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A Florida bill attacking ‘critical theory’ in higher education has the state’s Jewish academics worried
(JTA) — The University of Florida has more Jewish students than any other public college in the United States — and last week, one of them reached out to a professor, fearing that it would no longer be possible to study Jewish topics there.
Citing a graphic that had been making the rounds on social media, the student asked if it was true that a new bill working its way through the state legislature would remove all “Jewish Studies courses, majors and minors” in the state. The graphic was shared by several people with large online followings, including comedian D.L. Hughley, who has more than 750,000 followers on Twitter.
“I love my major and I can’t imagine switching to anything else,” the student wrote, according to Norman Goda, director of the university’s Center for Jewish Studies.
Goda wasn’t able to console the student. Like other Jewish academics in Florida who spoke to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, he doesn’t know whether H.B. 999 would affect Jewish studies on the state’s college campuses. Though the bill’s author — a Republican state representative — says that won’t be the case, the bill’s language is much less clear.
That’s because the bill’s current wording would forbid the state’s public higher education institutions from teaching or offering any major or minor based in “methodology associated with Critical Theory.” That prohibition, say academics and other critics of the bill, would make teaching courses in Jewish studies impossible — and would also outlaw many other fields in higher education.
Exactly what the bill means by “critical theory” is unclear. To academics, the term refers to a tool for analyzing society and culture, created in the 1930s by German Jewish academics, that encourages people to view the world through power structures, and to consider why they fall short. To political conservatives, it’s a relative of “critical race theory,” a watchword for those who want to inhibit classroom instruction about racism. An earlier version of H.B. 999 mentioned only critical race theory, not the umbrella theory.
“These people don’t know what they’re talking about,” said a Jewish faculty member at a Florida university, who requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from the state government, regarding the lawmakers behind H.B. 999. “You’re putting people who don’t know what critical theory is, but have heard the words — and now you’re putting them in charge of universities.”
A university that completely purged such ideas from its classrooms, the anonymous faculty member said, “would be non-existent.”
The bill in question is the latest example of conservative-led state efforts to snuff out culture-war modes of thought like critical race theory and gender studies, often referred to euphemistically by lawmakers as “divisive concepts” in education. Such efforts have occasionally ensnared efforts to teach Jewish history and the Holocaust.
Attempts to legislate the classroom are particularly potent in Florida, where Republican governor Ron DeSantis, a likely presidential candidate, has frequently stated his desire to ban “woke” concepts from being taught in the state. (DeSantis has stated he will wait to see H.B. 999’s final form before he decides whether to sign it, but in a discussion with college administrators last week he continued to rail against what he called the “ideological agenda” of campus diversity, equity and inclusion programs.)
The state recently rejected the curriculum for a new Advanced Placement African-American Studies course in high schools, forcing the College Board to rework the class. Florida is also home to several active conservative “parents’ rights” groups that have lobbied to remove objectionable books and clubs from public schools.
While most legislation in this realm to date has targeted what’s taught in K-12 public schools, this bill and other efforts in Florida have gone a step further by seeking to regulate the world of state-funded higher education — creating what critics say are new and dangerous threats to academic freedom, with broad and vague wording that leaves efforts to research and teach a variety of disciplines in doubt.
“This bill would cripple the long-standing freedom universities have to design and teach a curriculum based on the development of academic disciplines,” Cary Nelson, an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois and past president of the American Association of University Professors ,who has taught multiple courses on Jewish issues, told JTA.
In a recent subcommittee hearing on the bill, Republican state Rep. Alex Andrade, who co-authored the legislation, said, “I believe that state universities should be focused on teaching students how to think, not what to think.” He said the bill’s banning of “radical” ideologies referred to “a system meant to direct and promote certain activism to achieve a specific viewpoint.”
Efforts to limit the material taught to children and college students are underway in several states. But Florida has an especially large population of Jewish students. The University of Florida stands atop Hillel International’s ranking of public colleges with the highest proportion of Jewish students, and the University of Central Florida has the third-largest. Florida State University, Florida International University, Florida Atlantic University and the University of South Florida also rank in the top 60.
H.B. 999 would affect education at those schools in other ways, too. The bill, which recently advanced to committee, would overhaul the state’s post-tenure review process, so that instead of checking on a faculty member’s research productivity every five years, as is currently the case in the state, tenured professors could face reviews “at any time for cause” including “violation of any applicable law or rule.”
The result, one academic in the state said, would be “open season on faculty,” who could be out of a job if their university’s board — which, in public schools, is beholden to the governor — disagrees with their syllabus.
Andrade rejected the idea that H.B. 999 would undercut Jewish studies in Florida.
“Outsiders are wrong. Ethnic studies are not affected by the bill either by the bill’s intent or the bill’s language,” Andrade wrote in an email to JTA, accusing the bill’s critics of “lying and claiming that Florida’s leaders have tried to ban teaching black history in schools.”
The state’s only Jewish Republican legislator, state Rep. Randy Fine, did not return a JTA request for comment on whether he supports the bill. Fine has promoted similar culture-war legislation in the past, including a bill he co-authored in February that would prohibit all K-12 schools in the state from referring to either students or employees by pronouns that do not correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth.
With a Republican-dominated House and Senate, some form of H.B. 999 seems likely to reach DeSantis’ desk. (A parallel bill in the state Senate does not contain wording on critical theory.) But there is strong opposition from the academic community. Groups including the American Historical Association, the American Association of University Professors and Florida’s statewide faculty union have harshly condemned the bill and urged lawmakers to oppose it.
The American Historical Association’s statement on the bill this month calls it a “blatant and frontal attack on principles of academic freedom and shared governance central to higher education in the United States.” More than 70 academic, historical and activist organizations co-signed the statement.
The executive committee of the Association for Jewish Studies signed a different statement authored by the American Council of Learned Societies, decrying the bill as an “effort to undermine academic freedom in Florida.”
“If it passes, it ends academic freedom in the state’s public colleges and universities, with dire consequences for their teaching, research, and financial well-being,” the statement said of the bill. “Academic freedom means freedom of thought, not the state-mandated production of histories edited to suit one party’s agenda in the current culture wars.”
Asked for comment on the bill, Warren Hoffman, the executive director of the Association for Jewish Studies, pointed to the statement.
Rachel Harris, director and endowed chair at Florida Atlantic University’s Jewish Studies program, is in her first semester at the university, having just arrived from the University of Illinois. “I’m now wondering if that was a terrible mistake,” she joked. (Harris is spending this term in Israel, researching on a Fulbright fellowship.)
Still, Harris said she was “confident” that legislators would “continue to support educational commitments in the state,” noting that Florida has a Holocaust education mandate for K-12 public schools. Her Boca Raton university is currently building an expanded center for Jewish and Holocaust studies, funded by private donors. H.B. 999 in its current form would prohibit universities from teaching critical theory concepts even when such programs are privately funded.
Despite what he described as a few students at the Jewish Studies center who are concerned about the new bill, Goda said he did not think the legislation would change the experience of Jewish students on his campus.
“Jewish kids these days are really choosing universities based on whether or not Jewish kids feel comfortable there,” he said. “And I would argue that [the University of Florida] is a very welcoming campus for Jewish kids overall. There are strong Jewish institutions associated with the campus.”
Instead, he feels the bill’s real effects would be felt in the state’s ability to recruit faculty and staff while its legislators jeopardize academic freedom, tenure and other lodestars of the humanities. He said, “The real question to me is how and in what way it’s going to be enforced.”
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Isaac Accords, Wave of IRGC Terror Designations Signal Deepening Israel–Latin America Ties
Argentina’s President Javier Milei receives Presidential Medal of Honor from Israel’s President Isaac Herzog in Jerusalem, April 20, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
As Israel deepens its diplomatic outreach across Latin America, a quiet but notable convergence is taking shape, with regional governments tightening security cooperation and increasingly aligning efforts to counter Iranian-linked terrorism and illicit networks operating across the hemisphere.
During a state visit to Israel on Sunday, Argentine President Javier Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formally signed the Isaac Accords, a new framework aimed at deepening ties between Israel and Latin American governments while jointly addressing antisemitism and terrorism.
According to Toby Dershowitz, senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a Washington, DC–based think tank, this initiative builds on rising regional momentum for closer cooperation with the Jewish state and sets in place a framework for intelligence-sharing and coordinated law enforcement efforts aimed at countering Iranian proxy networks operating across the hemisphere.
Latin America has long been regarded as a hub for Iran-backed Hezbollah’s illicit drug trafficking and other criminal activities, which have been used to finance its broader terrorist operations worldwide.
“While just formally signed in recent days, there is already momentum behind some of the Isaac Accords’ goals,” Dershowitz told The Algemeiner. “Several countries have taken steps – including terrorism designations – to counter the Islamic Republic’s threat.”
“The Western Hemisphere has been plagued by Iran-backed terrorism for decades and countries are increasingly leveraging support from allies in the region to address the threat,” she continued.
Modeled after the Abraham Accords — a series of historic, US-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries — this new initiative aims to strengthen political, economic, and cultural cooperation between the Jewish state and Latin American governments.
During the signing ceremony, Milei described the launch of the accords as “a historic moment for our nations,” saying they are intended to advance peace through efforts to strengthen long-term regional stability, security, and economic prosperity.
The Isaac Accords “will not only strengthen the relationship between Argentina and Israel, united by shared values, but also mark a step toward a freer and more prosperous hemisphere,” the Argentine leader said.
According to a joint statement between the two leaders, the new initiative will focus on technology, security, and economic development, with an emphasis on deepening cooperation in innovation, commerce, and cultural exchange.
It will also seek to encourage partner countries to relocate their embassies to Jerusalem, formally designate Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and shift longstanding voting patterns on Israel at the United Nations.
Dershowitz explained that the push to formally designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its proxy groups as terrorist organizations — an approach already adopted by several Latin American countries — is central to strengthening states’ ability to investigate and prosecute terrorism networks.
She also noted that such designations facilitate cooperation with global financial intelligence units, expanding the legal tools available to track and disrupt illicit financing.
“Iran has a concerning footprint in Latin America. Some countries in the region face major Hezbollah-linked drug trafficking challenges and, as a result, exposure to illicit financial flows,” Dershowitz said. “It is no doubt part of the calculus that led to these designations.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, and even more so amid the broader confrontation with Iran, Latin American countries have increasingly sought to align their domestic legislation with international sanctions frameworks targeting Hezbollah, Hamas, and the IRGC — all of which are designated by the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union.
Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Paraguay are among some of the countries that have designated Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC as terrorist organizations.
More recently, Costa Rica and Trinidad and Tobago have also followed suit, proscribing all three Iranian and Iran-backed entities.
Once a formal designation is in place, authorities can immediately freeze a wide range of assets belonging to designated entities without the need for a prior criminal conviction.
The designation also makes it a criminal offense to provide such entities with material support — such as funding, transportation, housing, or false documentation — while giving authorities additional tools to track and map a group’s logistical and financial networks.
Last month, Argentina also designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, after previously designating the Palestinian group Hamas in 2024 and the Lebanese group Hezbollah in 2019.
After Iran accused Buenos Aires of “siding with the aggressors” and violating international law with its latest designation, the Argentine government declared Iranian chargé d’affaires Mohsen Tehrani “persona non grata” and gave him 48 hours to leave the country.
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Steeped in history, Pensacola Jews celebrate the 150th anniversary of Florida’s oldest synagogue
(JTA) — PENSACOLA, Florida — Mention the Jewish exodus to Florida, and people immediately think Miami Beach, Boca Raton or Aventura.
But it was here in Pensacola — along the Gulf Coast’s fabled “Redneck Riviera” — that German-speaking Jewish pioneers first put down roots in the Sunshine State. In 1876, when Pensacola’s Temple Beth El was founded, Florida had 200,000 inhabitants, just 2,000 of them Jews.
Today, Florida is home to 24.3 million people and a Jewish population exceeded only by New York and California. Most of the state’s 762,000 Jews reside in three South Florida counties — eclipsing much older congregations in Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Pensacola that thrived long before the advent of air-conditioning and interstate highways.
Pensacola is home to only about 1,800 Jewish adults, according to the American Jewish Population Project — a number that has remained constant for a century. Yet locals in this laid-back resort in Florida’s Panhandle, more than 600 miles northwest from the bustling Jewish communities of South Florida, say it is ripe for a Jewish renaissance.
“I’d like to make the case that this is also Florida, even though we’re only 10 miles from Alabama,” said Rabbi Joel Fleekop, 47, spiritual leader of Beth El since 2012. “The cost of living here is very low, we have no traffic or congestion, and there are plenty of good jobs.”
Pensacola also has three synagogues: a Chabad, an Orthodox-style congregation and Beth El, which this month is marking the 150th anniversary of its founding with a weekend of prayers, local art, Israeli music and dancing.
Beth El’s celebration began on Friday with a Shabbat service led jointly by Fleekop and Cantor Richard Cohen, former director of the Hebrew Union College’s School of Sacred Music and a and Pensacola native.
In a sermon, Fleekop told the story of the children’s book “Bone Button Borscht,” in which a wandering man helps the people of an impoverished town to create soup from their own meager ingredients that somehow taste far better together than separately.
“For 150 years, this temple — our temple, Temple Beth El — has thrived because similar to the people making soup in the story, its members have contributed and done what they could to nourish and enhance and better our community,” he said. “Our founding families like the man who set up the pot provided the vision that this little corner of the world could have a thriving Jewish community. Others provided the resources to build the sacred spaces our congregation has called home and to keep on the lights and, this being Florida, the air conditioning also on.”
Summarizing the wide range of contributions that members have made over the decades, Fleekop also noted changes that Temple Beth El experienced over the last 150 years: the number of stars on the American flag grew, the the Israeli flag was created, the amount of Hebrew in the service increased; and congregants are wearing “fewer neckties and fewer fancy hats” but more kippahs and tallits than they once did.
“Inevitably each generation had its own taste and so added their own ingredients, the spiritual equivalent of maybe some okra, or zaatar, or even some sriracha,” he said to laughs. “At 150 years, our congregation is no doubt very different from what was imagined at its inception. … The soup that is our temple has gone from a Bavarian borscht to a Gulf seafood gumbo to a gluten-free, Asian fusion matzoh ball soup. But in many ways, in the most essential ways, we are still the same congregation.”
The following evening, a gala dinner featured dancing and a live band. And on Sunday morning, congregants toured Pensacola’s Jewish cemetery, where the oldest tombstone dates from 1874 and many inscriptions are in Hebrew and German as well as English.
Among those buried in the cemetery is Florida’s first Jewish mayor, Adolph Greenhut, who served from 1913 to 1916 — two decades after his stint as Beth El’s president. Beth El also takes great pride in having been home to the nation’s first de facto female rabbi, Paula Ackerman, in the 1960s.
“There were really very few Jews in South Florida until the 1940s. People can’t believe there was a thriving Jewish community here at the turn of the century,” said Bill Zimmern, 74, a native Pensacolan like his mother and grandmother whose wife, Beverly, was once mayor of suburban Gulf Breeze.
That community was born after the Civil War, when Jews settled in Milton — a northwest Florida lumber hub — bringing their skills from heavily wooded areas of Bavaria and southern Germany. They began relocating to Pensacola in the 1870s as the city developed.
Zimmern added that nearby Naval Air Station Pensacola, home to the Blue Angels, has long welcomed Jews to the area, and that many Jewish men and women in uniform who were once stationed there eventually settled in Pensacola and joined the congregation.
Beth El’s first home was a wooden structure on Chase Street in downtown Pensacola, but it burned down in 1901 and all records of the shul’s first 25 years of existence disappeared in that fire. It was later rebuilt near what is today the on-ramp for Interstate 110, but closed in 1931 when its members inaugurated the current synagogue on nearby Palafox Street, and the previous structure became a roller-skating rink.
Soon after Beth El’s founding, Yiddish-speaking Jews from Eastern Europe — mainly traders and merchants — settled in the area, and they were not especially happy with its Reform services. So in 1899, they parted ways and established B’nai Israel as an Orthodox synagogue.
In 1923, congregants bought a house and converted it into a house of worship; by 1953, they had finally raised enough money to construct the building it currently occupies, according to Yehoshua Mizrachi, B’nai Israel’s rabbi.
At the time, it also chose to affiliate with the Conservative movement, then the largest denomination in the United States. It remained part of the movement until about a decade ago, separating after the Conservative movement opted to ordain gay rabbis and sanction same-sex marriages.
“I am the 19th rabbi to hold this pulpit, and all but three or four of them were Orthodox,” said Mizrachi, 62. Originally from Lakewood, New Jersey, he said B’nai Israel’s membership consists of 60 to 70 families, compared to 185 families at Beth El.
“This congregation is independent, so they dropped their affiliation 10 years ago. When they hired me, I told them not to expect me to do anything to compromise my personal integrity as a Jew,” Mizrachi said.
Even so, the rabbi added, “we are not an Orthodox congregation. We have mixed seating and women are called to the Torah. In all other aspects, this shul operates according to the standards of halacha,” or Jewish law.
Rabbi Mendel Danow runs the Pensacola Chabad Jewish Center along with his Israeli-born wife, Nechama, from a 120-year-old house less than a mile from B’nai Israel. Between 500 and 600 people are on his mailing list, he said.
“A lot of Jews here are unaffiliated. They don’t have that natural connection,” said Danow, 30. The best way of drawing them in is by inviting them to Friday night services and Shabbat dinner; anywhere from 20 to 80 people usually show up, he said. “It’s laid back. Davening [prayer] is shorter, dinner is longer. It’s been a very important part of our community.”
Danow is clear-eyed about the challenges of living an observant Jewish life in Pensacola.
“There’s no kosher restaurant within a 400-mile radius. The closest is in Jacksonville or Atlanta,” he said. “Obviously we’re not the first destination for an Orthodox Jew looking to move to Florida.”
But he’s trying to make things easier. His Chabad recently opened Pensa-Kosher — a mini-market for the handful of locals who strictly observe Jewish dietary laws. He and his wife, who have six children together, run a Hebrew school with close to 20 students, as well as a preschool with 10 children. And they are trying to support the few Jewish students at the nearest university.
“When we moved here, one of the first things we noticed was a lack of Jewish life on campus, so we started a Chabad student club at the University of West Florida,” Danow said.
With Pensacola enjoying a relatively low cost of living and ranking high when it comes to job growth, beach quality and even the density of Waffle House restaurants, the city is growing — and Chabad is bursting out of its current home. Early next year, it will relocate to a larger complex two blocks down the street. Among other things, the new facility will include a synagogue, Hebrew school and Pensacola’s first full-service mikvah.
Danow said any antisemitism in the city is dwarfed by support for Israel and Jews.
“Three years ago, a gang of four teenagers threw a brick through our window, and ‘Heil Hitler’ was spray-painted on the brick,” he recalled. “But after Oct. 7, people began dropping off flowers and giving donations. There was such a sense of sharing in our pain. People would stop me on the street to say, ‘We’re praying for Israel.’”
Mizrachi shared similar experiences. “There’s a church on every street corner. People are very pro-Israel here,” he said. “Strangers stop me in the supermarket and tell me they love Israel. It happens all the time.”
The front lawn of Zimmern’s best friend, Charles Kahn, 74, a retired federal judge, boasts two signs: “Go Gators” — a reference to his alma mater, the University of Florida — and “We Stand With Israel.”
“Right after Oct. 7, I got that sign,” Kahn said while sipping coffee as he sat on his porch overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. “My neighbor on one side is a retired Navy captain. He asked for one also, and my other neighbor on the other side asked for one too — and then the people across the street, then two houses down. We ended up with five of them just on this street.”
Kahn is a past president of Beth El, as is his wife Janet. Their Reform synagogue is by far the largest Jewish house of worship in the city.
“We’re a full-function, mainstream Reform synagogue. We follow Reform rules, and our house of worship is a place where people who disagree on politics can still be friends,” said Fleekop, a Philadelphia native who grew up in Reno, Nevada, and moved to Pensacola 13 years ago. His wife, Andrea, runs the temple’s School for Jewish Living, which has 55 children enrolled.
“We welcome the LGBTQ community. Some gay and lesbian Jews who were rejected elsewhere have found themselves here at Beth El,” he said. “We also have a lot of Jews by choice.”
One of them is Nichole Friedland, 51, a Pensacola-born nurse who was raised Catholic but converted to Judaism 16 years ago — on Easter Sunday no less — under Fleekop’s guidance. She’s now the vice-president of Beth El and treasurer of the Pensacola Jewish Federation.
“Most of our congregants are either interfaith or have converted to Judaism,” said Friedland, who with her husband is raising a blended family of eight kids. “I wanted my children to have a good foundational religion, and Judaism made the most sense to me. It was, and is, the correct choice.”
The federation, based inside Beth El, is entirely volunteer-run and rarely publicizes events or occasions — a sharp contrast to the vibe in the Jewish metropolises of South Florida.
But Mizrachi sees potential for Pensacola in some of the same forces that are luring Jews to Boca and Aventure — including unhappiness among New Yorkers with the city’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani.
“After Mamdani’s win, a lot of people are thinking of moving to Florida,” Mizrachi said. “But instead of going to Dade or Broward, they should consider Pensacola. There is Jewish life here.”
The post Steeped in history, Pensacola Jews celebrate the 150th anniversary of Florida’s oldest synagogue appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats Nominate Lawyer Who Praised Hezbollah for Top University Post
A sign at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Photo: Ken Lund.
The Michigan Democratic Party nominated attorney attorney Amir Makled over incumbent Jewish Regent Jordan Acker on Sunday, drawing fresh scrutiny towards Makled’s defense of international terrorist organizations and anti-Israel posture.
Makled, a Dearborn-based civil rights attorney who has been outspoken in support of divestment from Israel, won the party’s nomination for one of two regent seats up for election this year, defeating Acker, who had become a frequent target of pro-Palestinian activists over his opposition to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) efforts on campus.
The contest has drawn national attention because of the unusually broad authority held by University of Michigan regents, who are elected statewide and oversee the university’s finances, investments, executive leadership and major institutional policy decisions. The eight-member board plays a central role in decisions ranging from presidential oversight to responses to campus protest movements and demands for divestment.
For months, anti-Israel student activists and progressive organizers had pressed for changes to the board, arguing the university should divest from companies tied to Israel amid the war in Gaza. Acker, one of the board’s most vocal opponents of divestment, became a particular focus of that pressure campaign. In December 2024, pro-Hamas activists targeted Acker’s home with violent demonstrations, breaking his windows and spray-painting his car “Divest Free Palestine.” The vandals also spray-painted an inverted red triangle on Acker’s car, a symbol used to indicate support for the Hamas terrorist group.
Makled, who represented a student arrested during the university’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment protests, had argued publicly that the university should reconsider its investment policies regarding Israel. His nomination, however, also drew scrutiny after resurfaced and later-deleted social media posts in which he appeared to praise Hezbollah and shared antisemitic content. The Michigan chapter of the Service Employees International Union reportedly withdrew its endorsement following the controversy.
An investigation by The Detroit News revealed that Makled was found to have deleted social media posts praising leaders of the Hezbollah terrorist organization. One of the posts referred to slain Hezbollah leader Hasan Nasrallah as a “martyr.” He also reposted antisemitic messages from far-right commentator Candace Owens which referred to Israelis as “demons” who “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.”
Supporters of Acker have argued the outcome reflects a broader deterioration in support for Israel and tolerance of antisemitism within Democratic politics, particularly among younger and more progressive voters. Some also noted that Paul Brown, Acker’s non-Jewish running mate who had similarly opposed divestment efforts, was renominated while Acker was not, making the result especially symbolic for many Jewish Democrats.
The race underscores how university governance battles have become a new front in national political fights over Israel. While university divestment decisions are often constrained by legal and fiduciary obligations, regents can shape investment policy, institutional messaging and the university’s overall posture toward such campaigns.
With eight regents serving staggered terms and only two seats on the ballot this cycle, a single election does not determine the university’s investment policy outright. But activists on both sides increasingly view these races as critical long-term contests over whether public universities will resist or embrace institutional divestment from Israel.
As the general election approaches, the regent race is likely to remain a closely watched test of how far the Democratic Party’s internal debate over Israel is reshaping not only national politics, but the leadership of major American universities. Recent polls indicate that Democratic constituents have rapidly shifted away from supporting Israel