Campus antisemitism: ‘social justice’ gone haywire
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas War in October, there has been a notable spike in antisemitism on college campuses across the U.S. Reports have found that 73% of Jewish students have witnessed or experienced antisemitism on American campuses this academic year. An alarming 54% of surveyed Jewish college attendees do not feel safe on campus.
Nearly a quarter of surveyed students expressed sympathy for Hamas, a violent terrorist organization that has a history of suicide bombings, rape, kidnappings, murdering civilians, and genocidal rhetoric.
This is social justice teaching gone haywire. It’s what happens when you romanticize radical political figures, teach Critical Race Theory, and restrict free speech and intellectual diversity on campus. The wide-eyed college students that used to march against inequality now foster hate.
College is a time of experimentation, whether with alcohol or ideas. Rebellion and self-exploration make students more susceptible to radical social justice ideologies such as Marxism. Selling a political philosophy to a freshman is easy — all you really need is a seductive narrative. Look no further than the mythic Che Guevera. Students buy in to his false mystique as a martyr for equality. They even wear t-shirts adorned with his likeness. Why? Because the narrative they’ve been fed is compelling: an underdog commanding his troops through the rough terrain of the Sierra Maestra mountains enveloped in a plume of cigar smoke.
It doesn’t matter that Che scoffed at the concept of judicial evidence, was deeply racist, and condemned gays to concentration camps. Perception can often trump reality. Idealistic students are drawn to glorified images of radical political movements like moths to a flame.
And that’s precisely what’s behind the recent spike in antisemitism on college campuses. The idealistic student can’t be bothered to recognize the more than 1,300 civilians who were killed by Hamas in the current conflict, nor the litany of atrocities that have been committed over the past couple of months. They recognize Hamas as the noble defender of downtrodden Palestine. And Israel, as the oppressor, deserves whatever ill befalls.
It makes perfect sense that they would draw these conclusions, as this binary of “oppressor” and “oppressed” is exactly what they’re being taught in classrooms pushing Critical Race Theory.
When they look at Israel and Palestine, all they see are power dynamics. Israel’s greater economic success, powerful allies, and policies that have adversely impacted Palestine make them a target for the social justice crowd. “Settlers are not civilians” as one Yale American studies professor so succinctly put it.
It’s preposterous. Innocent Jewish citizens should not be punished for the policies of their government. And there is arguably no other group that has been more discriminated against in human history than the Jews.
The only potential antidote for the glamorization and the intellectual justification for left-wing antisemitism is intellectual diversity. Currently, only 26% of professors identify as being conservative and 17% as moderate. The academy is, effectively, an ideological echo chamber. Recognizing this, the spike in antisemitism should come as no surprise. What else should we expect from students when the only narrative they hear is the one that casts Israel as an evil oppressor?
The atmosphere among academics has to change. 40% of liberal professors are afraid of losing their job for making a social justice faux pas. This culture of fear has to end. More college administrators need to outspokenly condemn the support for Hamas and antisemitism on campus, otherwise they passively condone it.
The rise of antisemitism on college campuses might be surprising considering academia’s purported commitment to “tolerance.” But when radical ideologies are glorified and social sciences are fixated on antagonistically dividing people — and when college officials are too timid to denounce anti-Jewish sentiment — the result is a new generation of antisemites.
Peter Clark is a Young Voices Contributor. Follow him on Twitter @blog_logic.
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