Anti-Semitism and the demise of the American University

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CounterCurrent: anti-Semitism Edition
Don’t Cry for Them, Academia
Anti-Semitism and the demise of the American University

CounterCurrent: anti-Semitism Edition is a monthly newsletter of the National Association of Scholars’ newsletter, which will document, expose, and explain the anti-Semitism on today’s college campuses.
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Category: Israel, Free Speech, Current Events, Higher Ed;
Reading Time: ~4 minutes
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Credentials without wisdom and diplomas with debt are what come to mind when thinking about higher education. According to a recent poll ([link removed]) commissioned by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and conducted by the University of Chicago, only 28 percent of Americans had a “great deal” of confidence in colleges and universities. From 2015 to 2023, confidence in higher education fell ([link removed]) from 57 percent to 36 percent. Faith in universities was already dying, and now it is nearly finished. In the recent poll, the largest drop ([link removed]) was among “Democrats, women and younger Americans 18-34.” Campus anti-Semitism explains much
of why academia has reached late-stage luster.

In the past, the phrase “Western anti-Semitism” conjured images of medieval churches, nineteenth century Russian pogroms, and German gas chambers. In the twenty-first century, the college campus is included in this list. At Columbia University, three administrators were recently put on leave ([link removed]) for downplaying and dismissing anti-Semitism via text message. At the end of last year, University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill stepped ([link removed]) down after disastrous testimony before Congress in which she argued that anti-Semitism was “context-dependent.” At the University of Southern California (USC
([link removed]) ), the New School ([link removed]) , Northeastern ([link removed]) , New York University ([link removed]) , UCLA ([link removed]) , and elsewhere, groups of faculty have stated support for the Palestinians and student protestors who back them. Since October 7, over 2,100 were arrested ([link removed]) at campus protests across the country. From top administrators to students, mainstream American academia is anti-Semitic to the core. But you may be asking, how did this decrease faith in the Ivory Tower?

Today’s anti-Semitic student mobs, encouraged by professors and administrative enablers, are more than agitators. Today’s graduates will someday have power inside our nation’s courts, corporations, and culture. That pipeline from college to decision-making power has triggered a justifiable alarm within various sectors of American economic and cultural life. In an opinion piece published last December, John Ellis, a professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, argued that higher education has metastasized ([link removed]) into a “threat to America.” Rather than function as a beacon to help build an ([link removed]) “advanced society,” academia has become an ideological cesspit. According to the editor
([link removed]) of Guitar Chalk, a website for musical enthusiasts, college has become a pricey venue for propagating a “social agenda” rather than offering economic or educational benefits for students who choose to get degrees. At the University of Pennsylvania, David Magerman, a donor ([link removed]) to the university, opted to give $5 million to Israeli universities over his alma mater due to the school’s atrocious record on anti-Semitism. Magerman stated ([link removed]) that the “American Empire is ending.” Combined, the professor, the donor, and the online magazine editor offer a snapshot of the emerging consensus on higher education that it is simply out of touch at best, and evil at worst.

The dark secret of anti-Semitism is that ignorance alone cannot explain it away or absolve those who adhere to it. If anything, the most vivid episodes of history’s anti-Semitism have begun with a country’s elites. The Inquisitors ([link removed]) of early-modern Spain were from the elite of the Catholic world, hand-picked by monarchs and sanctioned by the Pope. In addition to founding the Inquisition, Pope Sixtus IV (1414-1484 AD) oversaw the construction of the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican Library. He also founded Uppsala University in Sweden. Half a millennium later, the Nazis emerged not out of an uneducated rabble, but out of Germany’s elites. Proto-Nazi intelligentsia ([link removed]) carefully created a deep philosophical basis for their worldview and set about promoting it. At least 80 ([link removed]) members of the Nazi SS
were German intellectuals. Other than the ideology in question, today’s elite anti-Semites are engaged in the same exercise with their theories of oppression and intersectionality ([link removed]) and efforts to translate theory into activism.

Adherents of intersectionality view the world through a matrix ([link removed]) of “marginalized” groups—a binary society divided into the “oppressed” and the “oppressor.” This idea of a “matrix” of oppression is the philosophical glue behind several academic fields built around ideas of shared grievance with a consistent lack of methodological rigor. While pervasive throughout today’s colleges and universities, research driven by intersectionality is fueled by confirmation bias more than anything scientific. Rather than trying to disprove a theory, studies on intersectionality rely on piling up data favorable to the argument. Over time, this creates fields lacking any notion of objectivity; instead, it lends academic weight to ideology rather than the production and dissemination of knowledge. In other words, many ideas found on today’s campus are worthless. Now, the world is taking notice.

Campus anti-Semites seeking to explain away their hatred for Israel as the only Jewish country would quickly point out that they are animated by moral outrage over the deaths of Palestinians rather than any intellectual conviction. Days after the October 7 attacks, faculty at the University of Minnesota’s Department for Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies stated their support for Palestine, noting their own ([link removed]) “rich history of studying transnational geopolitics and settler colonialism.” In expressing their rage ([link removed]) for Israel’s “apartheid system,” the faculty asserted that “Palestine is a feminist issue.” At UC Berkeley ([link removed]) two and a half weeks after the Hamas attack, faculty decried the “Palestinian people in Gaza facing genocidal Israeli state violence,” and called for more universities to “stand wi
th, and not against, the subjugated, brutalized, displaced, and terrorized Palestinian people.”

Much of academia is more motivated by a hatred of the West, anti-Semitism, and a special antipathy toward Israel than it is about actual atrocities on principle. If academia had a moral center and outrage about suffering, campus outrage mobs would have formed over the ethnic cleansing ([link removed]) of Armenian Artsakh by Azerbaijan, the plight of black Nigerian ([link removed]) Christians, and young pro-democracy Iranians jailed and murdered ([link removed]) by Iran’s theocrats. If you don’t remember campus protests over these other atrocities, it’s because there were none. In the world of intersectionality, these other groups are similar to Israel by virtue of their being too Western. That is why academia supports Hamas and cares little for these other causes.

Rumors about higher education’s deteriorating quality have been circling around for decades; however, faith in academia is finally reaching a nadir. If high financial costs, and opportunity costs in time were not enough to dissuade students and their families from college enrollment, anti-Semitism might be the last warning needed. Jew-hating mobs roaming “elite” institutions should serve as the final nail in the coffin for a dilapidated system that offers credentials without substance and anger instead of skills. Right now, the campus activists are coming for Jews. Thankfully, these activists have succeeded in alienating themselves from the rest of civil society.

Until next week.

Ian Oxnevad

Senior Fellow for Foreign Affairs and Security Studies
National Association of Scholars
Read the Article ([link removed])
For more on Israel, free speech, current events, and higher ed:
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July 22, 2024


** Women Lead Campus Protests, Men Outperform in Civic Literacy ([link removed])
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Samuel J. Abrams

Men and women are increasingly diverging politically, a notably pronounced trend on college campuses.

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July 09, 2024


** Safetyism and the Tentifada: Modern Campus Protests Undermine Intellectual Rigor and Erode Higher Education ([link removed])
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Brendan Dooley

The spring of 2024 witnessed the startling reemergence of anti-Semitism on the quads of many leading universities.

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June 24, 2024


** Can Harvard Faculty and Students Trust a Dean Who Wants to Punish Speech? ([link removed])
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Samuel J. Abrams and Steven McGuire

Faculty, alumni, and others have voiced concerns about not just academic freedom but opaque university governance structures that lack transparency.


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