Can College Campuses Get a Grip on Antisemitism?
If they don’t, expect a collapse of authority like what I saw as a student in the 1960s, says William A. Galston of The Wall Street Journal.
Article Quote: "Jewish students, faculty and staff reported that when they took their stories of misconduct on campus and in the classroom to administrators, their complaints often weren’t taken seriously, and some students were advised to seek mental-health counselling instead of redress. A senior administrator told the Stanford task force that 'at the end of the day, antisemitism is institutional, there is nothing I can do about it.' (Imagine the outcry if this administrator said the same thing about anti-black racism.)", writes William A. Galston of The Wall Street Journal.
Here is William A. Galston's entire article:
By William A. Galston The Wall Street Journal
As college students began returning to campus, news broke of Hamas’s cold-blooded murder of six hostages in a tunnel under Rafah. This crime should remind everyone how the Gaza war began, and in a better world it would deter student radicals from chanting pro-Hamas slogans.
The real issue, however, is whether campus administrators have learned anything from their disastrous mishandling of campus protests last academic year—and whether they are prepared to respond differently now.
High-level task forces are at work in many of the most visible sites of disruption, and two of these groups, representing?Columbia?and?Stanford, have issued detailed reports of their findings and recommendations.
What they uncovered is deeply disturbing. Large numbers of Jewish students report harassment, intimidation and even physical assault. Students wearing yarmulkes have been spat on, humiliated, and shoved up against walls. Necklaces with Jewish symbols have been ripped from their necks. Jewish students have been chased off campus by groups threatening violence, and many avoid walking alone on campus. Some have been excluded from public spaces. An Israeli student at Columbia reported that when she went to the university’s health services, no one came to see her, and she overheard a conversation between two healthcare professionals in the next room during which one refused to treat her because of her national origin.
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The Columbia task force found that “some critiques of Zionism on campus in recent months have incorporated traditional antisemitic tropes about secretive power, money, global conspiracies, bloodthirstiness, and comparisons of Zionists to Nazis or rodents.” The Stanford task force concluded that “antisemitism exists today on the Stanford campus in ways that are widespread and pernicious.”
At both campuses, there were prominent examples of teachers abusing their authority to stigmatize and humiliate Jewish students. At both, Jewish students, faculty and staff reported that when they took their stories of misconduct on campus and in the classroom to administrators, their complaints often weren’t taken seriously, and some students were advised to seek mental-health counseling instead of redress. A senior administrator told the Stanford task force that “at the end of the day, antisemitism is institutional, there is nothing I can do about it.” (Imagine the outcry if this administrator said the same thing about antiblack racism.)
At both campuses there has been a persistent reluctance to state clear rules of conduct or to hold violators accountable. At Stanford, encampments persisted even though they violated university rules. Students, faculty, staff and alumni have expressed concern that “the University’s inability to enforce its rules forbidding unauthorized overnight camping has generated a larger climate of impunity and contempt for rules and norms,” the task force reported. Columbia’s task force concluded that “the surge in violent antisemitic and xenophobic rhetoric that shook our campus this past academic year has revealed that the consensus around our norms and values no longer exists, and that the rules and procedures we thought we were operating under are not working or are insufficient to address our current problems.”
Based on my three decades as a faculty member of two large state universities and a short stint in an administrative post, let me offer a few suggestions. Colleges and universities should forbid conduct that disrupts teaching, learning and research. They shouldn’t allow anyone to interfere with these core activities through classroom disruptions, noisy demonstrations, or actions designed to prevent invited speakers from expressing their views. They should establish reasonable limits on the time, place and manner of public speech and expression. They should resist any effort to close off campus public spaces for any individuals or groups. They should treat complaints of misconduct with concern and respect, regardless of the identity of the complainant, and administrators who violate this norm should be disciplined.
Rules mean nothing unless they are enforced. All incoming students should receive not only written notice of campus regulations but also mandatory, in-person briefings to explain the rules and answer questions about them, including the consequences of violating them. For serious violations, there should be a system of escalating punishments—a warning after the first offence, suspension for at least a semester after the second, and expulsion without the possibility of readmission for the third.
In cases involving major disruptions, top officials, not mid-level administrators, should take the lead. The response to interference with core functions should be enforcement, not negotiation. If presidents and provosts aren’t serious about institutional rules and norms, no one else will be, and the outcome will be a repetition of the collapse of authority that I saw as a student in the 1960s.