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Tensions are running high at America’s elite colleges as students, professors, and well-connected, wealthy alumni respond to Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel.
Backlash is brewing against a sometimes radical campus culture that some people say is taking open dialogue too far and does not recognize the plight of Israeli citizens.
Israel has long been a contentious issue on college campuses, causing protests and counter-protests covered by college newspapers and discussed by alums. But the brutal attack on Israel and the following war brought the conversation off the quads and into the spotlight.
THIS IS WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED:
Image-wise, we expect Ivy League students to be rational, measured and reflective at moments of truth.
A coalition of students should have demanded that an unpacking of this conflict begin in an adequately thorough manner and require examining it through a diverse range of lenses such as antisemitism, Islamic fundamentalism, the Holocaust, imperialism, contact theory, and many more, all while keeping in mind valid but competing narratives of victimhood that span hundreds of years. You know, set the bar high, very high because that’s the way you “do Ivy League.”
BUT INSTEAD:
HARVARD
Hours after news broke that Hamas had murdered hundreds of Israelis in border towns near Gaza, students at Harvard University sat down to write a letter of protest.
The letter, titled “Joint Statement by Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups on the Situation in Palestine,” does not mince words. It opens, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
Expressing no sympathy for the hundreds of Israeli victims, the dozens of student groups — including representatives of Palestinian, Arab, Black, Bengali, Pakistani, South Asian, and Sikh student associations — instead focused on Israel’s historical treatment of Palestinians and stated plans to retaliate against Hamas in Gaza.
“The apartheid regime is the only one to blame,” it reads, concluding, “The coming days will require a firm stand against colonial retaliation. We call on the Harvard community to take action to stop the ongoing annihilation of Palestinians.”
COLUMBIA AND NYU
At least two others, Columbia University and New York University, joined the student letter that targeted Israel for condemnation. Students at other Ivy League schools made pro-Palestinian social media posts and held pro-Palestinian demonstrations this week, some linking Hamas’ actions to Indigenous Peoples Day.
Taken together, the activities — and the responses they generated — are a sign that the campus wars over Israel, already a lightning rod for controversy, are reigniting in the aftermath of Hamas’ attacks.
YALE
Students at Yale University agreed with their Ivy League counterparts over the weekend’s exterminations.
Yalies4Palestine stated that Palestinians “made history this Saturday morning when they broke down the wall which has imprisoned Gaza for 17 years.”
“The events of October 7th are not an isolated event but the inevitable outcome of a decades-long apartheid and suffocating blockade, in addition to a year of escalated settler violence against civilians in the West Bank,” Yalies4Palestine said. “The resistance is the consequence of the longstanding and ongoing Zionist colonization.” After a national backlash, many of the original cowardly signers removed their names.
Antisemitism watchdogs say campuses are already a hotbed of anti-Israel activity. A Palestinian culture festival at the University of Pennsylvania induced an early-in-the-semester flare-up of debate last month.
Students for Justice in Palestine, a national group with chapters at major universities across the United States, has declared Hamas’ operation “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance” and called for a “Day of Resistance” on Thursday.
The group is encouraging local chapters to hold demonstrations to “continue to resist directly through dismantling Zionism” and distributed a list of talking points that stated, “When people are occupied, resistance is justified,” declared that “settlers are not ‘civilians’ in the sense of international law,” and framed Hamas’ actions as “Gaza broke out of prison.”
ANTISEMITISM ON CAMPUS
Adam Guillette, the president of Accuracy in Media, told The National Desk (TND) Monday he is “not surprised to see so much hatred and antisemitism on America’s campuses.”
Accuracy in Media has repeatedly worked to fight antisemitism in higher education by sending billboards to campuses. Guillette told TND his group plans to protest the latest wave of anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.
“Administrators have coddled these radicals and have faced no opposition whatsoever,” Guillette told TND. “Any student group that signs one of these anti-Semitic pledges should immediately be kicked off campus, and any leader of these groups should be expelled.”
THE REALITIES OF LIFE
Ryna Workman, the president of NYU’s Student Bar Association, wrote that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life” in a letter to the group that quickly went viral and drew widespread condemnation. The student has since lost her law firm job offer and is in the process of being removed from her leadership role.
Yes, even Ivy Leaguers get a taste of the reality when they don’t live in it.
This column is by Ritchie Lucas, Founder/CEO of the non-profit The Student Success Project. He can be reached by email at ritchie@studentsuccessproject.org and on Facebook as The Student Success Project
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