Two recent incidents of antisemitic hate have been met with a yawn from university administrators.
Two recent incidents of antisemitic hate have been met with a yawn from university administrators.
G eorge Washington University’s beleaguered Jewish community is reeling from twin incidents of antisemitism on campus — and is still waiting for the school’s administration to show that it cares.
During the Jewish high-holiday season last month, activists from Students for Justice in Palestine staged a demonstration outside the center of Jewish life at GW, the Hillel building, shouting, “Israel is a terrorist state!” They were protesting a speech given on campus by Doron Tenne, a former Israeli Defense Forces intelligence official, at the invitation of two Jewish student groups. They held signs and chanted for the use of violence against Israel and the Jewish people: “There is only one solution, intifada revolution.” (The word “intifada” references periods in Israeli history when hundreds of Jews were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in suicide bombings and stabbings.) Less than a week earlier, signs reading “Zionists F*** Off” had been pasted on the light posts around the Hillel building and affixed to a bench on GW Hillel’s property.
After the protest, GW Hillel lamented that the two recent incidents of antisemitism had debilitated the organization’s capacity to serve as a home away from home for Jewish students on campus. GW For Israel (GWI), one of the two student groups that hosted Tenne’s speech, published a statement of its own calling on the university and the leaders of all other GW student groups to condemn the heinous demonstration and “make it clear that [antisemitism] has no place on our campus.”
Yet rather than taking the steps necessary to prevent a repeat of these two incidents, or worse, all the GW administration has done in the weeks since is issue a meekly worded pronouncement lamenting the “distress” recent events may have caused Jewish students and reiterating its commitment to “diversity.” (When asked for clarification, the administration directed National Review to that statement.)
This sorry excuse for an expression of empathy is nothing more than tone-deaf disregard for 32 percent of the school’s student body. Imagine what the university would have done if any other group had faced similar treatment on campus. There’d be a years-long reckoning with the legacy of [insert form of prejudice that isn’t Jewish hatred]. There’d be sit-ins, walk-outs, die-ins, and changes to the core curriculum. Nothing short of a complete scholastic overhaul would be accepted.
When antisemitism is at issue, though, it merits only a measly, vague statement that proposes no meaningful remedies. Make no mistake, there is an easy way to prevent something like this from happening again: a ban on demonstrations outside centers of communal life. This wouldn’t impinge upon any student’s right to freedom of speech; basic time, place, and manner restrictions like these are consonant with the First Amendment. But no such restrictions appear to be forthcoming here.
Many Jewish students on campus feel neglected by the administration’s inaction. “I feel deeply offended not only by the incident but [by] the administration’s failure to meaningfully address the incident,” says sophomore Sabrina Soffer. “The fact that this protest occurred during Jewish high holidays confirms the demonstrators’ discriminatory intent and makes me question whether Jews like me are safe on campus, irrespective of one’s orientation towards Israel.”
Soffer is not alone. Ezra Meyer, the former president of GWI, says there’s no doubt that the target of the protest was the entirety of the Jewish student body. “It’s impossible to disassociate the term ‘intifada’ with the indiscriminate murder of civilians. It’s a clear endorsement of terror attacks against Jews. What else could a call for globalizing the intifada mean other than advocacy for violence against diaspora Jewry?” Meyer also believes the GW administration has failed in its duty to protect students from threats of violence and intimidation, regardless of their race, religion, or creed. “This climate of fear is the product of years of delinquency,” he adds.
Scott Phillips, a former Midwest Christian outreach director for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) who now serves as the executive director of Passages, a pro-Israel Christian organization, says GW isn’t alone in its ignominious acquiescence to antisemitism. “We’ve seen incidents like this pop up in recent years. GW is just the tip of the iceberg,” Phillips says.
In fairness to GW, he’s not wrong. Jew hatred is a bicoastal phenomenon. Berkeley is currently experiencing a spate of antisemitic incidents. Wellesley has also witnessed similar displays of antisemitism, as has GW’s cross-town rival, Georgetown.
GW’s namesake, our first president, welcomed Jewish people into this country with open arms at a time when Jews were subjected to persecution, violence and bigotry across the globe. He did so because he was committed to the people of the book. In the spirit of religious toleration unique to America at the time of the nation’s founding, and still distinctive in many respects, he offered these words of support to the republic’s nascent Jewish community:
For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.
More than 230 years later, GW has a clear choice: It can either embrace this legacy of toleration, or tacitly accept antisemitic hate on its campus. What it should do is obvious. What it will do, sadly, is not.