Jew hatred in colleges escalates

Sheffi states that the conflict engulfing Jewish students and many Jewish professors (those who aren’t woke) isn’t a debate over Middle East policy. Nor is it a disagreement between two student groups with competing narratives. It’s not an outbreak of spontaneous grief-driven protest and it’s not a symmetrical conflict between two equally situated communities. It is, “a coordinated campaign of delegitimization and intimidation, amplified by social media, shielded by institutional paralysis, and justified through a moral framework that denied Jews the protections routinely extended to other minorities.”

Sheffi describes in detail the heinous behavior on campus towards Jews at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has grown exponentially in recent decades, particularly after the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel. Many of the leaders of the protests there against Israel are professional agitators or professors; some are of Middle Eastern descent. The MIT administrators show a lack of compassion for Jewish students and professors bordering on indifference or worse.

Sally Kornbluth is the President of MIT. (She was one of the three female college presidents – “it depends on the context” – who were questioned by then-Representative Elise Stefanik a few years ago about antisemitism on their campuses.) Sheffi’s book describes, from the inside, her and her associates’ conduct towards the Jewish students and professors who were harshly mistreated by students and other professors and forced to run a gantlet through tent communities set up by Jew haters on campus to get to their classroom buildings and the library. Their complaints to the administrators were mostly ignored.

A few examples: Dana, an undergraduate, moved back to the dorms after on-line threats had made her off-campus home feel unsafe. She had left her sorority because of its pervasive anti-Israel bias. She avoided the library, minimized her classroom attendance, and took elaborate detours to avoid running the gauntlet of libelous posters and anti-Zionist flyers posted on campus paths. 

Will Sussman, a Ph.D. student in computer science, joined the board of MIT Grad Hillel. That led to him being targeted as he witnessed fellow students celebrate Hamas attacks, chant slogans calling for violence, occupy buildings, disrupt classes, and intimidate Jewish students. 

When Sussman objected to those accusations from radical professor Michel DeGraff, that Jewish student organizations were guilty of “Zionist ‘mind infection,’” DeGraff targeted him personally in public posts and mass emails. There was no comment from the administration. Students, staff, and others amplified the accusations against him, labeling Sussman a racist. The attacks against Sussman included flyers advocating “resistance” against Jews; DeGraff continued his attack while addressing his students in classes. 

Sussman filed a formal complaint with MIT’s discrimination office, which refused to even investigate the hate DeGraff espoused against him, claiming it reflected criticism of “settler-colonial Zionists propaganda,” not Jews. Not long after, Sussman left MIT, abandoning his Ph.D. and the academic career he had hoped to pursue. 

This book is an alarming and educational look at American colleges today, or at least those in the throes of woke discrimination against Jewish teachers and students. It is “must’ reading for parents whose high school children are thinking about college: where to go to school and even if it’s worthwhile in today’s America.

NOTE: I’m alarmed at the destructive direction many schools have taken. Would you send your child to MIT, Columbia, Harvard, or UPenn? Hillel can give parents the kind of information that they need to help their children choose a school where they will encounter a minimum of Jew-hatred. 

Alternatively, consideration should be given to sending high school grads to college in Israel, where there are many fine schools and colleges which have English-language programs. A bonus is the fact that college tuition in Israel is a fraction of the cost of American schools. And, attending school in Israel opens up a whole new world for the younger generation.