Antisemitism on College Campuses: Professors Speak Out

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[DESCRIPTION] Images of Touro University students are displayed on the screen and fade out as the Touro University logo fades in.

[TEXT] TOURO TALKS TOURO UNIVERSITY, Antisemitism on College Campuses: Professors Respond, February 26, 2024, Touro Talks is sponsored by Robert and Arlene Rosenberg

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish speaks to the camera in a library setting.

[TEXT] Dr. Alan Kadish

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Welcome, everyone, tonight. We have what I hope will be an interesting and serious conversation about antisemitism on college campuses. We have four fantastic guests tonight, professors at major American universities, who've spoken and written about antisemitism on their campus and antisemitism on college campuses in general. I thought we'd begin by asking each of them to talk a little bit about what they've experienced over the past few months and what they feel the atmosphere on their own campus is, as well as what they've done, both locally and nationally, to combat antisemitism on college campuses? After those formal presentations, we'll have a bit of a discussion, in which I'll pose some questions to the panel.

In the interest of trying to remember everything, I'm going to introduce each of the panelists as they speak. And we'll introduce Shai Davidi, Claire Finkelstein, Yael Shiloh-Malawsky, and Steven Solomon in order, alphabetical order.

And so Shai is first. He's an assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School. His research examines people's everyday judgments of themselves, other people, and society as a whole. He studies the psychological forces that shape, distort, and bias people's perceptions of the world. He has his PhD in social psychology from Cornell. He's spoken prominently and publicly about the Hamas-Israel war, and has been accused of a number of unfortunate things as a result of speaking out.

Shai, welcome. And tell us a little bit about what your experience has been on campus since October 7th and what you see on the Columbia campus?

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Shai Davidai appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] And we know about your YouTube video. So you can tell us a little bit about that as well.

[DESCRIPTION] Shai Davidai speaks to the camera in an office setting.

[TEXT] Shai Davidai

[Shai Davidai] Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, everyone, for showing up. I've been looking at the people that are coming in, from all over the country, and I saw also from all over North America. So this is incredible. To me, it shows that we have a real desire to fight this ill. And people want to know more how to fight it. And so I'm looking forward to the Q&A, the conversation.

I can tell you a little bit about myself. You only gave me five minutes. I'll be very brief. But I grew up in Israel. I'm an Israeli professor. I moved to the US for my graduate school in 2010. So I've been here for 14 years.

Throughout those 14 years, inevitably, I've seen a lot of reactions to flare-ups in Israel and Palestine and the different rounds of fighting that there's been. I have never seen things the way they are right now. And here is why.

Up until October 7th, there was an understanding, or at least a pretense, that everything that we see on campuses is completely ideological. There is this understanding that you take one side or you take the other side because based on the policies of one side versus the other side. Right now, what we're seeing is something completely different. Right now, we're not seeing differences in ideology, differences in politics. We're seeing hatred. And that's what led me to speak up, that what we're seeing as a reaction to October 7th.

And we have to remember, everything we're seeing right now is a reaction to October 7th. When people tell you that they are protesting Israel's operation/war in Gaza, that's a complete lie, if you want to be a bit blunt, or misrepresentation, if you want to be gracious, because the protest on campuses started on October 8th. We, at Columbia, on October 9th, already had two big organizations put out a very strongly worded letter, calling October 7th, a day of resistance; calling Hamas fighters, freedom fighters; calling this an historic day, and basically apologize justifying, excusing, and even celebrating October 7th.

The thing that's most important for me to convey and I'm looking forward to the conversations that we will all have is that what we're seeing now is just another mutation in antisemitism. And this is an important thing to remember because a lot of people are asking themselves, is this does this count as antisemitism, does it not count for antisemitism? And in my book, if you are motivated by hatred towards the Jewish group as a group and the Jewish endeavor as an endeavor, then, by definition, you are antisemitic.

Now, if you think of antisemitism as some sort of pandemic or epidemic that happens, you can see that it ebbs and flows throughout history. And every time, the virus mutates itself. So in the Middle Ages, in the 13th, 14th, 15th century, antisemitism was mostly focused on religion differences in religion persecuting the Jews for practicing different religion. Then, in the 19th, 20th century, with the advent of science, antisemitism mutated. And now it was persecuting Jews based on race and ethnicity. And the whole idea is, that led to the Nazi extermination camps.

What we're seeing now is another mutation, where antisemitism is now focused on Israel as the land of the Jewish people. And what we're seeing now is that, unlike in history, where antisemitism was the domain of the working class, lower class individuals, now we're seeing that the left-wing antisemitism in the United States and in Europe is actually the domain of the highly educated so people with master's degrees, with PhDs. And that's the most dangerous kind of antisemitism because it's antisemitism that masks itself as something different, using different words, using different academic terms.

And this is why it's so extremely important that we do not let the other side if there are sides here do not let the other side define for us what antisemitism is, and that we be very, very clear what antisemitism is and isn't. And I'm happy to talk more about that.

I can say only one thing about Columbia, because you asked me to say what's the what's the feel like at Columbia? It depends on the time of day. It depends on the day and it depends on the week. You can come on a Monday, walk through campus and feel like there's nothing. If you put on blinders, maybe you don't notice all the posters and the stickers and the flyers. And you feel like everything is normal. Then you come up another day, or just stay a few more hours, and all of a sudden you'll have a protest.

We had a protest today. A walkout from an academic discussion, where the students felt that that was not OK because the academic discussion involved a proud Jewish professor. So it really does depend on where you are at what time of day.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Shai Davidai appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Shai Davidai] But it is a problem that we need to keep fighting, so that every day, no matter what time of day, we'll have a campus that's free of antisemitism.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Claire Finkelstein appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Thank you very much. The next panelist is Claire Finkelstein, the Biddle Professor of Law and Professor of Philosophy and the Director of the Center of Ethics and the Rule of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. She's the founder and Director of the Center of Ethics, a nonpartisan, interdisciplinary institute affiliated with Penn's Annenberg Public Policy Center.

She's an expert on the law of armed conflict, military ethics, and national security law, and has been a widely sought-out commentator. She has a bachelor's in philosophy from Harvard and a master's in philosophy from the Sorbonne. She's written a number of pieces about antisemitism on campus. And so, welcome Claire, and tell us a little bit about yourself and about what you see as the environment at Penn?

[DESCRIPTION] Claire Finkelstein speaks to the camera in an office setting.

[TEXT] Claire Finkelstein

[Claire Finkelstein] Thank you so much, Dr. Kadish, and to everyone that at the college for at the university for organizing this panel on such an important theme. This has been a very, very difficult year on Penn's campus. Let me give you a little bit of background on myself. So for many years now, I have studied the law of armed conflict. I have been focused on national security.

And so, when October 7th happened, my first approach to the subject was as a national security expert. The board of the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law was focused on the Hamas attacks as one more instance of terrorism. We have studied the post-9/11 era, as a center, for many years now many different aspects of it, including the legal framework and including aspects of US conduct after 9/11 that we find regrettable and concerning.

So the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law is not beyond criticizing a response to terror. However, we were all rather stunned when we found that, in the wake of the October 7 attacks, we found ourselves in the position of being the only organization on Penn's campus to be putting out a statement condemning the Hamas attacks and supporting Israel. It was not really difficult for our board to do that. It came naturally. And, of course, the Center for Ethics and the Rule of Law is not particularly oriented towards issues of antisemitism or towards issues relating to Israel, but rather towards the law of armed conflict, more generally, and national security.

For those on the board, it was natural to study Hamas's actions in the same light that we studied ISIS and al-Qaeda and the Taliban. There seemed to be no daylight there, except that in some ways Hamas presented an even more formidable adversary given the complexities of the tunnel system in Israel, the human shielding, and many other aspects of the war. We were surprised, therefore, with the backlash to the effort to think about this war in the sober and legally bounded terms of the law of armed conflict.

I, myself, have written quite a bit about the law of armed conflict, and started writing, as would be natural for me given my area of expertise, on the Israel/Hamas war, and was quite amazed to find that despite my writing on other conflicts, my writing on this conflict was not greeted in the same light. In addition, I wrote an article on free speech on campus. That ended up being published in The Washington Post and became quite a lightning rod.

I found myself with hundreds and hundreds of antisemitic emails, posts on Twitter, now X, and in other fora. I am quite taken aback by the degree to which scholarly positions in the domain of free expression on campus and on the law of armed conflict have suddenly made me feel like public enemy number one in a number of settings. And I think this is very emblematic of what's going on campus.

I'll tell you one more anecdote, which is in January, a number of my colleagues at Penn and I decided to take a trip to Israel. It was a brief, three-day trip, with travel, just basically five days, door-to-door. And we went in solidarity with our Israeli colleagues and to learn and to witness, to the extent we could, so many months later, what had happened.

We visited kibbutzim. We spoke to many people who were affected. I, myself, have been in regular touch with people in the IDF because I work with legal advisors in the military, with the US Army, and with the IDF, and with others in other militaries.

When we returned from what was really largely a personal trip, with work interest, but not sponsored by the university, there was a letter writing campaign organized against those who had attended the trip. There was a form letter sent out, that alumni, and possibly students as well, were encouraged to sign. They could just fill in their names and send these letters to the deans of the various schools that my colleagues and I came from.

And our deans received hundreds and hundreds of letters asking the university to decry our trip, to disclaim it, to make sure people knew that it wasn't officially sponsored by the university. And they claimed to now organize a parallel trip to Gaza, which we would have had no objection to, and, indeed, would have visited ourselves if it weren't impossible to enter and so dangerous.

So just yesterday, then, a doxing site was set up, as this snowball has continued to grow, on those of us who participated in that trip again, a purely personal trip charging us featuring our pictures and charging us with "scholasticide," which I had to look up. I had no idea what scholasticide was. But, apparently, it was murdering scholastic pursuits by bringing politics into the university. Well, I would have thought that the people setting up this site were much more likely to be guilty of scholasticide than we were, given that we were just visiting Israel and on our personal time during vacation and paying a visit to our colleagues and our friends and learning more about the situation.

So it has been an extremely tense atmosphere. I do understand that the university is in a bind. But I am dismayed that there hasn't been more action taken to stop the accumulation of this snowball on campus, which really badly needs to be addressed.

I will also just say one further word, which is that the Department of Education, as some of you may know, was investigating the University of Pennsylvania. And it called off the investigation because there was a lawsuit against Penn by two students. And the Department of Education said that it did not want to conduct duplicative investigations, that the lawsuit would sort out anything that needed to be investigated.

To some extent, I regret that. Not that I wish trouble for my own university, but I'm very surprised that the Department of Education took that stance given that at Harvard that has not occurred, at other universities that has not occurred, where there have also been lawsuits.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Claire Finkelstein appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] It's also atypical for the Department of Education.

[Claire Finkelstein] It is. It is. So, again, I don't I love my university. I know the provost very well and the acting president. Obviously, we were part of the meltdown that was the testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. And Liz McGill, of whom I was very fond, ended up stepping down. But to say that there is no problem of antisemitism on university campuses, my own included, would be a grave mistake.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] We'll have a chance to talk some more in a moment. Let's hear briefly from our other two panelists and then we'll come back to some discussion. I wanted to particularly follow-up on some of the things you mentioned, Claire.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Yael Shiloh-Malawsky appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] The next speaker is Yael Shiloh-Malawsky, a clinical associate professor at the School of Medicine at UNC Chapel Hill. She grew up on a kibbutz in Israel and received her MD from Tel Aviv University, completed a pediatric residency at Sheba Medical Center, and then relocated to North Carolina, where she joined the faculty at the Department of Neurology of UNC. And she's been outspoken in calling the university to do more to protect Israeli supporters on campus. So perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about yourself and elaborate on what you've done to try to protect Israeli supporters?

[DESCRIPTION] Yael Shiloh-Malawsky speaks to the camera in an office setting.

[TEXT] Yael Shiloh-Malawsky

[Yael Shiloh-Malawsky] Thank you. Thank you for organizing this. And I feel like I'm the least qualified of anyone here. So my involvement is both as faculty, but maybe even more burning need is that I have a daughter on campus. So as a physician, I'm a clinical neurologist. I see students only through the med school, when they come to us.

So I don't walk on campus. But I am aware of the UNC campus through my children. So I want to give a slight description of what UNC campus is because unlike a lot of all of us know I think by now, well aware of a lot of the other campuses that were just described.

So the University of North Carolina is the oldest state university in the United States. It has 30,000 students. North Carolina has a very small percentage of Jews. So I believe that, on Wikipedia, from 10 million people in North Carolina, only 0.5% are Jewish. UNC campus, according to Wikipedia again, has about 5% Jewish students. So when talking to different clubs on campus, the number of people that actually are listed under some of the Jewish organizations on campus is about 400. This is a university of 30,000 students.

For Israelis on campus, which is also a unique, in a way, I believe, situation to be in and a very lonely one we have a WhatsApp group of Israelis on campus, like many of us in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, but also the staggering antisemitism, anti-Israel. We joined power.

So we have 14 people on our WhatsApp. This includes students who are not undergrad students, but students who are getting their PhD. So we're just 14. But what's going on, on campus, is probably similar to others. So take into it. Also, that we're a very small minority on campus.

So on October 12th so actually a couple of days before October 12th, my son, who graduated in 2020, said to me, mom, I'm looking on social media. UNC is terrible. Terrible things happened.

So now, well-known for everyone paragliders, posters of Student for Justice for Palestine. The USC chapter of the Students for Justice, Palestine, had their demonstration on October 12th. So all of us are aware. This was not a reaction to anything that Israel has done. And it had paragliders.

This was published on social media. And the demonstration followed, including students yelling, we are for Hamas, from the river to the sea. We all know this by now.

The requests from I personally wrote to the chancellor, saying, hey, this is not OK. You should not allow it. This is and no response. The university is keeping very, very political silence and not responding. And not even following the university policy.

So that was October 12th. Following actually watching Shai Davidai's video, that all of us watch, I was like I also need to say something. And North Carolina is a very small community. I contacted someone in Spectrum News and went on campus with a journalist.

And I have never I don't walk on campus. But I walked on campus because this is where I thought would make sense to speak to a reporter. And she took me to the South Building, which is where the chancellor sits, in front of a huge quad of this old campus. And the whole steps and area facing the chancellor building, was in chalk FY, from the river to the sea, genocide, the whole thing.

And that was October 23rd. Fast forward it, just to really, briefly say a few things that are going on campus. So the atmosphere is that and, actually, I will say that seeing this chalking graffiti was awful, was terrible to be in an ocean of this hate, very very I'm Israeli, a Zionist. All of my family is there.

So that was one. But the next thing, when I looked around, there was none no Israeli flag; no, we stand with Israel. No posters of the abducted children or nothing, like nothing.

Which also speaks to how what a small minority we are and how well-organized are these antisemitics, masking themselves as pro- Hamas. They actually say that, pro-Hamas. There were UNC actually had Title VI since 2019, for the violation of both basically having panels speaking things that were never questioned, never battled, and really pro-terrorism.

We also had in November 28, organized by the four actually, I think, five departments in the university, a panel. And one of the speakers there, just to quote one thing that was said there, was that for many of us, she said and I won't even say her name because for many of us she was just to clarify, this is going to be discussing things by a pro-Hamas person.

For many of us, October 7 was a beautiful day, a day of resistance and an attempt to condemn the speech and attempt to have condemn antisemitism. In different ways, the university so far has been unsuccessful, despite having previous violation, previous three actual Title VI. And we're still in the same situation. I'll stop here.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Yael Shiloh-Malawsky appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] It sounds like a difficult situation. And certainly you should be applauded for your efforts. We have one more speaker. And then we'll have a bit of a discussion.

[DESCRIPTION] Dr. Alan Kadish and Steven Solomon appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Steven Davidoff Solomon is a professor of law at UC Berkeley, the Morrison Professor of Law. He's Chairman of the National Israel Institute, which I'll ask him to speak about. At Berkeley, he headed the Chancellor's Committee on Jewish Life and co-founded the Berkeley Antisemitism Institute.

He teaches a course on antisemitism and the law and has worked extensively with the Brandeis Institute in litigation to stop antisemitism. His JD is from Columbia. And he's been widely quoted, calling for law firms not to hire antisemitic students. Steven, tell us a little bit about what you've been doing and what the atmosphere at Berkeley is like?

[DESCRIPTION] Steven Solomon speaks to the camera in a library setting.

[TEXT] Steven Solomon

[Steven Solomon] Thanks. I just want to say the way that I'm going to talk about this is nothing that happened post-October 7th is a surprise to many of us, who've been involved in this for the past 20 years. And so I, at Berkeley, headed the Chancellor's Committee on Jewish Life, which is, I guess, the predecessor of the wave of these antisemitism committees that have been formed, starting about 2016.

And as part of this, we were advising the chancellor on Jewish issues. The committee was formed mainly for donor purposes. Most of our big donors are Jewish, not surprisingly. But as part of this, I was able when you have a convening power in a large administrative university, anyone will speak to you.

And I think it's important to say what's going on now, and what my prior colleagues were talking about, is directly a result of the structure of the university and what's going on in terms of their attitudes of the faculty, the staff, et cetera which is that universities historically have had poor corporate governance.

Essentially, the president runs the operation. And there's a board that meets periodically. I advise Marc Rowan in his efforts with Penn. And the board does not really create a powerful role.

So who is the force that's acting on the university? It's the faculty. That's the main force that's catered to. And in the past decade, decade and a half, DEI efforts have become extremely prominent and almost a religion at these universities.

And that has resulted in a number of things. So one is, DEI is not focused on Jewish students. Jews are white-adjacent or white. Second, we have successfully established Hillel, Chabad and outsourced our Jewish life. So it's not something that even Student Affairs really speaks about.

So at Berkeley, what I was faced, in 2016, 2017, coming in, is an administration that's really focused on DEI efforts, vast departments in the arts and sciences that are where the litmus test for hiring now are ideology and not scholarship or pseudo-scholarship, much of it devoted to anti-colonialism, anti-racism, things that are, again, their own religion. Not very scholarly in my opinion, but you can make your own judgments if you can read it. It tends to be word salad.

So what we did at Berkeley for the last decade was we really focused on making sure Jews were at the table, making sure when DEI was looking at things, they considered Jewish issues, making sure they consulted with the Hillel rabbi. But what we found, and why I'm not surprised what happened on October 8, is that universities are cloistered. They're devoted to the issues that they face. And the departments have spent 20 years hiring people who have an ideological bent against Israel.

So in 2014, 2015, together with Jesse Fried, who was just appointed to the antisemitism committee at Harvard, we sued the American Studies Association for adopting a boycott of Israel. Why Israel, out of any other nation, really? And that's the attitude that comes in some of these departments. And they've become really no-go zones.

So this has also affected hiring. So in terms of Jewish studies this is an issue at Columbia, too many of the positions are actually in Mid-East studies. And so we have four open Jewish Studies positions in Mid-East studies right now at Berkeley. The reason why is because an anti-Zionist, or someone who hates Israel, that's the gating issue to hire them. And it sort of goes down from there, unfortunately.

And so you have a vast array of faculty who are hired for their ideological bent and their religion. That is phrased in terms of anti-colonialism and pseudo-scholarship. The PhD students that they push forth, these are the classes that they teach. And it seeps down to the students, who adopt the same attitude.

And so for the past decade, one of the biggest issues we've had is the social of exclusion of Jewish students. Basically, in interactions, students get here. There's not much religion these days. Their religion is politics or social justice. And Jewish students would go to these places and suddenly Israel was the demon. Right?

And in discussions with the university about a year ago, I eventually resigned from all these positions, including Jewish Studies, because I felt that unless there were structural changes made to how the university worked in terms of who they hired, how they worked there's vast administrative bureaucracies now in the university that are devoted to the ideology. The university spends about $20 to $30 million Berkeley on DEI efforts a year. When I asked them to fund my antisemitism initiative, they said no. Or, we have vast centers of race and gender throughout the university. They refuse, and have refused, to do antisemitism programming over the years.

And, finally, I just said, look, we've done enough. We opened a kosher kitchen. That's great. We have DEI actually acknowledges Jewish students, but we couldn't go any farther.

And, in fact, it all came to a crux about a year ago when student groups at the law school started adopting a bylaw saying, we won't allow anti-Zionists to speak. Huge uproar. Chancellor refused to condemn it.

So that's the sort of attitude that we went into on October 8. And what we've seen since October 8 and I'll wind this up so we can get to questioning is university administrators have the whole it's not a surprise that all these people are new. And they were not hired to put forth some idea of the university or otherwise. They were hired for their DEI credentials.

But they were hired to push forward an agenda. Claudine Gay the Penn head, who actually had sort of an academic background. And so, suddenly, they're put in a situation where it's actually a small group of extremely vocal students most students don't care or are positive to Israel who are suddenly bursting out.

And the universities, almost to a T Columbia has been almost the worst have refused to enforce the rules. They suddenly have developed this love of free speech. They suddenly are passing on blatant violations. And this has simply empowered students to do more.

And so, I wrote an op-ed this is the last thing I'll say way back in November, don't hire any antisemitic law students. Basically, look, don't let's apply the real world here, which is if people endorse Hamas, maybe you should not hire them. And it's not a controversial view outside of academia. But suddenly, in academia, there's this, how dare you say this. How dare you make judgments about this.

We're fine to have a DEI statement from a faculty member that says they adhere to this religion. But if you actually express a different opinion, that you might not want to hire someone based on another view, there's nothing there.

So that's where we are. I'm heartened by the fact that so many people now are coming out and realizing the problems here. And I really look forward to a discussion on these issues going forward.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Sure. If we could have everybody come back on, Claire as well.

[DESCRIPTION] The panelists appear in a Zoom grid format, each with their respective titles displayed in their video boxes.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] So one of the first questions I was going to ask, Steven gave his answer to already, which is, it does appear that things are worse on college campuses than they are elsewhere in the United States. And while there have been pro-Hamas demonstrations and anti-Zionists statements made outside of college campuses, it certainly seems like the atmosphere on college campuses is worse.

Steven suggested that it was the hiring of faculty over the past 15 years, perhaps. I would suggest perhaps even a little bit longer. What is everyone else's thoughts about that? Do you think that's the primary problem, the primary reason that campuses seem to be worse? And do you agree that campuses are worse than the atmosphere in the United States, in general? So I'll open it up to anyone of the three of you.

[Shai Davidai] I'll start off. We don't really know. It's complicated to say this is there's one reason for this. Like, yeah, the hiring of antisemitic professors that are I don't see them as a professor, I can say, they are not academics. They are ideologues. They come into class to press an ideology. That's part of it.

But it's also institutions. The leadership saying nothing and allowing this to happen. We have to remember the world, in the United States and the Western world, would have looked completely different if 10 or 20 university presidents on October 8 came out and said, this is wrong. We will not allow it. We would have had a completely different path for 4 and 1/2 months.

So it's not just that. It's the leaders. It's also the trustees, that are hiding behind plausible deniability. They are giving money. And they are the ones keeping these universities afloat. And they are also to blame. So there's no one thing.

But what I would say about campuses, and why this is so important, we cannot distinguish campus life from the outside world. And I know a lot of people feel that way. It allows us to sleep soundly at night. But we have to remember, these universities teach our teachers, K to 12. Every person that teaches K to 12 has to have a college education in the United States. They train our doctors. They train our social workers.

At Columbia, we see the Columbia School of Social Work is it's hard for me to say but infested with Hamas apologists. These people are going to be therapists. People that deny the mass systematic rapes that happened, just because the victims were Israeli, are going to be treating victims, men and women, victims of rape. This is wrong.

We have journalists. Columbia University has the Pulitzer Journalism School, one of the best journalism schools in the country. Makes you wonder why The New York Times only writes fluff pieces about Columbia's president? We cannot treat the colleges in the United States as separate entities. They are a hotbed right now for antisemitism and hatred. But it won't stop there.

And the last thing I would say about that is even if we're able to somehow a lot of people tell me these students will grow out of it. And that's true. Once you have to pay your mortgage, you become less revolutionary. But you have to remember, every year the antisemitic professors get a new crop to indoctrinate. We have

[Steven Solomon] Can I just jump in with Shai, because he's making a good point? But, I agree, everything is pretty terrible. And this is problematic.

But I think also, you have to think and also, that there's many forces. But I think also you have to think, at Berkeley, initially, our chancellor refused to issue a statement. And we were like, well, you've issued statements on everything else, on Dobbs. How can you not issue a statement here?

And she ultimately did. But she forced us to negotiate it with the Mid-East studies department, essentially. So the two I don't even want to say their names, because it's not worth it. And the idea is that, historically, the board of trustees has been absent. And, historically, many parties have been absent. And the only people who can unseat a president from serving two terms is the faculty. Look at Larry Summers.

And, so, that is changing now. And it should change, I think is what Shai is saying. But unless you put a lot of pressure on these institutions, they're in their own bubble. Harvard will appoint Derek Penslar as head because that's all they see. And it makes no problem for them that he's out of tune with 95% of Jews in the United States because that's all they see. And that's all they respond to.

So unless you're going to make deep structural changes now, it may be happening. I don't know if you saw this, Shai, but the Columbia when they announced the new Columbia provost, it was a scientist. They didn't even mention DEI in the announcement. It was all about free speech.

And so they're certainly scared. And I feel bad for Liz Magill. She got in a train wreck that she probably didn't deserve. But so what? I mean, that's the way life goes.

And so I think structurally things are bad. But I think you have to think about what the structures are and how you're going to address it. And I've spoken to it.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] I have to say that despite efforts that have been made by several of us to speak to other college presidents and, of course, there are exceptions. But the response I'm not sure that Shai isn't overestimating what college presidents can do, quite frankly. But that aside, it's certainly been disappointing that college leadership has not stood up and tried to fight this in a more aggressive way. And attempts to get them to do that have been largely unsuccessful.

[Shai Davidai] So, I would say

[Claire Finkelstein] Can I speak, too? Oh, I'm sorry.

[Shai Davidai] Sorry, Claire. I would say one thing. You're absolutely right, Alan. College presidents' hands are restricted, but their mouths aren't.

Colombia's president I know most about where I am Columbia's president has not used the word "Hamas" once in the past five months. And she has not given an interview. She's not given a press conference. She has not spoken about the two lawsuits and the US congressional investigation about antisemitism.

So while college presidents are limited in what they can do, they're not limited in what they can say. And right now and again, I can only speak about Columbia the Jewish students, faculty, staff, we just feel like we're not seen by the president. Forget that she doesn't care about our well-being and our safety and protection. She doesn't even see us. She doesn't even care. And that's the big problem.

[Claire Finkelstein] So if I consider the question you originally asked, Dr. Kadish, why is it different on college campuses? Why is it worse on college campuses? And I have a two-part answer to that.

One is, there's a profound generational difference. And I have this experience teaching national security every year, and every year observing the lack of perspective that my students have, which is a widening gap, I think, on atrocity and on the Holocaust. The fact that we are nearly at a point that there are very few Holocaust survivors left to speak. The rise in Holocaust denialism, which is extraordinary.

The fact that so many of these students are being raised and going to high schools, where they are no longer taught the Holocaust. They are no longer taught European history. I can just say, personally, my daughter's situation in her own high school is like this. And we have been struggling with that and fighting that.

So I think there are flaws in the secondary education that need to be addressed, that really explain why, when students get to college campuses, they are it is a fertile ground for really not understanding the phenomenon of antisemitism, for really not understanding the reasons for the existence of the state of Israel, and a kind of underlying antisemitism that they've been raised with, which is resurgent in a way that it simply wasn't when the Second World War and the memory of the Holocaust was closer to our experiences. So that's one thing I want to say.

Another thing that I want to say and I said this in a Washington Post op-ed, that got me in a lot of trouble is we have a cult around the First Amendment. And it's a cult more in fantasy than in reality. So we think that we follow the First Amendment on university campuses. I don't even think that's true on public campuses, but it's certainly not true on private university campuses.

As I said in that op-ed, we are bound by Title VI of the civil rights laws. We are not bound by the First Amendment as private universities. And we've actually never followed the First Amendment. That's the truth of it.

So I have chaired the Senate Committee on Academic Freedom twice. I have chaired the entire Faculty Senate. I am now the chair of the law school Committee on Academic Freedom. The first time I heard a lot of talk about the First Amendment was this year, in nearly 24 years at the University of Pennsylvania. I have heard years and years and years about the need to build and strengthen our community, the need to avoid racial stereotyping, the need to avoid microaggressions, the need to educate our students against racism, the need for greater sensitivity, the need to better educate our faculty members.

Of course, there is an ongoing situation at my law school with regard to a colleague of mine, Amy Wax. I'm sure most of you are familiar with that, which is said to be a disciplinary matter, not a free speech matter. I do believe, for the most part, it is a free speech matter. And just this past week, there were articles indicating the sanctions that have been announced against her.

So I do not think that university campuses actually follow the First Amendment, but we think we do. The extraordinary thing that I've encountered this year, and I must say with a profound sense of dismay and sense of betrayal after being involved in university administration in an informal from the standpoint of the Faculty Senate for so many years, and trying so hard to support the mission to make Penn a really cohesive, supportive, and hate-free environment, is that when we had the surfacing of hate towards Jews, the only thing that we're hearing back is "First Amendment." And I find that extraordinary. I think that perspective needs to change.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] I think you're absolutely right. Several of us have written about this for a long time, that academic freedom is not the same thing as the First Amendment, nor should be. It's protected. But we don't want that on campus.

In any case, we only have a couple of minutes left. This has been a great discussion. I want to just close with a last question about, do you see anything fundamentally different that we can do going forward? Each of you has made extraordinary efforts to try to fight antisemitism on campus and try to improve the environment for Jewish students.

So other than sending everybody to Touro, what do you think that we can do going forward? Yael, you had a chance to speak much in the discussion. So do you have any ideas about things we can do differently going forward that would make a difference?

[Yael Shiloh-Malawsky] I wanted to add to all of our difficulty with university leadership, with students. I actually am fairly shocked by Jews on campus. And I'll be completely honest. This is the 14 Israelis were fairly on the same page, that anti-Zionism, it is antisemitism. And that calling October 7 a beautiful day is unacceptable.

But when it came to the Faculty Council so my dear friend, Ronnie Freeman, that I met through this group, put in this resolution to condemn antisemitism. And there was only one person that was speaking for it. And the other side came fully organized, with speeches, and basically ambushed the whole discussion and managed to get the resolution deferred indefinitely. They didn't even want to vote on it because they didn't want to come out antisemitic by voting against a resolution against antisemitism.

And Hillel are on the same boat of October 7th happened. And it was not a safe place for pro-Israel Jews. And the people actually asked me kind of would tell me, you're so brave to speak out. How can I be brave? What can happen to me? Nothing can happen to me. Nevertheless, faculty on campus are not safe, speaking now.

I'm in medicine. I'm not shy, who is really in the front of or the rest of you. But people actually call me and say to me, you need to be careful. You were sitting next to 1-8 during the resolution. Do you know that it was shown?

So I think that we have a problem. And this is what I think that is maybe the next step is for us to unite people that are of the same thought of this. That's what I think is the only way forward, is for us to work on that.

[Shai Davidai] If I may add a more I don't know, let's less polite response, right. I've been in academia, not less time than everyone else here. But I've already seen that in academia, if you want to kill change, you set up a committee. If you want to kill change, you set up a conversation, you set up webinars like this.

This is not how we're going to change. The only way we're going to change and I'm not just talking about faculty. I'm talking about students. I'm talking about students and parents. I'm talking about grandparents. I'm talking about siblings. The only way we're going to fight this is if we all speak up now, not wait tomorrow, next week.

A lot of people that I talk with, they have this imaginary red line. When they cross this red line, I will speak up. Well, we've been here before in history. That red line, once you've crossed it, you will not be able to speak up. We know how these things work. Now is the time to speak up.

Now, I have gotten a lot of flak. And my entire career is in jeopardy for speaking up. And that's a cost that I'm willing to take because this is bigger than me. It's more important.

But even if you don't want to take this risk, and I understand when people don't, then don't speak up alone. Bring two, three, four other people and speak up together. Write letters. Write letters to your local newspapers.

Stop donating. Stop donating money. You are keeping the universities afloat. When they actually need you, that's when they will make any change. Stop sending your kids to schools that will not do things that protect them.

It's not enough to have these conversations, because I see most of the questions in the Q&A are like, what do we do? Well, the first thing you do is speak up. The second thing you do is get someone else to speak up.

And the third thing you do is you realize that this is not a Jewish problem. This is not an Israeli problem. This is an American problem. This is a question of, do we value life? Do we value liberty? The hostages is a question about life and liberty. Israel's right to defend itself is a question of life and liberty. That's the only way we will make any change.

Now, we can't do this alone. So I can see most people here are Jewish. But I hope that we're not just Jews that are concerned, because everybody is sending their kids to these schools. And every kid in first year, sophomore, junior and senior year right now is not getting the education they deserve and that they paid for because they're not speaking up, because we're letting these pro-Hamas organizations completely ruin the university experience.

So really, if I can do one thing is, get the fire burning in everyone's bellies. Because if you wait and wait and wait, it'll end up being too late when you actually want to act.

[Claire Finkelstein] So if I could address this very briefly

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Sure, Claire.

[Claire Finkelstein] I have four points. Number one, university administrators must demand and teach civility on college campuses. This does not suppress political speech. It's how to channel political speech through the means of civil and engaged discourse. This is a life skill that students need to have, rather than slinging intemperate slogans at one another. They will be better people and more effective advocates if they can communicate civilly with people who disagree with them.

Number two, universities must stop taking funds from non-democratic nations, especially non-democratic nations in the Middle East. Qatari funds are in the billions of dollars in the last five years. They exceed funds from overseas nations by a staggering degree.

We were all worried a few years ago about Chinese money. The Chinese have nothing on the Qataris. There is very likely an impact from these foreign funds. And universities need to disclose how much they are taking in from non-democratic nations.

Three, threatening and harassing speech must be stopped on campus and must be punished. This is not a carve-out from the First Amendment. It is consistent with the First Amendment doctrine to punish harassing and threatening speech. There is no First Amendment problem there. And we should stop pretending that there is.

And, four, the Holocaust needs to be mandatory instruction on every university campus. This should be a part of what is studied. It should be a part of basic education. And, of course, I believe the same for high school studies.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] Thank you so much. Steven, we're kind of over time, but I wanted to give you a chance to wrap up and see there have been some great suggestions made here. And I think we have to all push them forward. Do you have any other final comments?

[Steven Solomon] Send your kids to Jewish day school. Other than that, I do think I agree with everything that has been said. And I do think that these universities need the donor funds more than you think. They spend massive amounts of money. And holding that back is important. And keeping the pressure on, as Shai said, is important.

I think this is an elite university problem, perhaps, that we're talking about, but it extends everywhere. And I think it's not just Holocaust education. That's the last thing I'll say.

I teach antisemitism and law in an undergraduate class to my students. None of them had heard of the Nuremberg trials. They believed that Israel just existed in 1948. And with many of our fellow professors teaching ideological strains that defy the facts and circumstances, they just really don't know the history generally.

And so I would say, not, just the holocaust, but the history, if you look at it, of what's going on and why it's here and what's going forward. And I'm really heartened that all of you are here. And thank you for all your work.

[Dr. Alan Kadish] I want to thank all of you for joining us. We could probably continue this for another few hours, but we've already gone over by about 10 minutes. I really appreciate the perspective, the courage, and the activism of our four panelists. We need more people around the country to work on this.

And I think there have been a lot of good suggestions made here tonight, that hopefully we can continue pushing forward and begin to get a handle on controlling a problem that many people, I think naively thought was gone, which is the 2,000-year-old problem of antisemitism, which has simply been remanifest in the atmosphere on college campuses. And we all need to band together to fight that.

Thanks again. And I look forward to speaking with you in the future.

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