University leaders must root out hate

By now, college students are fully engaged in the fall semester and looking forward to a year of promise and opportunity. They’re thinking about what to major in, which clubs to join, and what to do after graduation. But despite their optimism, in the back of their minds they’re wondering if their college experience will be upended, as it was last year.

It’s been more than three months since the curtain closed on the 2023-24 academic year, the volatile protests and threatening environments included, but has anything changed? The war in Gaza still is raging, the same professors are ready to influence naïve students looking for a cause, and Jewish students around the country are looking over their shoulders, wondering if they’ll have to focus on their safety rather than their coursework.

This has been a driving force behind an exodus of Jewish students from colleges like Columbia, where last year a campus rabbi instructed them to go home for the Passover holiday and stay there. Or from institutions like Harvard, MIT, and Penn, after their leadership refused to take a stand over whether they should take action against students who call for genocide of the Jewish people.

Creating a safe campus environment free of hate, violence, and antisemitism is easier said than done, and one need not look further than former Columbia president Minouche Shafik to appreciate the complex environment in which college presidents function. Shafik was criticized by pro-Palestinian protesters for her decision to proceed with a police crackdown on a campus encampment, which resulted in the arrest of more than 100 students, while also catching flak for not doing more to combat antisemitism at the university, leading to her resignation last month.

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But despite this inherent double-edged sword, it’s still the responsibility of administrators to provide a safe learning environment for students, and too many have failed to prevent antisemitism from festering and growing on campuses for years.

In some cases — including the disastrous congressional testimonies of the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn — universities have hidden behind the First Amendment to excuse in action even when it’s clear that the Amendment doesn’t apply, particularly to private universities. It doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to recognize that even if hate speech were to be protected under the guise of academic freedom, that’s not what universities ought to be about.

These are issues most college presidents have been unwilling to address, and last year we witnessed the results of their refusal to acknowledge what was obvious to all.

Every college is different, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to circumvent a repeat of an academic year like the last, but hopefully we can all agree that a good first step would be to eliminate, or at least neutralize, antisemitism on campus. It won’t be easy, but college presidents possess resources unavailable to others that can make an impact on ridding our schools of this scourge.

First, it’s imperative that we check our double standards when deliberating on how to respond to campus protests or student complaints about discrimination. Had hate speech similar to that which was routinely leveled toward Jewish students last year been addressed to other minority groups on campus, the response would have been universal and unequivocal condemnation. Our passion for protecting our students must never depend on their demographic, and such hypocrisy should be called out at every turn.

Next, presidents must live up to the Diversity Equity and Inclusion efforts they profess to support by ensuring that efforts to encourage inclusion and eliminate racism and bias on campus explicitly include antisemitism.

Even though much of what falls within the DEI rubric is positive, too often, elements of DEI have created divisive identity politics by not including antisemitism in our efforts to eliminate racism and bias and make sure that everyone feels comfortable on campus. This needs to change.

Finally, remember that words really do matter, especially those lined with hate.

While the future of Gaza, our opinions on the Israel-Hamas war, and concerns for Palestinian rights all are legitimate subjects for debate, advocating for violence against civilians is not, and we must make clear, to students and faculty alike, that it and similar rhetoric violate university codes of conduct, and anyone who verbalizes these views will face severe consequences, up to and including expulsion or termination.

Such proactive measures surely would be criticized by those who insist that hate is acceptable if used in the name of education and academic freedom, but it’ll be well worth it for our students to feel safe and enjoy a successful college experience.

Dr. Alan Kadish of Teaneck is the president of Touro University.