‘It’s bigger than the protests’: Congressman breaks down antisemitism on US college campuses
You said that you have been on the campuses of Harvard and you visited with these students just now. Can you help us understand what that looks like for them? Because I do think when we hear a lot of the voices from these protesters who are trying to say, well, it’s peaceful, we’re not actually harassing Jewish students. Clearly the Jewish students do not feel that way. What is it that they are experiencing? So first of all, it’s bigger than the protest. The protests are a crystallizing moment for much of the anti-Semitism that’s been bubbling up on these campuses. And to be clear, the anti Zionism has often times morphed into anti-Semitism. There’s this trick where? People are recycling age-old anti-Semitic tropes and replacing the word Jew with the word Zionist. Yeah, we’re on to that. That’s still anti-Semitic. You can absolutely criticize the Israeli government. You can absolutely protest Netanyahu or any actions that you wanted the Israeli government fair game. But you can’t say all Zionists are murderers and not expect people to think that that’s also anti-Semitic as well. There’s a different experience, I think, for Jews and for Israelis on these campuses. The Jewish students have to code their Zionism to work in progressive spaces. If you’re a Jewish student and you want to be active in LGBT issues, if you want to be active in democracy issues. You can’t also be Zionists. They have to now suppress that element of their identity. Israeli students are just downright harassed on campus. That for them it is. They cannot participate in most of the. Academic and social settings on many of these universities, and for that reason I’ve pressed 8 Massachusetts universities to come back with an action plan for How are you going to improve your anti-Semitism climate on campus? Because the ADL ranked four of them with an F and the other four with AC for how they’ve upheld A suitable learning environment for Jewish students.