Today, colleges and universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism, fueled by faculty teaching critical race theory, intersectionality, and postcolonial ideology that falsely label Jews as “White oppressors” and Israel as an “evil Western colonial outpost” subjugating Palestinians.
The October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israeli men, women, and children exposed this festering hatred for all to see.
While Jew-hating students and complicit college administrators have drawn public attention, it is the faculty — predominantly leftist and a key source of Marxist radicalism and anti-American dogma — that plays an even greater role in fostering this sordid environment.
At Rutgers University, faculty recently demanded the school divest from corporations linked to Israel and suspend programs with Tel Aviv University, officially joining the international Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.
Launched in 2003, BDS seeks to isolate Israel economically, politically, culturally, and academically in a coordinated effort to destroy the Jewish state. It calls for severing ties with Israeli institutions, including study-abroad programs, under the guise of opposing Zionism — the Jewish people's right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland.
This alarming move was backed by Rutgers’ Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), part of a national network of academics with 170 campus chapters that emerged after the Hamas massacre. In inflammatory social media posts, FJP accused Rutgers of supporting “genocide.”
According to the AMCHA Initiative, a campus antisemitism watchdog, FJP chapters are pivotal in fueling antisemitic violence, anti-Israel protests, and BDS activity nationwide. Their primary mission is to use classrooms and department resources to promote boycotts of Israel and purge campuses of Zionism and Zionists.
Shockingly, the FJP network is indirectly tied to groups like Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated terrorist organizations.
AMCHA’s report, "Academic Extremism: How a Faculty Network Fuels Campus Unrest," reveals that at schools with active FJP chapters, physical assaults on Jewish students are seven times more likely, and threats of violence and death triple.
At Rutgers, a freshman posted on social media platform Yik Yak, “Go kill him,” targeting a Jewish fraternity member.
FJP’s activism prolongs anti-Israel protests fourfold and emboldens faculty to devote more time to anti-Zionist activities.
This toxic culture of Jew hatred permeates elite institutions like Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and the University of Pennsylvania. At smaller schools without FJP chapters, like my alma mater Vassar, aggressive and vocal anti-Zionist faculty voices intimidate their peers into silence.
To their students, faculty falsely claim anti-Zionist activism is not antisemitism, contradicting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, adopted by 35 nations, including the U.S., which explicitly includes denying Jewish self-determination. By legitimizing Jew hatred, they encourage students to engage in antisemitic behavior while denying they are doing so.
Meanwhile, antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed. Since October 7, campus assaults on Jewish students have risen by a staggering 2,500%, and violent threats, including death threats, have jumped 900%, according to AMCHA.
Universities’ passive responses are disgraceful. Instead of addressing the epidemic of antisemitism, administrators treat it as a PR issue. A December 18, 2024, U.S. House Staff Report on Antisemitism revealed university leaders ignore hostile campus climates, issuing muted responses to antisemitic incidents. Offenders face minimal consequences. At Harvard, suspensions for disruptive protesters were overturned, and probationary periods were so reduced as to be meaningless.
It’s time for action. The academy will not change unless compelled to do so.
President-elect Trump has pledged to confront this rot. He plans to use Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination against Jewish students at federally funded educational institutions, to compel schools to provide protection for Jewish students equal to what is provided for other minorities.
Punishments for Title VI violations must include financial penalties sufficient to halt bad behavior. Currently, token institutional promises of improvement maintain the status quo.
Trump’s strategy includes using federal funding and tax policy to promote merit and viewpoint diversity. It also would eleminate ideological echo chambers and scholar activism, which distort curricula, foster thought conformity, legitimize hatred and violence, and transform classrooms into soapboxes for anti-Israel/anti-American propaganda, is essential.
Deporting foreign students engaged in pro-Hamas activity and restricting foreign countries like Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and China from pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into universities to propagate antisemitism and anti-American sentiment must happen.
Columbia University’s recent appointment of Joseph Massad, a vocal apologist for Hamas atrocities who called them “astounding” and “incredible,” to teach a course on Zionism underscores the urgency for action.
As Rep. Ritchie Torres aptly put it on X, “What’s next at Columbia? David Duke teaching a course on antiracism?”
Instead of producing graduates who understand the complexities of the world and contribute to society, colleges and universities are churning out students indoctrinated with hatred, entering careers in government, medicine, law, industry, education, and the arts, and threatening the fabric of our society.
This is a crisis. Higher education is failing. Bold action is imperative in 2025.
Ziva Dahl is a senior fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Ziva writes and lectures about U.S.-Israel relations, U.S. foreign policy, Israel, Zionism, Antisemitism and BDS on college campuses. Her articles have appeared in such publications as The Hill, New York Daily News, New York Observer, The Washington Times, American Spectator, American Thinker and Jerusalem Post. Read Ziva Dahl's Reports — More Here.
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