not LAUSD employees. They take those students and I just happen to be at the same place and the same time with them.”

Gochez was just getting warmed up. “It’s like tomorrow I go to church and some of my students are at the church. ‘Oh, wow! Hey, how you doing?’ We just happen to be at the same place at the same time, and look! We just happen to be at a pro-Palestine action, same place, same time.”

The crowd burst into approving laughter.

The above was shown to students at Lowell High School as part of their Ethnic Studies class. Image source: The Free Press

Much of the anti-Israel vituperation slides into classrooms through a subject called ethnic studies. In 2021, California became the first state to adopt it as a requirement for receiving a high school diploma. Legislatures of more than a dozen states have already followed suit, incorporating ethnic studies into K–12 curricula. 

In principle, these laws require schools to teach the histories and cultures of African Americans, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Latinos, and Native Americans. In practice, they grant teachers license to incorporate lessons that often divide civilization into “oppressed” and “oppressor.” A primary fixation of ethnic studies is demonizing Israel. 

Activist-led organizations readily supply instructional materials. Arab Resource & Organizing Center (AROC), Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA; creators of the Teach Palestine Project), Teaching While Muslim, Jewish Voice for Peace, Unión del Barrio, and the Zinn Education Project regularly furnish distorted histories with eliminationist rhetoric against Israel. 

Especially in the year since the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023, the anti-Israel materials have become pervasive. It’s not surprising that they are found in world history and current events lessons. But demonization of Israel is now taught in art, English, math, physics, and social-emotional learning classes.

It is therefore not surprising that students are arriving at our universities already indoctrinated into antisemitism. This underscores the importance of educational efforts to present accurate and unbiased view of the Middle East politics on university campuses. But to beat antisemitism, we need to clean up K–12. For a start, so-called Ethnics Studies, which in reality is Critical Social Justice ideology, should be eliminated from the curriculum. Note, again, the role of the unions, as we commented here and here.

Foreign Funding of American Universities

Lee Jussim of Rutgers University and coworkers have published a thorough study of the effect of foreign funding on campus antisemitism. Their paper, titled “Foreign Funding of U.S. Higher Education Relates to Sanctioning of Scholars and Antisemitism,” will appear in Frontiers of Social Psychology in a special issue on global threats to democracy (appearing with our exposé on the corruption of science funding). A preprint of Jussim’s paper is available here. Below is a summary of key findings from seven studies discussed in the paper, as communicated to us by Jussim:

Receipt of funding from Islamic or authoritarian countries is associated with corrosion of norms supporting free speech and academic freedom, and with rises in antisemitism, not just on the campuses that receive the funding, but in the surrounding communities. This was an epic piece to work on, and included the most interdisciplinary team I’ve ever published with, including an accountant (who tracked the funding), a geographer (who tracked the spread of antisemitism), several “big data/social media” analysts, a political scientist, one other psychologist, two of my grads, and two researchers at The Foundation for Individual Rights and Education.

This data-rich paper is a real eye-opener.

Table 8 from Jussim et al. comparing measures of antisemitism between campuses receiving funding from countries in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and those not receiving funding from countries in the OIC.

We should add a request to look into funding of USC programs by terror-adjacent entities to the list of our recommendations to the USC administration.

College Officials Must Condemn On-Campus Support for Hamas Violence, Erwin Chemerinsky, New York Times (October 20, 2024)

Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky makes a pitch for university officials to take a stand against the Hamas supporters. Chemerinsky explains:

Although college campuses are much quieter this fall than they were last spring, some of the anti-Israel language at some schools is frightening in its celebration of Hamas’s violence. What feels different is the repeated glorification of the Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 people last year on Oct. 7 in a surprise attack.

About 1,000 people attended a rally on Oct. 8 commemorating the first anniversary of the Hamas attack at the University of California, Berkeley, where I am the dean of the law school. About half appeared to be students. Many of the protest signs were explicit in their endorsement of the violence on that day a year ago: “Israel deserves 10,000 October 7ths,” one said. “Long live Al-Aqsa Flood,” another said, using the Hamas name for the attack.

At the clock tower at the center of the Berkeley campus, a large banner was hung proclaiming “Glory to the resistance.” It displayed a red triangle used by Hamas to mark Israeli targets.

Across the country at Columbia University, the group Apartheid Divest posted an essay calling the Hamas attack a “moral, military and political victory.” The group also rescinded its criticism from last spring of Khymani James, a student who had said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”

Indeed, in its statement, the group declared, “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” It also said, “Where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”

In Rhode Island, the Brown University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted this on Instagram: “Al-Aqsa Flood was a historic act of resistance against decades of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonial violence.” …

The Oct. 7, 2023, attack was the deadliest on Jews since the Holocaust. Women were raped and sexually mutilated, babies were slaughtered, and whole families were burned alive. About 250 hostages were taken; more than 60 are thought to remain in Hamas’s hands.

Certainly, there is an important conversation to be had about Israel’s actions over the past year, which has led to so much devastation and loss of life in Gaza. However, these demonstrations on campuses were not that conversation. They were largely the celebration of the coldblooded murder and torture of innocent civilians. Regardless of one’s views on the conflict in the Middle East, the celebration of mass murder can only be condemned.

This support of violence is deeply disturbing. But so is the silence of school officials. Does anyone think the officials would be silent if there was a Ku Klux Klan gathering on a college campus celebrating white supremacist violence?

As I listen to my Jewish students and their reaction to celebrations of Hamas, I have no doubt that they perceive a hostile environment. They do not feel comfortable walking across a plaza in the middle of campus where a sign says, “Israel deserves 10,000 October 7ths.” They understandably fear that the celebration of violence can too easily lead to violence.

I understand the reluctance of university officials to speak out or take other actions. It is easier to do nothing than to say something that will upset some campus constituencies.

But silence, too, is a message. And it is more. In the eyes of the law, doing nothing can be viewed as deliberate indifference, which violates Title VI and can lead to action by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education.

At the very least, campus officials must issue a simple message: “Those who have praised the terrorism of Hamas on this campus have the right to express their views. But we, as campus officials, have the duty to say that celebrating murder, rape and taking hostages is deeply offensive and fundamentally inconsistent with what this university stands for.”

Saying so should not take courage.

On one hand, Chemerinsky’s proposal is contrary to the Kalven principle of institutional neutrality, which we support. On the other hand, if the actions of the campus Hamasniks—such as disruptive protests and using classroom time for pro-Hamas propaganda—threaten the ability of the university to carry out its educational mission, then that would meet the single criterion that Kalven Report states that the university may take an institutional position.

Defund the Professors. Every Last One, Carson Jerema, National Post (October 22, 2024)

This is another bold proposal for how to deal with the radicalized campus contingent.

It is offensive that public money—any amount—goes to universities to fund the self-actualization of professional activists masquerading as academics, but that is what is being supported. Too many professors twist and abuse their status to push whatever progressive cause they care about at the moment. It is an unforgivable use of tax dollars.…

Academic reaction to Israel’s war against Hamas has made it plain just how unsalvageable universities, as publicly-funded institutions, have become. Professors just can’t help themselves from making arguments that seem to sympathize with those responsible for the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people—mostly civilians, mostly Israelis.

A year later, their defence of Hamas has grown bolder, but hardly more sophisticated.

After Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who ordered and planned the October 7 attack, was killed by the Israel Defence Forces last week, York University law professor Heidi Matthews lamented how he was killed.

“There is good reason to believe that Sinwar was, in fact, murdered by the IDF,” she posted on X on Friday. “Canada should be demanding that Israel comply with an independent investigation into the circumstances of Sinwar’s death.”

It’s possible for an expert in the laws of war to conclude that Sinwar was in fact, as Matthews put it, “hors de combat,” or “no longer in the fight,” and that, therefore, his killing was “illegal.”…

That some university professors have left-wing politics, or use progressive theories in their work, is not, in and of itself, a problem. Problems arise when rigour is thrown out the window.

Even if we give Matthews the benefit of the doubt and assume she is simply applying her expertise to the circumstances of Sinwar’s killing, her emphasis on international law appears to evaporate when crimes are being committed against Israelis.

The day after Hamas’s October 7 incursion into southern Israel, Matthews wrote on X that there was “a lot of obfuscation going on about what the right of resistance looks like in brutally asymmetrical contexts.” When she was challenged on that point, she replied, “I think I’ll leave it to Palestinians to let us know what resistance looks like to them.”…

Academics who trade rigorous standards for progressive politics are hardly unique. Whether it is the dozens of professors who supported or participated in illegal anti-Israel encampments, or those whose “expert” opinion on the legality of protests changes with the politics of the protesters, the search for truth is all-too-frequently pushed aside in favour of left-wing dogma.

There is only one solution to this nonsense: defund the professors.

How Canadians Can Beat Back Pro-Hamas Hatred, Howard Levitt, National Post (October 21, 2024)

Instead of solemnity over the anniversary of October 7, an event replete with rapes, beheadings and the torture of innocent civilians, the alliance between Islamists and large sections of the Canadian left expressed themselves with jubilation, triumphant announcements, the burning of the Canadian flag and calls for the destruction of Canada, the United States and Israel.

On her Substack days later, on Oct. 9, political commentator Melanie Philips wrote, “October 7 was the starting gun for Iran’s final war of extermination against Israel as a precursor to the regime’s intended destruction of the West.“

Make no mistake who the enemies of civilization are. They make no pretense.

There are, at least, dozens of tools available to resist them.

“Lawsuits, political pressure and local elections are all tools of resistance against antisemitism,” says the author, and he offers a number of other useful suggestions, political and social, as well. The UCLA Jewish students’ landmark legal victory demonstrated the effectiveness of aggressive use of the courts to force universities to take action against campus antisemitism. We find it somewhat of a mystery why more lawsuits against campus administrations have not been filed.

Laugh or Cry?

Here is another gem from The Free Press (“TGIF: We’re All Garbage,” November 1, 2024) the illustrating antisemitic, pro-Islamist bias of the mainstream press:

→ A random shoot-out: In Chicago, a West African migrant went to a Jewish neighborhood and shot a Jewish man on his way to a synagogue—while screaming “Allahu Akbar.” He then ran around shooting anyone he could find near the synagogue until police came. It’s all captured on video, even the Allahu Akbar part. But here’s how the Chicago Tribune covered it:

Sure sounds like another racist police shooting if you ask me! Feels like there’s a silent unarmed there. Chicago’s mayor seemed unusually tongue-tied on the matter. And the police say they have no idea what the motive could be, with a spokesman explaining: “The statement that was made. . . is nothing that we could bring in as evidence at this point that would support any motive.”