The horrors of Hamas’ deadly October 7th attack on Israel, in which nearly 1,200 people were murdered and over two hundred more taken captive, were not limited to that day, or even to the region. Nearly one year later, the reactions of many progressives to the events of that dark day are still a horror to many American Jews. Perhaps the most frightening episode was the avalanche of anti-Israel protests that rocked college campuses in the spring of 2024. Displays of pro-Hamas support and outright demonization of not just Israel but the Jewish people as a whole were numerous and unabashed. Perhaps more shocking was university presidents’ and administrators’ inability – or unwillingness – to protect the Jewish students under threat.
With a new school year in session, the events of the previous year are being put into perspective. In light of the high-profile resignations of elite university presidents as well as lawsuits and fleeing donors, several schools have started to reassess their approach to antisemitism on their campuses. In fact, the College and University Presidents Summit on Campus Antisemitism was held on September 22 and 23 at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. Nearly 80 university presidents and chancellors attended the two-day summit organized by Hillel International, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the American Council on Education (ACE). Presidents who attended “benefited from panel discussions with leading subject-matter experts that explored the deep roots of contemporary antisemitism, discussed the relationship between free speech imperatives and creating a safe campus for all students and delved into applications of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act,” as well as participated in workshops to craft strategies that will foster inclusion and combat hate.
This summit is a good first step, but it’s too soon to tell whether these strategies will be effectively implemented on campus. In an article for The Jerusalem Post, Adam Milstein, a prominent venture philanthropist based in Los Angeles with deep experience and connections in the Jewish nonprofit world, discusses how universities can ensure they don’t repeat the mistakes of last year. The charitable foundation he co-founded with his wife in 2000, the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation, is committed to fostering a network of nonprofits that strengthen American values, support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and combat hate and bigotry in all forms. The Milstein Family Foundation works closely with organizations like StandWithUs, Israel on Campus Coalition, and Alums for Campus Fairness which do invaluable work on campus to combat antisemitism and the demonization of Israel. But these organizations can’t do all the work on their own.
Milstein has laid out three clear strategies universities must take in order to rebuild the integrity of academia. First, he argues that campus leadership must not allow a “loud, misinformed, angry minority and outside instigators to overtake campus life” as happened in the spring. One of the biggest challenges universities face is that non-students and paid outside agitators participate in and greatly contribute to the fervor of these protests. And even though these protests are “not representative of the views of the majority of college students,” administrators not only appease but often encourage demonstrators and bad actors, “allowing them to maintain their disruptive presence on campus.” To Milstein, this makes a mockery of what universities are supposed to be: “Academic life in America used to consist of debating Plato and exploring biology and economics.”
Despite campus agitators’ oversized share of attention, they have “zero impact on any of the policies they claim to care about,” says Milstein. Instead, their actions adversely impact students’ mental and physical well-being. They even prevent students from accessing parts of campus and attending class. All of this amounts to a negative public image of our most hallowed academic institutions, and over time, this will affect their enrollments and endowments even more than it already has.
From Darkness to Light.
— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) April 29, 2024
Pro Israel and pro America celebration countering the pro Hamas riots at UCLA. pic.twitter.com/h21kIdk814
Milstein’s second task for universities is to “reclaim the ‘American’ in their founding charters.” Universities have long been the breeding ground for anti-imperialist, anti-colonial worldviews, in which the U.S. is indicted as an evil and oppressive power. The anti-Israel protests have brought this to the forefront. As agitators “spew anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment,” they are also “bent on rewriting Western history and placing American history on the chopping block.” They see the U.S., Israel, and the entire West as “white supremacists, nationalistic colonizers,” convinced they must burn the system to the ground. Milstein urges university leadership to recognize that this ideology doesn’t just threaten Jews, but all Americans and the values our society is built upon.
Third, Milstein insists that universities must “reinforce their sovereignty.” In addition to outside agitators fanning the flames of campus protests, so too do foreign actors in the Middle East. Organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace “take advantage of lax campus policies to infect campus life,” and they often take their marching orders from the jihadi “propaganda machines” operating out of Tehran and Doha. Therefore it’s vital campus leadership educate students about the dangers of unsourced and biased social media information. Administrators must “reassert themselves as the gatekeepers to the truth. They can only do so when they reject the anti-Western propaganda so many of their students embrace.”
The 2024-2025 school year is a pivotal moment for university leadership. Will they continue to allow the proliferation of anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment, often fueled by their own irresponsible faculty? Or will they finally start to take meaningful steps toward change, such as Columbia’s revision of its anti-discriminatory guidelines to classify the word “Zionist” as harassment when used to target Jews or Israelis? If campus administrators follow Milstein’s three simple steps, they can “reclaim their institutional gravitas” and prevent their schools’ ugly slide into scandal and eventual obsolescence.