^^ University ca,puses become battlefields of Jew hate. How did we as a nation allow this blasphemy to happen ?

The vicious pogrom unleashed on October 7th by Islamic terrorists on the citizens of southern Israel unleashed an equally barbaric wave of Jew hate at some of America’s elite universities. We all saw it: the hate shouts, the torchy marches, the sit-downs, the mob violence, the vandalism. Much of it recalled, painfully, similar mob criminality seen at summer 2020’s BLM riots. Yet this was different. The BLM riots arose in response to a grave injustice. These Jew hate riots arose in support of a grave injustice.

What happened, one may well ask ? How could the campuses of prized universities — sites of learning, of education, of the search for wisdom — incubate riots of hate celebrating a pogrom ?

I wish I did not have an answer to this question. I wish it were inexplicable.

But it isn’t.

A brief look back at how it came to be will suffice before I post suggestions for reforming our tainted universities:

The Jew hate riots at universities — later to include many less than elite institutions as well — grew out of what appears to be decades of conscious decisions by those universities to hire and promote purveyors of unhinged anti-semitic theories about Israel, and by extension, about all Jews. It was said that because millions of European Jews fled to Israel after World war 2, that Israel was a “colonial” state, and, worse in the view of the anti-semitic theorists, a white persons’ colonial state. To these theorists, many of them marxist, all the evil in the political world is the fault of white European people, who, in the theorists’ minds, “colonized’ black and brown people, exploited them, made them second class citizens, stole their resources, etc. European Jews, however persecuted they had been, were white and now were colonizers and exploiters of brown people : the Palestinians, who, according to the theorists, were the rightful inhabitants of the Holy land and were dark skinned and thus very much a part of the populations and lands overtaken and brutalized by white Europeans.

That every assertion in this theory could be easily shown false — the Arabic Conquest, which continues, was the actual colonization; most Israeli immigrants come from North Africa and the Middle East and are decidedly not “white” — did not dissuade the universities from hiring its spokespeople and giving them room to propagate and mis-educate students. At the same time, universities made special effort to recruit and admit Palestinian students, who were, of course, happy to be cadres for the Palestinian-as-victim theory. Eventually, two organizations were established, first at one university, later spreading to very many, advocating the Palestinains-as-marxist-heroes theory : Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslim for Palestine.

Of these, the SJP seems by far the most lethal. Based in the universities’ Palestinian students, but eventually attracting many non-Palestinian students persuaded by its speakers and by faculty promoting the “white colonizer” marxist theory embedded in university curricula, the SJP appears to be the main campus organizer of current Jew hate.

I suppose that the SJP’s campus battles would be of interest chiefly to alumni of the affected universities, were it not injecting itself into street thuggery, vandalism, and bullying. Indeed, many alumni have reacted against the present campus Jew hate by cancelling donations, calling for university deans to resign, and by themselves resigning from university oversight boards. Some have even filed civil rights lawsuits against universities that have not acted to protect, much less defend, their Jewish students and faculty. Yet the SJP”s campus anti-semitism is not the chiefest Jew hate afoot. Its anti-Jew protests have been picked up by organized socialist politicals (such as the Democratic Socalist Alliance, or DSA, here in the US). It is these actors who have raised campus Jew hate from a college thing to a public threat.

That’s a story for another day, however. Today’s story is the reformation of our universities. Alumni and donors have already made their disgust plain, their severance of ties a fact. Negation, though, cannot be the last word. So here are my suggestions for active eform :

( 1 ) expel from campus all organizations promoting hatred of Jews and/or the abolition of Israel and all students or faculty advocating the same in any manner beyond mere speech.

( 2 ) condemn calls for the genocide of Jews., and expel any student or faculty who speaks thus. There is no First Amendment protection for incitement to mass murder.

( 3 ) tie in to community police forces and the FBI for reporting acts of anti-Semitism and requesting, if advisable, their immediate response including arrests and prosecution; and where the subject is not a citizen, revocation of their student visa.

( 4 ) cancellation of all university offices based on, or promoting any sort of identity rules, prohibitions, or institutions or any other devices which would classify students and faculty in any other way than competence (one sole exception : geographic diversity).

( 5 ) irrevocable commitment to the values, ethics, and ideals of the Enlightenment and Western civilisation. Said commitment to encompass admissions — any student seeking admission must pledge, in writing, to embrace and promote the values, ethics, and ideals of Western civilisation — and faculty and administrative hires. No one has a personal right to attend our universities, which are quite free to make the commitments I call for.

( 6 ) curriculum requirements to include courses in Western civilisation philosophy, American and European history, American civics, and the American Constitution.

( 7 ) cancellation of all foreign money donations tied to nations or individuals that espouse and/or facilitate Jew hate or terrorism.

Students or faculty not wishing to embrace these commitments and these values are free to apply tio otherr universities elsewhere.

I am sure that many of you will have other reformative suggestions to make. Nor do I cnsider my own list written in stone, although its basic principles are inviolable for me.

Let us educate, not falsify; encourage ideals, not undermine them;, and let us pursue character and principle, because facts are not enough and theories are ephemeral.

— Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere