In recent years, we have seen how anti-Israel hostility has sprouted in hundreds of universities across the country. Under the disguise of academic freedom, institutions of higher learning have become fertile grounds for extremism. While Jewish studies departments and organizations such as Chabad and Hillel sustain a vibrant Jewish life...
Crimson’s BDS Embrace Pulls Reputation Into Question
In a dark return to history, Harvard has again made itself unsafe to Jewish students. The storied Harvard Crimson made the mistake of endorsing the antisemitic BDS campaign on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Over the past year, we have witnessed a troubling trend of the Harvard Crimson’s increasingly hostile bias against the State of...
Appropriating Apartheid is Social Injustice
“Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination,” reads Amnesty International’s recent report accusing Israel of enforcing “a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people.” Human Rights Watch, too, claims that Israel is guilty of the “Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution.” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch’s...
McGill’s student union’s Palestine policy has little to do with democracy or academic freedom, says a former student representative
The Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) recently made headlines after McGill threatened to sanction the association for adopting a “Palestine Solidarity Policy”—a misleadingly named, unconstitutional proposal to marginalize Jewish groups. Nevertheless, many undergraduates and staff continue to defend the manifesto as an example of student “democracy.” When McGill warned...
A Berkeley student group celebrates anti-Semitic violence
Bears for Palestine, a UC Berkeley student organization, hosted their fifth annual gala this past semester. The gala was “in honor of the unity intifada” — the latest in a series of violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel. Honoring an intifada disregards the violent history of past intifadas, downplays the trauma...
Why the Harvard Crimson’s Call for BDS is Dead Wrong
The Harvard Crimson has published an anonymous statement by its Editorial Board in favor of the notorious Boycott, Divest and Sanctions campaign (BDS) against Israel: In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanctions and a Free Palestine. Despite the editorial’s portentous style, as a Harvard alumnus (GSAS 1987) I do feel it’s important to respond in an...
MESA’s decision to adopt BDS is wrong
On December 2nd, the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA) adopted a resolution endorsing the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign targeting the Israeli universities and academics. According to MESA President Dina Rizek Khuri, “the decision was made to show solidarity with researchers whose lives and livelihoods are being attacked by the...
Echoes of Wannsee on campus
On January 20, 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee, fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials convened in a villa to carry out the sentencing of the Jewish people. By war’s end, the edict reached saw its near-realization: six million Jews were systematically executed. The ideological heirs to the twentieth century’s eliminationist...