A new report reveals the ugly depth of anti-Semitism at elite colleges and universities around New York, just in time for the High Holy Days.
Three major institutions of higher learning — Columbia University, New York University and CUNY’s Brooklyn College — all earned F ratings, the lowest possible, from a watchdog group dedicated to calling out anti-Semitism.
Jewish students on these campuses, per the report, feel the administration doesn’t do enough to ensure their safety, indeed feel the need to hide both their Jewish identity and their support for Israel — as though they were living not in 21st century New York but Nazi Germany or the USSR.
Sadly, this surprises no one. The naked recent hostility to Jews found in New York’s educational institutions stretches from Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s 2007 invitation to Iran’s then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the 2022 CUNY School of Law commencement address by Nerdeen Kiswani, who has endorsed violence against “Zionists” and is a top figure at an organization devoted to the eradication of Israel, Within Our Lifetime (which has also been banned from Instagram for hate speech).
And the American left’s political superstars — Reps. Rashida Tlaib, AOC, Ilhan Omar, and others — have helped legitimate the hate. Omar famously invoked an anti-Semitic trope in attacking US pro-Israel groups; Tlaib’s even more nakedly anti-Semitic, asserting recently, “You cannot claim to hold progressives values yet back Israel’s apartheid government” and working with a Holocaust-denying fund-raiser.
Morally hideous, without question. But the real horror is just how unsurprising it’s all become. The left’s normalization of Jew-hatred will have, if left unchecked, tragic consequences (New York was already No. 1 in anti-Semitic hate crimes nationwide last year).
Mainstream Dems like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, to say nothing of the wider media and academic establishments, should be fighting like hell against this trend. That they’re not reveals all their moralizing around inclusion as cynical — and dangerous — posturing.