Dear John,
It is a dire situation for our nation’s Jewish or Zionist college students. We have all heard horror stories about young women with stars of David around their necks or young men wearing yarmulkes, even members of secular Jewish fraternities and sororities, being spat upon or being verbally or physically harassed on campus. If they plan to hold a pro-Israel event, oftentimes their flyers are defaced with swastikas.
Worse: According to a survey by stopantisemitism.org, many young Jews are reporting feeling ashamed to wear symbols that identify them as Jews, or to speak up in defense of the very existence of the state of Israel.
Just in March of 2023, alone, according to the AMCHA Initiative, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign at Harvard held a “vigil for Palestinian lives”, where they demonized the state of Israel, calling it an “apartheid state” that commits “massacres”. This is commonplace. At the University of Chicago, Students for Justice in Palestine held an event whose advertisement compared Israel with apartheid South Africa. A Jewish student at Haverford College was forced to leave a birthday party when the host found out that she was Jewish and had attended Birthright.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. Every day, we hear more and more of such painful, discriminatory assaults on our nation’s Jewish students.
We are all painfully aware of the steep uptick of antisemitic incidents in the United States. According to a recent American Jewish Committee report, fully 89 percent of American Jews feel that antisemitism is a problem in the United States, and 82 percent believe it has increased over the past 5 years.
But it is our American Jewish college students that are on the front lines.
And many do not report these incidents but suffer their grave injustices in silence.
And when a student complains, (which is rare), they usually are not taken seriously by their university administrators. Although universities now have Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Departments, Jews are now considered part of “white privilege “ in this country, and the complaints and the rights of Jewish students are met with a dismissive attitude.
For far too long, Jewish and pro-Israel students have not only been intimidated by their peers but oftentimes, by their professors and teaching assistants. For example, in November of 2021, at John Hopkins University, Rasha Anayah, a T.A. posted on Twitter, “ethical dilemma: if you have to grade a zionist (sic) students exam, do you still give them all their points even though they support your ethnic cleansing? Like idk.” When 77% of the respondents replied, “Free Palestine! Fail them,” she wrote, “like I agree but also too many of you want me to get fired.”
No punitive actions were taken against her.
This would not have happened when it comes to any other minority group. There are Constitutional protections for most minority students, as spelled out in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That means certain standards of behavior are codified, and therefore legally actionable. It means the universities, and K through 12 schools, are to be held accountable for such biased and hate-infested atrocities.
EMET is here to try to fight this injustice. We are working with Congress, almost every day to, among many other issues, reintroduce the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism so that university presidents and deans can recognize antisemitism when they see it.
If anyone were to punter the “N” word on a college campus, he would be immediately expelled, as well he should be. Yet, somehow, when a Jew is described as an “F’ing Zionist Pig”, that is considered freedom of speech.
And we, at EMET, firmly believe that what happens on the college campus does not simply remain on the college campus. Our nation’s school systems and universities are incubators of ideas. If there is just one minority group for whom it is considered okay to threaten, intimidate, and bully, our nation’s students will graduate and bring these attitudes into their workplaces. And it will help shape their policy positions, both toward Jews and towards the state of Israel.
This intimidation, harassment, and bullying of our Jewish and Zionist students have gone on for far too long. We need one federal standard of antisemitism, not one that varies from state to state.
And maybe then, our nation’s Jewish and Zionist students will be able to walk freely on college campuses, wearing symbols that proudly identify them as Jews, and they will feel free to speak up in defense of the one Jewish state in the world, the nation-state of Israel, without fear of intimidation, bullying or physical harassment.
We are asking for your help. We cannot do this alone.
We ask you to please partner with us to the greatest extent you comfortably can.
Invest in EMET. Invest in the Truth
Thank you very much.
