RSS
I’m a Jewish Zionist College Professor: My Colleagues and I Are Under Attack
The Sarah Lawrence campus. Photo: Wiki Commons.
“We’ve watched your joy in every small victory & your grief and rage when the NYPD breaks your bones & the bones of your friends … You give us hope. We’re so proud of you.”
These are not the words of radical student activists. They come from my own colleagues at Sarah Lawrence College, where I have taught for nearly two decades. They were posted publicly on the official Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine Instagram account. Professors celebrating broken bones. Educators glorifying violence. Teachers recruiting students not for scholarship, but for “resistance.”
This is the reality of American higher education in 2025. A powerful new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) confirms what I’ve witnessed firsthand: activist faculty, not just students, are driving some of the worst antisemitism on our campuses.
While the public fixates on student protests — the encampments, the disrupted commencements, the viral confrontations — the real danger often lurks in faculty lounges and department meetings. According to the survey of 209 Jewish faculty members, more than 73 percent have personally witnessed antisemitic incidents from colleagues, administrators, or staff. These are not impressionable undergraduates, but the very people entrusted to model scholarly discourse and uphold the core principles of academic freedom.
The transformation of professors into activists is no longer subtle. At Sarah Lawrence, the Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine chapter routinely posts messages defending radical actions, including one justifying a call for intifada on the school’s free speech board: “Sarah Lawrence Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine standing with our students today in their defense of what the free speech board was designed for. Here’s hoping that in a time of so much cowardice & ignorance (the English translation of the word ‘intifada’! become a way to shut down political opinion) @sarahlawrencecollege can defend the courage & the knowledge of these students fighting for the new day.”
This isn’t education. It’s antisemitic intimidation masquerading as scholarship. Faculty are no longer celebrating intellectual achievement, but glorifying physical confrontation and ideological conformity. They aren’t opening minds; they are closing ranks.
The ADL and AEN report exposes just how widespread and organized this movement has become. Nearly half of queried faculty in the opt-in survey report the presence of Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters on their campuses. Where these chapters exist, they are not academic societies but activist cells. Their work is not the pursuit of truth, but the advancement of a political program through intimidation and disruption. Since October 7, 2023, the network has expanded to over 130 chapters nationwide. The effect on Jewish faculty is profound: more than a third now hide their identity to survive professionally, while those who have experienced harassment are nearly eight times more likely to consider leaving academia entirely.
The report captures the human toll. One faculty member described how their department chair, openly pro-Hamas, turned the department into a literal encampment, plastered with “river to the sea” slogans. When a handful of Jewish faculty objected, the chair mobilized 50 people to attack them verbally, with one telling a Jewish colleague, “you have all the money and power.” These are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of a movement that has taken hold in far too many institutions.
Universities that move swiftly to punish microaggressions and mandate bias training suddenly discover complexity and nuance when Jews are targeted. Administrators who champion “safe spaces” tell Jewish faculty to be patient, to understand context, to accept that “anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitism” even as their Jewish colleagues flee campus for their own safety. This selective enforcement is more than hypocrisy; it is institutional complicity.
The numbers reflect the consequences. In 2024, reported campus antisemitic incidents rose by 84 percent, reaching 1,694 documented cases — nearly five every single day. Universities have become the epicenters of anti-Jewish hatred. While some schools, like Vanderbilt, have improved their response, most remain paralyzed or unwilling to confront entrenched activist cultures among their own faculty.
At stake is the meaning of academic freedom itself. Professors can and should debate Israeli policies or any other contentious topic. That is the essence of higher learning. But academic freedom does not mean turning classrooms into indoctrination camps or making colleagues fear for their safety.
When faculty celebrate students having their “bones broken” by police, when they organize campaigns to exclude Israeli scholars from conferences and journals, when they instruct students not to cite “Zionist authors” even in unrelated subjects, that is no longer scholarship. It is activism wearing academic robes.
The danger extends far beyond campus walls. Universities do not simply educate individuals; they shape the habits of an entire generation of leaders. Students trained to see dissent as betrayal and ideological conformity as virtue will carry those habits into newsrooms, courtrooms, boardrooms, and government offices. When faculty replace education with indoctrination, they corrupt not only the academy, but the democratic society it exists to serve.
I have lived this crisis personally. A colleague once physically assaulted me for refusing to condemn Israel. Administrators shrugged when I was boycotted for being openly Jewish and Zionist. Members of my own department have led teach-ins filled with hate and half-truths. These were not abstract debates about politics or foreign policy; they were direct attacks on my ability to teach and to exist openly as a Jew and Zionist on campus.
Across the country, countless faculty now hide who they are to survive in institutions that claim to value openness and diversity. Campuses have become minefields where a single word about Israel can end a career. The ADL and AEN data confirm what we are living: a crisis not merely of policies but of values. Universities must decide whether they are places of learning or places of ideological enforcement. They must decide whether they will protect all minorities or only those aligned with the prevailing activist culture.
I have spent my career defending the liberal arts ideal: that education means engaging with difficult ideas, not enforcing orthodox ones. But that tradition will not survive unless others join in this defense. Alumni can withhold donations until meaningful reforms are made. Legislators can insist on equal enforcement of anti-discrimination laws. Parents can choose schools that protect all students and faculty. Boards of Trustees can reclaim their oversight role and hold universities accountable to their core missions.
If we fail to act, we risk a future where universities complete their transformation into ideological factories — places where conformity is rewarded, dissent is punished, and entire groups of scholars are driven out. That is not only a loss for Jewish faculty or Jewish students. It is a catastrophe for the American democracy universities are supposed to strengthen.
When faculty abandon education for activism and administrators turn a blind eye, higher education ceases to serve its most basic purpose. The choice before us is stark: reform now, or watch as the very institutions tasked with preserving free thought become the engines of its destruction.
If our universities can no longer protect truth-seekers from mobs, they cannot protect democracy itself.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
RSS
Antisemitism Lawsuit Filed Against New Jersey University
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas activists. Photo: New Deal Coalition/Instagram
A new lawsuit alleges that Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) in Teaneck, New Jersey punished a Jewish professor and volunteer chaplain for complaining about antisemitic discrimination that officials allegedly refused to quell even as it resulted in violations of civil rights.
“After voicing opposition to the antisemitic discriminatory speech promulgated and antisemitic abuse directed at Jews during a defendant-approved, sponsored, or sanctioned campus event, defendant FSU suspended and effectively terminated plaintiff,” court documents filed in a Bergen County superior court say. “Defendant FDU’s conduct was retaliatory, discriminatory, and violated state law.”
On Monday, Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) told The Algemeiner that the claims are false and will be discredited in court.
“We categorically deny the allegations of antisemitism put forward in this lawsuit, and the facts will show that our students, faculty, and staff have been able to freely study and work at the university without experiencing the type of discriminatory incidents that have been reported elsewhere in the country,” it said in a statement. “The university has not and will not tolerate illegal discrimination against our Jewish community or others based on religion, national origin, or other protected status under law.”
It added, “We believe that the university has consistently fulfilled its mission to promote a respectful forum for the expression and discussion of different viewpoints in a civil manner that does not interfere with the right of any person to study and work at the university, and we will proceed to defend this action.”
The plaintiff, Ira Jaskoll, says his plight began following the explosion of antisemitic hatred set off by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, when masses of FDU students began holding anti-Israel events he describes as hateful and calling for the destruction of Israel. During one such event, an activist from a local anti-Israel group uttered hate speech accusing Israel of “genocide” and “apartheid,” a message allegedly promoted with a stamp of approval from an administrative office which supervises expressive activities.
Jaskoll took umbrage at the speaker’s remarks and assumed the right to express his own views on the matter during the event, triggering his being involuntarily removed from the venue. A cascade of meetings, complaints, and counter-complaints followed this incident, with Jaskoll charging that he had been a victim of flagrantly antisemitic conduct. University officials allegedly disregarded his telling of what transpired and, after declining to file disciplinary charges against anyone responsible for organizing the anti-Israel event, “paused” his serving as a chaplain for Jewish students.
According to the lawsuit, the “pause” would have been lifted had Jaskoll agreed to apologize for disrupting the anti-Israel event, but he declined to do so, citing his conviction that apologizing for someone else’s discriminatory conduct would be immensely unjust. He has not been restored to the position to this day. The complaint alleges that he is “effectively” terminated and entitled to damages, both punitive and compensatory.
Jaskoll is not the first university employee to allege that school officials permitted the escalation of hostile and discriminatory activities.
Earlier this month, a male researcher came forward to join a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed in June against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). According to court documents shared with The Algemeiner, he endured psychological torment, having been swarmed by “masked” pro-Hamas activists clamoring for the destruction of Israel and students who “interrogated” his Jewish identity, pelting him with slurs and threatening to “prevent” his reproducing to bring “more Jewish children” into the world.
While administrators received formal complaints describing in harrowing detail the severity of the bullying being perpetrated against the student, they allegedly took no action. Left to stand alone, the student resorted to concealing his Jewishness on a campus which purports to be one of the most inclusive in the country.
A new survey released this month found that anti-Zionist staff and faculty have accelerated the antisemitism crisis on US college campuses by politicizing the classroom, promoting anti-Israel bias, and even discriminating against Jewish colleagues.
The actions by faculty provided an academic pretext for the relentless wave of antisemitic incidents of discrimination and harassment which pro-Hamas activists have perpetrated against Jewish and Israeli members of campus communities since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel, according to the survey.
Released earlier this month as the result of a joint partnership by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), the survey of “Jewish-identifying US-based faculty members” found that 73 percent of Jewish faculty witnessed their colleagues engaging in antisemitic activity, and a significant percentage named the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) group as the force driving it.
Of those aware of an FSJP chapter on their campus, the vast majority of respondents reported that the chapter engaged in anti-Israel programming (77.2 percent), organized anti-Israel protests and demonstrations (79.4 percent), and endorsed anti-Israel divestment campaigns (84.8 percent).
Additionally, 50 percent of respondents said that anti-Zionist faculty have established de facto, or “shadow,” boycotts of Israel on campus even in the absence of formal declaration or recognition of one by the administration. Among those who reported the presence of such a boycott, 55 percent noted that departments avoid co-sponsoring events with Jewish or pro-Israel groups and 29.5 percent said this policy is also subtly enacted by sabotaging negotiations for partnerships with Israeli institutions. All the while, such faculty fostered an environment in which Jewish professors were “maligned, professionally isolated, and in severe cases, doxxed or harassed” as they assumed the right to determine for their Jewish colleagues what constitutes antisemitism.
“Colleges and universities are meant to be open, safe, learning environments where faculty and students alike feel comfortable sharing ideas and having open discourse,” AEN executive director Miriam Elman said in a statement. “It’s disturbing, but perhaps unsurprising, that Jewish and Zionist faculty on campuses across the country are experiencing antisemitic hostility and retaliation for their beliefs.”
She continued, “Administrators must address these issues head-on and take meaningful action to protect the flow of free ideas and open inquiry on their campuses, or their institutions will suffer for generations to come.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
More Countries Speak Out About Calls to Boycott Israel at 2025 Eurovision Song Contest
JJ, representing Austria with “Wasted Love”, winner of the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest, holds the trophy during the Grand Final, in Basel, Switzerland, May 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Several European countries have expressed their opinions in recent days about efforts to boycott next year’s Eurovision song contest if Israel takes part in the international competition.
Germany’s Culture Minister Wolfram Weimer on Saturday criticized those threatening to pull out of the 2026 Eurovision contest if Israel takes part.
“Eurovision was founded to bring nations together through music. Excluding Israel today goes against this fundamental idea and turns a celebration of understanding between peoples into a tribunal,” Weimer said in a statement. “It’s precisely because Eurovision was born on the ruins of war that it should not become a scene of exclusion. Eurovision is based on the principle that artists are judged on their art and not on their nationality. The culture of cancellation is not the solution — the solution is diversity and cohesion.”
Meanwhile, Poland’s culture minister said she hopes her country will not participate in the 2026 Eurovision if Israel is allowed to join the event. “I believe we should not participate in Eurovision if Israel is taking part. This is my personal opinion,” the minister told the radio station TOK FM on Friday.
The next Eurovision is taking place in Vienna, Austria, in May 2026. Sepp Schellhorn, a senior foreign ministry official in Austria, told the daily Kurier that cultural boycotts are “dumb and pointless.” Over the weekend, the country’s Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger expressed concerns about the boycott efforts against Israel in a statement shared on X. Meinl-Reisinger revealed that she wrote to colleagues in Europe about how such boycotts create division and will not improve the situation in Gaza.
“The Eurovision Song Contest is a symbol of peace, unity, and cultural exchange – not an instrument for sanctions,” Meinl-Reisinger wrote in a post on X. “It concerns me that some countries are now considering boycotting the 70th #ESC in Vienna due to Israel’s participation. Therefore, I have written a letter to my European colleagues with the appeal to promote the important exchange through art and culture and to jointly find ways to actually improve the situation in Israel and Gaza.”
In her letter, cited by Reuters, the minster wrote that excluding Israel from the Eurovision or pulling participation because of Israel’s involvement “would neither alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza nor contribute to a sustainable political solution.”
“Such a rift would only deepen the discord and preclude opportunities for important dialogue between artists and the public – without improving the situation on the ground in Israel and Gaza,” Meinl-Reisinger added.
Spain previously said it would boycott next year’s Eurovision if Israel participated, following similar threats made by the Netherlands, Ireland, Slovenia, and Iceland.
Austrian singer JJ won this year’s competition in Basel, Switzerland, with his song “Wasted Love.” He has also called for Israel to be banned from the 2026 contest.
RSS
How the Palestinian Authority Pays Terrorists to Murder Jews
The opening of a hall that the Palestinian Authority named for a terrorist who killed 125 people. Photo: Palestinian Media Watch.
Two Israeli soldiers, who were directing humanitarian aid transfers to Gaza, were murdered last week by a Jordanian truck driver delivering humanitarian aid at the Allenby Crossing from Jordan to Israel. The Jordanian shot and then stabbed the Israelis, and was killed right after the attack.
According to the Palestinian Authority (PA), every terrorist, including non-Palestinians, who is killed while attacking Israelis is considered a “Martyr,” whose family will receive an immediate 6,000-shekel grant and then a lifetime monthly terror reward.
Thousands of the recipients of PA terror rewards live outside the PA areas.
At times, the PA waits before announcing that the murderer is a “Martyr” — because it is afraid of what the international response will be on the day of the murder. For example, earlier this month, two Palestinian terrorists murdered six Israeli civilians and injured 12 in Jerusalem.
For the first week, the PA did not define the murderers as “Martyrs.” However, after the attack was no longer an active news story, both terrorist murderers were given the “Martyr” designation by the PA.
Dying for Allah as a “Martyr” does not just have financial benefits. It is also the highest status achievable in Islam, according to the PA. The PA is sending the ultimate terror-supporting message to its Muslim population, which is that the murder of Israeli civilians is not only condoned by Islam but is precisely what Allah wants of them. And Allah will reward them for those murders.
The glorification by the PA through its official daily of those two murderers as “Martyrs” on the way to Allah’s rewards in heaven follows PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ fake “condemnation” of the attack.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) showed that Abbas’ statement was anything but a condemnation. Rather, it was a cover-up of the fact that the PA’s ideology endorses Palestinian terror attacks against Israeli civilians.
PMW has documented for decades that the PA always gives the “Martyr” title to any terrorist who dies while attacking Israelis, which also ensures that his family is rewarded with monthly Martyrs’ payments for life.
Another recent example is the terrorist who shot and murdered a 30-year-old mother, Tzeela Gez, and her unborn baby earlier this year. He was also venerated by the PA as a “Martyr”:
It should be noted that Nael Sami Abdul Rahman Samarah, a 36-year-old young man, died as a Martyr on May 17, 2025 after occupation forces shot him with live bullets in the Al-Balata area of the town of Bruqin. [emphasis added]
[Official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Sept. 15, 2025]
The Jordanian murderer was not yet defined as a “Martyr” by the PA, but if its past policy is any indicator, he will soon receive his designation and his family will begin receiving their monthly rewards.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.