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Erev Rosh Hashanah 5785 – Campus Protests 

Rabbi Robin Nafshi

It might not surprise you to learn this about me: in college, I was a campus activist. I graduated from high school in 1978. I spent my first year of college at Drew University, a tiny school in northern New Jersey. The place was so wrong for me, particularly because I felt like I was living in a fishbowl. I eventually found a group a friends, and we went into New York City most Saturday nights. By early spring, I knew I had to transfer.

In the fall of 1979, I moved to Manhattan to begin my sophomore year at NYU, New York University. At the time, it was the largest private university in the country. That was just what I needed – a big place where I could be as anonymous as I wanted to be.

But anonymity didn’t last long. Soon after arriving, I perused the tables at the student activities fair. The two guys from Hillel looked Orthodox, so I quickly walked by. Then I found the GPU – the Gay People’s Union, which became my home for the next three years. 

During my years at NYU, I was treasurer and then co-president of the GPU. I marched, I protested, I organized, and I made a nuisance of myself. Our primary objective was to get the military off of the NYU campus, for in the late 70s and early 80s, openly LGBTQ people were not permitted to serve in the military. 

We sought to get ROTC out of the recruitment office and to end on-campus ROTC activities. We also demanded that NYU leave what was called ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. NYU was helping to develop the forerunner to the internet. 

My most successful event was a sit-in outside of the NYU president’s office. There were a lot of us and the administration did not appreciate our presence. But they agreed to meet with us, which was our initial goal. And while NYU was never going to end its involvement with ARPA, the university did relook at its ROTC program, eventually closing it and directing students to other New York campuses to pursue military involvement and training. It was a huge victory for us.

This time in my life was exhilarating. Through my NYU activism, I attended the first March on Washington for LGBTQ rights, I protested two horribly homophobic films, Cruising and Windows, and I became an activist in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

Why do I tell you all of this? Because all across our country, college and university students are protesting, and have been for a year. Their protests are not about LGBTQ issues or AIDS. As you know, their protests are against Israel and the way that Israel has waged war in Gaza.

Let me say this: my remarks this evening are not about Israel. Come back on Yom Kippur morning to hear that sermon. 

Since the Hamas terror attack against Israel on October 7, campus life in the U.S. has changed substantially. Campus anti-Israel groups set the tone for the school year, issuing statements of praise for the attack, and calling for Israel and Zionism to be eradicated. As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism.

The ADL Center on Extremism identified over 2,000 anti-Israel incidents on U.S. college campuses last year, a 477% increase over the prior year. 
Included are 28 assaults (zero the year before), 201 acts of vandalism, and 360 instances of harassment. The report also notes the veneration of groups like Hamas, misinformation around October 7, and attacks against Hillel and Chabad on campus. ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt said, “The antisemitic [and] anti-Zionist vitriol we’ve witnessed on campus is unlike anything we’ve seen in the past.”

The Jim Joseph Foundation studied Jewish identity on campuses and found that most Jewish students say there is a “social penalty” for supporting Israel; one-third of Jewish students say they must hide their Jewishness to fit in. The study’s author wrote: “The Jewish students feel that others don’t believe that they can hold two opinions: to be upset about … Gaza and to believe in Israel. Jewish students largely perceived their universities to be anti-Israel.” He concludes that, “The social dynamics on campus are quite bad.”

In a third study, done by a group called Campus Pulse, more than 50,000 students across 258 universities were asked about free speech. 32% believe “using violence to stop a campus speech” is acceptable, 69% believe it okay to shout down a speaker, and 51% believe that blocking other students from attending campus is fine. The group that produced this survey says, “the trends are going in a bad direction.”

As most of you know, I am a former lawyer. While I never practiced Constitutional law, I went to law school in part because I am a staunch believer in the freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution, particularly free speech. I am truly disturbed by the sheer number of protests, and the demands that universities divest from companies that do business in Israel, but I would never seek to ban those protests or demands. Never, that is, until the activities cross the line. 

As Harvard professor Cass Sunstein wrote, “Students have no constitutional right to threaten to commit violence against their classmates. The First Amendment protects dissent, but it is … not an absolute. If students want to take over a building or to destroy property, the First Amendment will not help them.”

I also agree with colleges’ desire to ban activities that disrupt the main purpose for why they exist: to educate students. Protests are fine and good until one’s protest interferes with another’s ability to learn. 

So, what have Jewish college students endured this past year?

At Harvard, two students were caught on camera assaulting a classmate; the university has done nothing. Local officials said, “Harvard has ignored our requests … to investigate the incident; we never thought [they] would go so far as to impede the D.A.’s Office’s investigation. The University’s behavior “has been a shock to the Commonwealth.”

At U.C. Berkeley, a Jewish student was punched in the face at an anti-Israel protest. At Pitt, two Jewish students were attacked while walking to Hillel. The attacker smashed a glass bottle over one student’s head and cut the other on the cheek. At Pitt again, a Jewish student was attacked by a group of men who “saw his Star of David necklace and hurled insults about Israel.” At Michigan, a student was assaulted after a group asked him if he was Jewish, and he said “yes.”
Protestors physically blocked Jewish students from coming on to campuses and from entering buildings. Protests that included walkouts, sit-ins, and die-ins frequently disrupted classes. As the year progressed, some protesters physically occupied and damaged buildings. At Columbia, for instance, protesters broke windows and barricaded themselves inside using zip-ties. 

At the University of Delaware, a protester damaged flags that were part of a Holocaust memorial as she shouted vulgarities about Jews. At Urbana-Champaign, swastikas appeared throughout campus, mezuzahs were ripped off students’ doors, and a brick was thrown through the window of a Jewish fraternity. At Columbia, a protester set fire to an Israeli flag. At Temple, the Jewish fraternity house was vandalized four times, including the ripping down of an Israeli flag. At U.N.C. Chapel Hill, protesters entered nine school buildings and disrupted classes while spray painting inside and out anti-Israel rhetoric. At UCLA, protesters vandalized a residence hall and parking structure.

Harassment of Jewish students and Jewish organizations surged online. At Rutgers, Ohio State, Vassar and U.C., Santa Cruz, among others, Jewish students were subject to threats of violence. At Cornell, a protestor wrote online: “If I see another synagogue, another rally for the Zionist globalist genocidal apartheid dictatorial entity known as Israel, I will bring an assault rifle to campus and shoot all you pig Jews.”

And not only online. At Cooper Union, protesters banged on the windows and doors of the library shouting “Free Palestine” while Jewish students were inside. The Jewish students called the police to help them leave.

At a mandatory “bystander intervention” training at Rutgers to help RAs identify antisemitism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia, several walked out when a Jewish speaker began to explain the ongoing impact of October 7 on Jews. After the training, protesters used social media to post hate. One claimed, “the session … perpetuated Zionism, racism, and white supremacy.”

The Hillels from nine New York City universities (Baruch, City College, John Jay, School of Visual Arts, Fashion Institute, Fordham, New School and NY Institute of Technology), gathered for a year-opening dinner at a Kosher restaurant in NYC. The students were relentlessly harassed and subjected to antisemitic slurs and horrific statements about executed hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. 

Protesters marched at Georgetown, blocking campus intersections and shouting, “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.” 

An online discussion about a course taught by Sarah Lawrence politics professor Samuel Abrams was disrupted by protesters boycotting his classes; they pressured other students to not enroll. When Abrams reached out to the administration, he was effectively ignored. 

Also at Sarah Lawrence, a student transferred after other students sent him violent and threatening text messages. Conditions are so bad at Sarah Lawrence that the local Hillel filed a federal complaint against the school for ignoring “persistent and pervasive” antisemitism on campus. 

At Penn, an anti-Israel student group vandalized the Ben Franklin statue. This followed an earlier protest where students and faculty marched, chanting “say it clear, say it loud, Hamas you make us proud.” Faculty at Penn have called for a Day of Action on October 5, marking one year since “our people in Gaza showed the world that the Palestinian people will continue to resist.” 

A Cornell Professor spoke at a rally just a week after the October 7 massacre calling it “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Cornell leadership decided not to bar him from teaching because he made those statements “as a private citizen in his free time.” He is back on campus chanting “long live the intifada.”

As I proposed earlier, speech should be protected unless it crosses a line. At Albany, while administrators considered a BDS resolution, a student supporting it stated, “Those who do not support this should feel unsafe on campus. I will make sure you do not feel safe.”

On some campuses, students led boycotts of Starbucks for their perceived support of Israel. A Starbucks at Haverford College was vandalized with stickers that read, “this product supports genocide” and featured an Israeli flag covered in blood.

Hillel and Chabad chapters faced demands for universities to cut ties with them or replace them with “non-Zionist” organizations. At a protest at Galludet, a speaker declared, “We have a responsibility to plan more protests, to show up at every disgusting Hillel event.” 

One disturbing trend on campuses was the expression of support for Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as for terrorist leaders. At Columbia, protesters chanted, “Al-Qassam [reference to Hamas] you make us proud, kill another soldier now!” They also chanted “we are Hamas” and “we will never let up; we will never let down until Palestine is free, Zionism is destroyed, and Zionists start to hide like the Nazis.”

The facts of October 7 have been denied by protesters, asserting that there were no sexual assaults, Hamas treated hostages well, and no civilians were killed. Protesters claimed that all Israelis are settlers, and thus military assets, making them legitimate targets for violence. Mild protests included the removal or vandalizing of fliers promoting events about October 7. But activists went further, protesting the presence of October 7 survivors or their families, contending that such events spread Israeli propaganda, were forms of normalization with Israel, or like at Cal Poly, accused the host organization of being complicit in genocide.

I could go on and on … and on. After I downloaded various incidents into a Word file on my computer, the document was 47 pages long. But I’ll stop. You get the picture. Now, I didn’t run through this extensive list for no reason. Here in New Hampshire, we have been fairly insulated from what has been going on. Last spring one simultaneous protest at Dartmouth and UNH made the news. Neither protest lasted very long – about two weeks. Neither involved attacks, vandalism, or harassment. If you focused only on New Hampshire, you would not know how pervasive the antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment is on campuses across the country.

So, what can we do?

First, be aware. Know what is happening at all local colleges, where your children or grandchildren attend or attended, at your alma mater, and all other places to which you have a connection. The National Students for Justice in Palestine, whose campus chapters are responsible for most of what I described, plan to mark the Hamas massacre with a “week of rage,” October 7-11. They seek to “end universities’ complicity in genocide, to fight for the end of the colonization of Palestine, and to fight ‘for the complete liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea.’” 

Second, reach out to the college students you know. Offer them support. Especially offer them support for the upcoming week of rage. Guide them if they want to report a professor for making antisemitic remarks.

Third, show up in support of Jewish students and professors. If you know of an upcoming protest, ask if there will be a peaceful counter protest. But don’t just protest. Attend community events of importance to the Jewish community on campuses.

Fourth, if you have donated in the past and are angry about a particular campus’s response to antisemitic or anti-Israel activities, give $1. Fundraisers will take notice. Send your larger donation directly to organizations that support Jewish students on campus.

Fifth and finally, praise the campus leaders who are doing it right – who elevate Jewish students and faculty, who hear their concerns and fears, and who have no tolerance for harassment. One such leader is Dr. Sally Kornbluth. Just last month she sent the following, excerpted:

Dear members of the MIT community,

I hadn’t intended to start the year with a message like this, but [recently], an incident occurred that I found troubling. As we start a new year together, it’s important that you hear directly from me.

As first-year students entered an orientation event, several other students handed out flyers. “Welcome to MIT!” the flyers announced. [Then they] comment on the conflict in the Middle East and Israel, and list more than 20 resources.

I want to make three points very clearly.

First, these flyers were not created or distributed by anyone in the administration, and they do not speak for MIT.

Second, while I have repeatedly defended freedom of expression, I found some of [resources] deeply concerning, [especially] something called the Mapping Project. 
It catalogs hundreds of Jewish organizations in the Boston area and then provides their addresses. The goal of this effort is “to reveal the local entities that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them.” 

I believe the Mapping Project promotes antisemitism. Like every other form of racial and religious prejudice and hate, antisemitism is totally unacceptable in our community. It cannot be justified, and it is antithetical to MIT’s values.

Finally: We design orientation to introduce students to our campus and help them feel at home – all of them. Yet over the last two days I have heard from students who [feel] not welcome at MIT.

Do we really want to … make any of our newest students question whether they belong here? Every student, and every member of our faculty and staff, belongs here. 
MIT’s president’s message is one we need to hear more frequently. Let’s help elevate these voices and elevate the voices of Jewish students and faculty, and their allies, to ensure that America’s college campuses are safe homes to all students.

Shanah tovah.

Wed, November 6 2024 5 Cheshvan 5785