I've said for many years that there's a left-wing anti-Semitism problem at US universities.
People didn't believe me, or thought I was exaggerating.
This became especially apparently in 2019 when Trump signed an executive order requiring antisemitism allegations to be investigated on campuses the same way as other forms of accused bigotry.
The left complained about this executive order, citing "free speech" concerns. LOL. So your free speech is being violated when you're investigated for Jew bashing, but not when you're investigated for misgendering someone? Makes loads of sense.
Anyway, the truth is that the left has long hated Israel, and by extension, any Jews who do not loudly condemn Israel. This sentiment has long been pervasive on college campuses, while right-wing antisemitism is virtually nonexistent because... well, most white supremacists don't go to four year universities.
Leftists feared that Trump's 2019 Title VI order would expose the dirty little secret that colleges have long tolerated left wing antisemitism.
Then, for 4 years, things went mostly quiet. Trump's order did not have that much effect, and campus antisemitism was still fairly common. Still, who was going to report on it? The left wing media? Not likely. The NY Times actually did a fairly decent piece about 2 years ago about left wing antisemitism (though they laughably "both sides" the issue, claiming right wing antisemitism is a problem at colleges as well). But at least they were willing to call out the problem.
Fast forward to the aftermath of October 7, 2023.
There have been blatant displays of antisemitism on college campuses, including chants of "from the river to the sea" (calls for Palestinians to take over all of Israel and murder all Jews there) and "globalize the intifada" (calls for Muslims to murder any Jews found in the world who show support for Israel).
There is little debate that these phrases are basically calling for both the complete destruction of Israel and murder of all Jews (except perhaps the ones who express support for the Intifada!)
Despite that, these demonstrations highly featuring such chants have been allowed to take place on college campuses.
Keep in mind that this is NOT a first amendment question. I agree that such chants should be allowed on public streets, even if disgusting. However, college campuses have not allowed free speech when it comes to any form of bigotry. You are not allowed to call for the murder of blacks, gays, trans people, or any other minority group, or you will be expelled and banned from campus. In fact, you can get in trouble on a college campus for simply "misgendering" someone! Apparently it's okay to call for the death of all Jews, though.
University presidents have been dancing around this issue for the past 2 months, because in reality they agree with the protesters. They are far left themselves, and feel that Israel is an evil oppressor. They do not mind the chants calling for the extermination of Jews who support Israel, but of course cannot say this out loud. At the same time, they do not want to do anything to restrict or punish such speech, even while restricting all other forms of speech against other minority groups.
Well, this all came to a head this week, as Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik grilled three prominent university presidents, where lots of antisemitic hatred has been brewing for the past two months, with zero consequence.
Harvard's Claudine Gay, the University of Pennsylvania's Liz Magill and the MIT's Sally Kornbluth appeared before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce to explain and defend their approaches.
Stefanik completely owned them. None of these women denied that genocidal statements against Jews were made on their campus, but rather attempted to claim that "it depends upon the context" as to whether genocidal statements against Jews were okay!
In fact, there general position was that statements supporting Jewish genocide were okay by university standards, so long as they didn't directly target individual students!
Do you think you could make statements about black genocide or gay genocide at any of these schools? Of course not. And these women really had no answer.
Now there's increasing calls for all three to either resign or get fired.
Penn's Liz Magill further stepped on herself by releasing this stilted non-apology clarification of what she meant, claiming that she wasn't focused on the question properly during the Congressional hearings, and would seek to change Penn policy regarding antisemitism. Right.
https://twitter.com/Penn/status/1732549608230862999
Laughably, Penn disabled replies to this tweet, and it was received extremely poorly by almost everyone. Even Democratic Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro called her behavior unacceptable, and opened the possibility that she might be fired.
It is amazing to me that three major university Presidents could not make the simplest of simple statements: Calling for Jewish genocide is always unacceptable on campus, and anyone caught doing so will be disciplined. They all refused to say this, despite given multiple chances.
Instead, they tried to dance around it with bureaucrat-speak, and it became clear as day that they really had no problem with calls for Jewish genocide.
Slowly I am watching fellow Jews wake up to the fact that the Democratic Party has hated them for a long time, and they've been supporting the wrong side.
I've been saying this for many years.