SHOULD JEWS ABANDON THE IVIES?

Long before the Israeli armed forces moved into Gaza to destroy Hamas, in fact even while the Hamas murderers and rapists were still holding out in Israeli homes along the Gaza Envelope, top-tier American universities were the scenes of pro-Hamas protests, speeches, and encampments. Such deep-seated hostility toward Israel has caused many American Jews to ask: “Should Jews Abandon Ivy League Schools?” – as phrased in the headline of a Jerusalem Post interview of William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish American Organizations.

The fear that our most prestigious universities are hostile environments, not only for Israel, but for Jews in general, was reinforced by the disastrous congressional hearings last December, where the Presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn were unable to say whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ conduct policies.

Is it time for American Jews to abandon elite universities and to look elsewhere for educational opportunities?  Several arguments have been advanced for doing just that.

The primary one is safety. In a letter to Jewish students, Rabbi Elie Buechler, of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel and Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, recommended that they return home and stay there, since Columbia “cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety in the face of extreme antisemitism and anarchy.”  Substantiating his advice, footage from Columbia protests recorded protesters calling Jewish students “yehudim” (Hebrew for “Jews”), and demanding that they “go back to Poland.” The number of reported incidents of Jewish students being harassed, jeered, and physically assaulted by pro-Palestinians demonstrators has grown so large that such incidents now seem almost routine.

This concern for safety has exacted a toll on Jewish students, many of whom feel pressured to avoid confrontation by muting their opinions, and concealing their religious identity.  Mezuzahs —  a scroll of parchment inscribed with a prayer affixed to doorposts of Jewish homes – have been torn off and vandalized at Stanford and Northeastern, leaving many college students reluctant to attach them in their dorms. Many more are afraid to wear yarmulkes or Stars of David. As a result of such self-enforced concealment, Jewish students “glide toward complacency, moral confusion, and shame,” according to Tal Fortang, an advocate of abandoning the Ivies, in a recent Commentary Magazine essay.

Another reason put forward for leaving the Ivies and other top-tier schools is the hope that doing so will  effect change. Fewer Jewish students today will mean fewer Jewish alumni tomorrow, and fewer Jewish alumni will mean less financial support. To induce Jews to return, elite universities will have to reconsider their course curricula, which are currently steeped in semi-Marxist “settler/colonial” ideological jargon. They will have to offer courses that are less virulently anti-Israel.

Still another reason advanced for leaving prestige schools is the growing appeal of those less prestigious schools that have shown fortitude and spine in confronting pro-Palestinian protesters who violate college trespassing rules. Supporters of abandoning the Ivies point to the University of Florida, which has more Jewish students enrolled than any other university in the nation. Shortly after the October 7 rampage, while college presidents at more prestigious schools were issuing carefully worded and balanced declarations, often drafted with the input of lawyers, UF President Ben Sasse issued this direct, no-nonsense statement:

I will not tiptoe around this simple fact: What Hamas did is evil and there is no defense for terrorism. This shouldn’t be hard. Sadly, too many people in elite academia have been so weakened by their moral confusion that, when they see videos of raped women, hear of a beheaded baby, or learn of a grandmother murdered in her home, the first reaction of some is to “provide context” and try to blame the raped women, beheaded baby, or the murdered grandmother. In other grotesque cases, they express simple support for the terrorists. This thinking isn’t just wrong, it’s sickening.

After the arrest of several protesters who had violated University free speech rules by trespassing, President Sasse issued another plain, direct message:

This is not complicated: The University of Florida is not a daycare, and we do not treat protesters like children — they knew the rules, they broke the rules, and they’ll face the consequences.

Such straightforward, morally confident language is music to the ears of many Americans, especially Jewish Americans, disappointed by the cautiously balanced statements issued by the presidents of more prestigious institutions.

All of these arguments are based on factually valid premises. Jewish students are unsafe on Ivy League campuses. Jewish students are under pressure to conceal their religious identity, and that pressure takes an emotional and psychological toll. Elite institutions of higher learning do promulgate perniciously twisted, factually baseless academic doctrines in which Jews, the most persecuted minority in history, are somehow transformed into malevolent and all powerful “oppressors.” And in this time of danger, leaders of elite institutions, unlike the President of the University of Florida, have failed to speak or act with moral clarity.

But valid premises do not always lead to valid conclusions.

Abandoning the elite institutions will not ensure safety for Jewish students. It’s too late for that. The problem has metastasized. Hostility toward Jewish students may have started at top tier schools, but it has spread far beyond them. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there are now pro-Palestinian encampments on more than 100 American college campuses.

And while withholding donations may exert some financial pressure on these institutions, it is doubtful whether that pressure will suffice to change the virulently anti-Israel dogmas permeating their curricula.

Investor Bill Ackman made headlines when he announced he would no longer donate to Harvard. But his actions must be put in perspective. Over the years, Ackman donated tens of millions of dollars, with the largest being a 2014 gift of $25 million. Impressive figures. But Harvard’s endowment exceeds $50 billion. Other Ivy League schools also boast large endowments, though not as sizable as Harvard’s. They can survive the defections of many Bill Ackmans.

Moreover, international students now make up between 10% to 20% of the Ivy League enrollments. Many of these students come from countries rife with Jew-hatred, and most pay the full cost of tuition, making them attractive candidates for admission. The absence of Jewish applicants is likely to lead to the admission of more such foreign students, rendering the Ivy League campuses even less hospitable to Jews.

Finally, many if not most of the college professors disseminating these “settler/colonial” dogmas are tenured. Their influence on young, impressionable minds will likely remain, regardless of any financial pressure applied to these colleges by the exit of Jewish applicants, students, and alumni.

But rejecting the temptation to abandon the Ivies and other elite institutions does not mean that American Jews need surrender themselves to the forces of hate pervading those campuses.

Change is best effected from within. It may be impossible to eject tenured faculty members, but active members of the university community can influence hiring and admission decisions. They can argue and lobby for the hiring of anti-Marxist professors. They can insist on admission standards that guarantee that sociopaths like Khymani James (“Zionists don’t deserve to live.” “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”) are never admitted, or allowed to remain at institutions like Columbia, let alone to emerge as protest leaders. These are reasons for remaining active members of these institutions, rather than abandoning them.

But the most powerful reason why American Jews should not – must not — abandon the Ivies is that they have every right to stay. Jews are a major reason these elite institutions are elite. This fact emerges clearly from the fog of the current protests. When the pro-Hamas Students for Justice in Palestine activists projected the words “Glory to Our Martyrs” on a George Washington University building, they projected them onto the walls of the Gelman Library, named after the Jewish construction magnate Melvin Gelman and his wife Estelle. Protesters at Columbia blocked entrances to Alfred Lerner Hall, named after Al Lerner, the Jewish benefactor of the Cleveland Clinic and former owner of the Cleveland Browns. When the protesters at NYU blocked entrances, they did so in front of the Stern School of Business, named after the Jewish philanthropist Leonard Stern.

Jewish generosity stands out like proud beacons of enlightenment in the skylines of every major academic center in America. It is safe to say that no minority group has done as much for, or has been so closely identified with, higher education as the Jewish people. There is no reason for Jews to retreat from these institutions. If anyone is going to step away, it should be the haters, not the Jews.

After 1939, Jews disappeared from much of Europe because they were murdered. After 1948, Jews disappeared from the Arab lands of Northern Africa and the Middle East, where they had lived for centuries, because they were forcibly evicted.

No one can force the Jews to abandon the pinnacles of American higher education. Only the Jews themselves can choose that course. They should not do so. The bonds between the Jewish people and those institutions are strong, almost as strong as the Jewish ties to the Land of Israel. If the Jewish community shows resolve, those ties can remain proud, powerful, and unsevered.