Antisemitism

Sharon Otterman
New York Times

Excerpt: Dozens of pro-Palestinian demonstrators barged into Milbank Hall on Barnard College’s Manhattan campus on Wednesday and staged a sit-in over the expulsion of two students who interrupted a class on Israel, sparking a showdown with Barnard’s administration.

Samuel J. Abrams
American Enterprise Institute 

Excerpt: Well over a decade ago, when I started teaching at Sarah Lawrence College, I realized that many of my faculty colleagues were anti-Semitic. Because I am visibly Jewish and refuse to denounce Israel, I have been hazed; I have been called a “white skinned Taliban” by a senior professor. I was told that I was part of a colonial, genocidal Jewish people. I have had swastikas drawn on my office door. Somehow, I was expected to do more work than other colleagues to earn their support for promotion. It became clear that my Jewish faith and heritage was a problem for large numbers of professors on campus.  

Andrea Brower
Common Dreams

Excerpt: For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life.

The number of the similar cases is impossible to know, due in part to near media omission. Many people who have faced or are currently facing investigations are instructed that they must remain silent (and isolated) as to not “compromise” the investigation. Some are quiet because their jobs, prospects for future employment, and safety are at stake. What is clear is that the trials are wide-reaching, extraordinarily punitive, largely coordinated, and were coming down rapidly across the country at educational institutions of all types even before Trump was sworn in.

Elyse C. Goncalves and Akshaya Ravi
Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: Harvard Medical School canceled a planned Jan. 21 lecture on wartime healthcare and a subsequent panel with patients from Gaza receiving care in Boston in response to objections that students would hear from Gazans impacted by the war and not also Israelis.

Course instructors and students were notified Tuesday morning that the events — scheduled for that evening — would not be held. Medical School Dean George Q. Daley ’82 wrote in a Wednesday email sent to first-year students and obtained by The Crimson that his office began receiving complaints from students and faculty within days after the session was first publicized last week.

Sophia Vitter
College Fix

Excerpt: The University of Virginia “has willfully ignored its longstanding antisemitism problem” and must address it now, according to the Jefferson Council, an alumni network dedicated to preserving Thomas Jefferson’s legacy at the venerable university.

The alumni group recently published a 13-page report authored by council President Joel Gardner that argues antisemitism has been “exponentially exacerbated” on campus over the last year, following the massacre of Israeli citizens by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2024.