Academia's Antisemitism is a Recurrent Plague

In the aftermath of Hamas’ barbaric attacks against Israel on October 7th, those of us who are interested in pluralism, freedom of religion, and social equality more broadly have been left pondering one overwhelming question: Why are American colleges and universities so antisemitic? 

After years of apparent harmony and tranquility, Jewish students are now subject to death threats, physical intimidation, and a seemingly endless barrage of online and in-person harassment.

This isn’t just an online phenomenon. Indeed, a survey by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International found that 73% of Jewish college students have seen or experienced antisemitism on campus since the fall, and 46% of students report no longer feeling safe on campus. In other words, antisemitism in the wake of Oct. 7 has affected Jewish students’ day-to-day lives in universities across the country. 

The problem, however, is that campus antisemitism cannot be defeated with a handful of federal investigations, a new research center, or a slew of feel-good slogans about acceptance and inclusion. The reason American colleges and universities are so antisemitic is that they always have been. If universities really want to decipher how they have managed to cultivate a fervently antisemitic climate, they will have to interrogate themselves, and their own history. 

With academia’s current fixation on racial equity and its preeminent desire to “critique,” “interrogate” or otherwise identify how history has developed to facilitate the status quo, you’d think a plague like antisemitism would make for an easy and fascinating subject. And to a point, you’d be correct. 

While scholars have indeed paid attention to the problem and prevalence of antisemitism throughout history, many critiques of antisemitism see fit to lecture Jews on how ignorant they are of the real social dynamics at play and how what they’re really doing is maliciously attempting to make others’ suffering about themselves. 

More sympathetic critiques of antisemitism tend to be rooted in the twentieth century, divorced from American academic antisemitism’s medieval and colonial heritage.

Considering universities’ rightful reckoning with their similarly dark histories with African-Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, women, and other historically marginalized groups, a similar self-reflection regarding their history of antisemitism should not be a challenge.

In order to uncover the roots of antisemitic activity within American higher education, one must first look across the pond. America’s elite universities drew their antisemitism from Britain just as readily as they drew their structure and curricula. 

Oxford University, for instance, once neighbored a thriving Orthodox Jewish community filled with independent merchants, artisans, and scholars. For roughly a century, even with a fair bit of religious tension, the two communities lived in peace. This changed in 1244, when an Oxford student-led pogrom pillaged the city’s Jewish quarter, permanently damaging lives and livelihoods. In 1290, King Edward I expelled the country’s remaining Jews, ending any possible hope of reconciliation. 

When Jews returned to England in the 1650s, the country’s universities left the door slightly ajar. For some time, Cambridge permitted Jewish scholars to teach lessons in Hebrew, though it would be another two centuries before a Jew earned a Cambridge degree. 

This hostility was primarily religious. Universities were typically designed to train the next generation of Christian clergymen, meaning that any university that accepted a Jewish student was considered to be un-Christian. Less charitably, society in general portrayed Jews as greedy, avaricious, and the descendants of those who murdered Christ — no virtuous university could allow such a gleefully sinful race through their doors.

When English colonists arrived in what would later become the United States, they brought these antisemitic attitudes with them. Judah Monis, the first Jew to both receive a degree (albeit an honorary one) and lecture at Harvard University, was required to convert to Christianity as a condition of his employment. Yale would not graduate a religiously-Jewish student until the beginning of the nineteenth century, while Princeton may not have matriculated any Jewish students until much later in the century. 

Even when Jews were granted access to higher education, they could not participate fully in university life. Jewish students were excluded from membership in many fraternities, and a student often had to be a Protestant in order to participate in extracurricular activities. Simply put, while a Jew could enroll at Harvard and earn a Harvard degree, they could never truly become a “Harvard man.” Universities’ “Anglo-Saxon” elite deemed that Jews’ faith, appearance, and ethnic background were fundamentally incompatible with the sociopolitical image they sought to convey. 

This state of affairs worsened when eastern European Jews began emigrating to the United States en masse in the 1880s. At first, academic anger at Jews was mainly rhetorical. Henry Adams, the great Harvard historian who later became president of the American Historical Association, frequently railed against Jews and Judaism in his private letters, declaring that someone should “bombard New York” and that he lived “only and solely with the hope of seeing [the Jews’] demise.”

Adams’ attitude was at first considered extreme, but when the children and grandchildren of Jewish immigrants began applying to college, his attitude became commonplace, albeit subtly. By the early 1920s, Jews made up 40% of Columbia’s student population, and 21.5% of Harvard’s — a disturbing prospect for the Anglo-Saxonists.The so-called “Jewish problem” led universities to implement legacy admissions, student interviews, and geographical preference in admissions, all of which were intended on reducing the number of Jewish students obtaining degrees. In other words, these universities implemented a Jewish quota. 

The quota system did not begin to dissipate until the late 1960s. Jewish students were welcomed into universities with “doors wide open,” and American Jews more broadly became part of the United States’ political, economic, and academic elite. This newfound success, however, came at a cost. 

Within a few decades, as critical social justice ideology, which dichotomizes all people into either being an oppressor or oppressed, proliferated within academia, and soon elite politics, in the United States, Jews suddenly found themselves on the side of the oppressors. Jews, due their wealth and success in the United States, were now not only lumped in with the WASP groups that once excluded them, they were seen as worse — a group guilty of colluding with white supremacists in order to benefit themselves at everyone else’s expense.

To summarize, there is nothing new under the hood of the latest wave of antisemitism in higher education. It’s merely a repackaging of nasty old tropes. Just as academia once stereotyped Jews as unscrupulous and sinful moneylenders, they now condemn Jews as being part of a racist, transnational “Zionist” army. Just as academia once took it upon themselves to punish the Jews for their barbarism, they now castigate Jews for their “whiteness” and economic privilege. Just as academia once condemned all Jews for the murder of Christ, they now see fit to blame all Jews for whatever sins Israel commits or does not commit in Gaza. 

It is impossible to completely expunge antisemitism from American universities, or any public or civic institution. Such hatred can be mitigated — but only if universities are willing to look at their own history and take responsibility for the antisemitic ideas and institutions that still persevere. Unfortunately, at least for the moment, universities appear unwilling to do so. 

Garion Frankel is a Ph.D. student in PK-12 educational leadership at Texas A&M University. He is a Young Voices contributor, and his writing can be found in outlets like Newsweek, USA Today, and the Wall Street Journal.