The AntI-Israel Problem at American Universities
The embrace of the BDS movement by some in academia is a stain on higher education.
Caroline B. Glick writes at Minding the Campus.
Our AntI-Israel American Universities
The foundations of American Jewish life are under assault today in ways that were unimaginable a generation ago. Academia is ground zero of the onslaught. The protest movements on campuses are primarily anti-Jewish movements.
For the past decade or so, Jewish communal leaders and activists have focused on just one aspect of this anti-Jewish campaign. Jewish leaders have devoted themselves to helping Jewish students combat the direct anti-Semitism inherent to the anti-Israel student movements.
Despite the substantial funds that have been devoted to fighting anti-Israel forces on campuses, they have not been diminished. To the contrary, with each passing year they have grown more powerful and menacing.
Consider a sampling of the anti-Jewish incidents that took place over the past two weeks.
Two weeks ago, Daniel Bernstein, a Jewish student at University of California Santa Cruz and a member of the university’s student government was ordered not to vote on a resolution calling for the university to divest from four companies, which do business with Israel.
Bernstein represents UCSC’s Stevenson College at the university student government. He is also vice president of his college’s Jewish Student Union. Ahead of the anti-Israel vote, Bernstein received a message from a member of his college’s student council ordering him to abstain from the vote on Israel divestment.
The student council, Bernstein was informed, had determined that he was motivated by “a Jewish agenda,” and therefore couldn’t be trusted to view the resolution fairly.
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And at my alma mater, 70% of Jewish students report facing anti-Semitism on campus and both the official undergraduate and graduate student associations have pledged formal support of BDS. The graduate student union members also promised “to take BDS into their personal and professional lives.”
Is there ANY reason for alumni to support institutionalized anti-Semitism and broader institutional support for a culture which seeks to overthrow the canons of Western post-Enlightenment culture?
As I have written else where:
What is most troubling is the cowardice and/or groveling support shown by faculty and staff in the face of outrageous, anti-intellectual and frankly racist demands. At the same time, senior faculty and administrators are amazingly venal, in continual search of major alumni donations.
So let’s have a national alumni strike, an Alumni Revolt, and cease giving to campuses whose administrators and staff facilitate this decade’s Salem Witch trials. I am organizing an alumni boycott at my alma mater. I suggest others concerned about the long-term health of universities here and abroad do the same. There is no reason to fund those who despise us and who seek to turn universities into centers of anti-democratic, Stalinist social control.
It’s not an anti Israel problem it’s a Jew Hate Problem. Antizionism has never been more than a polite company cover for Jew Hatred. And as a result, you will see a college officially and with administration blessing, pogrom itself of Jewish enrollment soon.