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I’m a Jewish College Student; Hatred Inspire Me to Fight Back and Engage — Others Can Do the Same
George Washington University students assembled at the campus’ Kogan Plaza on Oct. 9, 2023 to mourn those who died during Hamas’ terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians. Photo: Dion J. Pierre/The Algemeiner
As Jewish students return to campus this Fall, many are clouded by fear and distrust: fear of harassment from anti-Israel mobs, retaliation from anti-Zionist professors, and distrust toward administrators who bear the responsibility to protect them. While these concerns are understandable, Jewish students should not succumb to defeatism.
My aim is not to push every Jewish student toward activism, nor to justify parents paying high tuition fees simply for their children to be forced to confront campus antisemitism. However, amid the current campus crises, Jewish students have the opportunity to transform obstacles into opportunities for growth in ways that no traditional classroom experience can offer.
I entered George Washington University (GWU) three years ago with an air of naivité that allowed me to express my Israeli, American, and Jewish identities with utmost pride.
The slurs of “racist,” “colonial apologist,” “extremist,” “anti-immigrant” among others from my classmates surely offended me, but they also perplexed me. I deemed myself liberal and “progressive.” Wasn’t I the embodiment of diversity with family roots in Dagestan, Egypt, Israel, France, Mexico, and America?
During my freshman and sophomore years, I encountered blatant antisemitism on campus, including the desecration of a Torah scroll along. I also experienced my first run-ins with Intifada rallies and Israeli Apartheid weeks. My peers subtly ostracized me in seminars.
As my involvement in Jewish life increased, I heard physical threats against me from members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Following the threats, around the time that I published “Semites are here to Stay” in October 2022, I faced a moral dilemma: should I put myself at risk by continuing to speak out on this issue, or pull away to keep myself safe?
As 2023 neared, my Jewish friends were sharing that they had been “spat on” on the library steps, and were being excluded from student organizations; professors like Dr. Lara Sheehi were intimidating or harassing Israeli students in class. My friends’ experiences, above all, lit a fire inside of me to act. Yet, my dilemma remained.
Conversations with family friends and one notable Professor of Holocaust Memory imbued me with the words of Pirkei Avot: “It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it.”
My instinct was to understand the root of such defamatory beliefs about me, my people, and my two home countries. I sought an intellectual coping mechanism, exploring anti-Zionism and its permeation into academia. As antisemitism in my International Affairs courses continued, I also craved a forum to critically think and debate — what I was receiving in Philosophy courses. Eventually, I changed my major from International Affairs to Philosophy, where I’d excavate how my peers formed their ideas by asking difficult questions and formulating my own.
In classes where I was often the only pro-Israel student, and sometimes the only Jew, I chose to write papers and deliver presentations about Israel and Jewish life. In my Frankfurt School course, my final project Israel on the Utopian Horizon analyzed the Israeli Protest Movement through philosophies of Theodor Adorno, Ernst Bloch, Martin Buber, and José Munoz. Aside from quenching my personal academic interests, the project demonstrated how Israel embodies the liberal Frankfurt School principles that my non/anti-Zionist peers admired.
Another project in my course “Power,” used Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish to describe how universities have become like “Intellectual Panopticons” that lead to “Self-Censorship.” The panopticon concept represents a prison-like mechanism where constant surveillance enforces social control. Using Jonanthan Haidt & Greg Lukianoff’s The Coddling of the American Mind and drawing from my personal experience, I argued for reimagining individualism as responsible citizenship — expressing disagreement respectfully and assertively, even if standing alone. Once again, I demonstrated how many of my peers were misusing and abusing Progressive ideals against those holding political differences.
Unsurprisingly, those words I had penned during my sophomore year would become a reality. Despite widespread opposition, I formed the GW Student Association Antisemitism Task Force in early 2023. Approaching adversarial audiences by altering my communication style to make statements appear uncontroversial — and flipping my opposition’s arguments against them — provided instrumental lessons in persuasion. I even invited members of SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), who pledged anti-normalization, on board; they could no longer delegitimize my initiative by tarnishing me on the basis of my Israeli, Jewish, and American identities.
I could not have achieved these goals on my own. Outreach is a key ingredient in the recipe to success. The advice from public intellectuals like Einat Wilf, legal powerhouses like the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, and other Jewish organizations like AMCHA were instrumental to formulating my approach. GW Hillel placed QR codes around their building and sent emails to Jewish community members to make public comments at the Student Senate meeting where a vote on creating an antisemitism task force would take place. Over 30 students showed up, and public comments that night ran for nearly an hour. In the end, the task force passed unanimously.
While the task force was dismantled by the following year’s Student Association president, its work has continued. Since the October 7th terror attacks, my peers and I consistently meet with professors and administrators to understand university conduct policies; we have learned to convey our perspectives to administrators who tread to take action. We’ve examined state and Federal law pertaining to Title VI, boycotts, and more. We engage with policy makers on the state and Federal level. We organize and advertise GW and DC-wide events. Most importantly, we have learned to engage substantively with prevalent and opposing views, block out hate, and hold our heads high with robust Jewish spirit.
My story is much less about what I accomplished, but the knowledge, skills, and strong sense of character I gained. Understanding your rights and learning to articulate information to diverse audiences are as important in school as in relationships and the workplace.
Rather than resenting my college experience, I am all the more grateful for it. Indeed, becoming comfortable with discomfort, and learning practical wisdom, is what college — the bridge to independence — is all about.
The author is a senior at George Washington University.
The post I’m a Jewish College Student; Hatred Inspire Me to Fight Back and Engage — Others Can Do the Same first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Flip through the digital edition of the Fall 2024 print magazine from The Canadian Jewish News
We’ve produced a collection of feature articles four times a year since 2022. The next edition of this magazine will appear in mid-December, and look out for a reimagined publication with a name of its own in 2025. Get future copies delivered to your door as a thank-you for donating to The CJN.
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No Harvard Students Punished for Anti-Israel Encampments, US Congress Says in New Report
Anti-Zionist Harvard students taking part in a sit-in organized by a student group which favors the Islamist terror group Hamas. Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, Nov. 16, 2023. Photo: Brian Snyder via Reuters Connect
Harvard University disciplined virtually no one who was accused of perpetrating antisemitic harassment or participating in a “Gaza Solidarity” encampment last academic year, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce alleged on Thursday.
As evidence supporting its claims, the committee cited documents obtained during its ongoing investigation of Harvard University, which was prompted by a succession of antisemitic incidents in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel as well as allegations of antisemitism going back years. According to the committee, “not one of the 68 Harvard students referred for discipline conduct related to the encampment is suspended, and the vast majority is in good standing.”
Neither, it continued, were any of the students who chanted antisemitic slogans on campus property punished. Essentially slapped on the wrist, they were “admonished,” a verbal measure which, Harvard acknowledges, is not recorded in their records as a disciplinary sanction.
“Harvard failed, end of story. These administrators failed their Jewish students and faculty, they failed to make it clear that antisemitism will not be tolerated, and in this case, Harvard may have failed to fulfill its legal responsibilities to protect students from a hostile environment,” US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the committee, said in a statement on Thursday. “The only thing administrators accomplished is appeasing radical students who have almost certainly returned to campus emboldened and ready to repeat the spring semester’s chaos. Harvard must change course immediately.”
The Algemeiner has previously reported that Harvard University was amnestying students charged with violating school rules which proscribe unauthorized demonstrations and disruptions of university business. During summer, it “downgraded” disciplinary sanctions it levied against several pro-Hamas protesters it punished for illegally occupying Harvard Yard and roiling the campus for nearly five weeks.
For a time Harvard University talked tough about its intention to restore order and dismantle a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” — a collection of tents on campus in which demonstrators lived and from which they refused to leave unless Harvard agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — creating an impression that no one would go unpunished.
In a public statement, interim president Alan Garber denounced their actions for forcing the rescheduling of exams and disrupting the academics of students who continued doing their homework and studying for final exams, responsibilities the protesters seemingly abdicated by participating in the demonstration.
Harvard then began suspending the protesters following their rejection of a deal to leave the encampment, according to The Harvard Crimson. Before then, Garber vowed that any student who continued to occupy the section of campus would be placed on “involuntary leave,” a measure that effectively disenrolls the students from school and bars them from campus until the university decides whether they are allowed back. The disciplinary measures were levied one day after members of Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine (HOOP) created a sign featuring an antisemitic caricature of Garber as Satan, and accused him of duplicity.
During Harvard’s commencement ceremonies in May, reports emerged that some students had been banned from graduation and receiving their diplomas.
However, Harvard and HOOP always maintained that some protesters would be allowed to appeal their punishments, per an agreement the two parties reached, but it was not clear that the end result would amount to a victory for the protesters and an embarrassment to the university. Indeed, after the suspensions were lifted, HOOP proceeded to mock what they described as their administrators’ lack of resolve. Unrepentant, they celebrated the revocation of the suspensions on social media and, in addition to suggesting that they will disrupt the campus again, called their movement an “intifada,” alluding to two prolonged periods of Palestinian terrorism during which hundreds of Israeli Jews were murdered.
“Harvard walks back on probations and reverses suspensions of pro-Palestine students after massive pressure,” the group said. “After sustained student and faculty organizing, Harvard has caved in, showing that the student intifada will always prevail … This reversal is a bare minimum. We call on our community to demand no less than Palestinian liberation from the river to the sea. Grounded in the rights of return and resistance. We will not rest until divestment from the Israeli regime is met.”
The past year has been described by experts as a low point in the history of Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most important institution of higher education. Since the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas across southern Israel, the school has been accused of fostering a culture of racial grievance and antisemitism, while important donors have suspended funding for programs. In just the past nine months, its first Black president, Claudine Gay, resigned in disgrace after being outed as a serial plagiarist; Harvard faculty shared an antisemitic cartoon on social media; and its protesters were filmed surrounding a Jewish student and shouting “Shame!” into his ears.
According to the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce, Harvard has repeatedly misrepresented its handling of the explosion of hate and rule breaking, launching a campaign of deceit and spin to cover up what ultimately became the biggest scandal in higher education.
A report generated by the committee as part of a wider investigation of the school claimed that the university formed an Antisemitism Advisory Group (AAG) largely for show and did not consult its members when Jewish students were subject to verbal abuse and harassment, a time, its members felt, when its counsel was most needed. The advisory group went on to recommend nearly a dozen measures for addressing the problem and offered other guidance, the report said, but it was excluded from high-level discussions which preceded, for example, the December congressional testimony of former president Claudine Gay — a hearing convened to discuss antisemitism at Harvard.
So frustrated were a “majority” of AAG members with being an accessory to what the committee described as a guilefully crafted public relations facade that they threatened to resign from it.
Currently, the university is fighting a lawsuit which accuses it of ignoring antisemitic discrimination. The case survived an effort by Harvard’s lawyers to dismiss it on the grounds that the students who brought it “lack standing.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post No Harvard Students Punished for Anti-Israel Encampments, US Congress Says in New Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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If Eric Adams Steps Down, New York City’s Next Acting Mayor Will Be an Anti-Israel Critic
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams. Photo: Screenshot
The next acting mayor of New York City might be a left-wing activist and staunch critic of the Jewish state.
US prosecutors charged New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday with soliciting illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals and bribery. Adams’s potential departure from office could prove consequential for New York City’s estimated 960,000 Jewish residents, representing roughly 10 percent of the Big Apple’s population, and supporters of Israel living in the city.
If Adams resigns as a result of the federal charges against him, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is widely expected to step into the mayoral role as his replacement. A review of Wiliams’s social media history reveals a pattern of denigrating Israel, raising questions over whether the public advocate would defend the city’s Jewish community.
Williams has condemned Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza as a “war crime” and criticized the US Congress for inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak in July.
“Aside from basic humanity, under accepted [international] Law Benjamin Netanyahu is quite literally, at this moment, engaged in [international] war crimes/human rights violations,” Williams posted on X/Twitter at the time. “Instead of Congress trying to stop it, they gave a platform.”
Williams issued a statement on Oct. 11 of last year, four days after the Hamas terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, lamenteing the terrorist attacks on the Jewish state before calling on Jerusalem not to retaliate and shifting attention to alleged “oppression” of Palestinians.
“We can, we have to be able to, at once grieve the hundreds of innocent lives taken in Israel, and oppose the escalating violence of retaliation, the endless war, the systemic violence and oppression of Palestinians too often ignored, excused, or condoned,” Williams wrote.
On Oct. 14, one week after Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people in southern Israel, Williams condemned “shameful” New York elected officials that “won’t even mention [Palestine] or [Gaza].”
Five days later, less than two weeks after the largest single-day mass-murder of Jews since the Holocaust, Williams called for an immediate “ceasefire” between the Jewish state and the terrorist group. Israel had not yet launched its military offensive in neighboring Hamas-ruled Gaza to dismantle the terror group’s military capabilities and free the 251 hostages kidnapped from southern Israel on Oct. 7. He also drew an equivalency between Israel’s military operations to the Hamas atrocities.
“The moral compass of our leaders shows stunning irregularities,” Williams wrote on Instagram.
“On point in condemning horrendous attacks on Israel and demanding hostages be returned,” he added. “[Yet, failure] to recognize the [United Nation’s] description of a humanitarian crisis in Gaza, let alone support de-escalation and ceasefire.”
On Oct. 24, Williams declared Gaza a “humanitarian crisis” and added that “all of us who rightly condemned Oct 7 on Israel should be rightly demanding a [ceasefire] now and before any ground invasion.”
Israel began striking Hamas targets after repelling the Oct. 7 invasion but did not launch a ground offensive into Gaza until Oct. 27.
In February, Williams appeared at a press conference conducted by the “NYC 4 Ceasefire” coalition to demand an end to Israel’s military operations in Gaza. During the event, participants referred to the Gaza war as a “genocide” and honored Palestinian “martyrs.”
“We have gathered here today to show city-wide support for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and end to the genocide in Palestine,” said Jawanza Williams, organizing director of left-wing activist group VOCALNY.
Williams harbors ties to the vehemently anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America group (DSA). In a 2018 interview with the left-wing media outlet Jacobin, Williams said, “I have no problem saying I’m a Democratic Socialist.”
Williams has solicited an endorsement from the group while running for office in New York City. DSA has routinely praised Hamas’s so-called “armed struggle” against Israel. The group issued an explicit endorsement of Hamas, stating that the terrorist organization is a cornerstone in the “resistance” against the “Zionist project.” DSA has also accused Israel of committing “genocide” and praised the Hezbollah terrorist group for attempting to pummel the Jewish state with missiles.
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