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EDUCATION

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Crisis of Antisemitism on Campus and Where It’s Coming From By Janet Levy

By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/07/the_crisis_of_antisemitism_on_campus_and_where_it_s_coming_from.html

On October 7, 2023, crossing the Gaza border during a ceasefire, Hamas and other Islamic terror groups slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and took 240 hostage. The magnitude of this unprovoked act should have ignited widespread outrage and solidarity with Jews and Israel. Instead, students and professors on many university campuses celebrated Hamas, vilified Israel, and expressed virulent antisemitism that had built up over the years, through slurs, flagrant discrimination, and even assaults.

Prof. Russell Rickford, who teaches history at Cornell, described the Hamas attack as “energizing” and “exhilarating,” and called it a “symbol of resistance.” He later defended his comments, saying he was referring to Hamas’s breaking through a “wall of apartheid” — whatever that means. Five days after the attack, student groups at Cornell justified it and blamed Israel for it. Similar displays of anti-Israel sentiment and blatant antisemitism appeared on other campuses as well. Jewish students and professors reported feeling unsafe, facing hate speech and unprovoked heckling.

An April report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) revealed 1,694 antisemitic incidents in 2024, marking an 84% increase from 2023. Likely, the actual numbers are higher, as a survey conducted by the ADL, Hillel International, and College Pulse found that 93% of students did not report antisemitic incidents to university authorities, and 83% of Jewish students have experienced various forms of antisemitism since October 7. Twenty-seven percent reported antisemitic behavior by faculty, and 66% expressed no confidence in their university’s ability to prevent such incidents. In fact, 30% of those who reported incidents said they received no help. Additionally, 23% of Jewish students now take extra security measures, and 41% feel the need to hide their identity.

According to the joint survey, on-campus antisemitism includes disrupting Jewish, Israeli, and pro-Israel speakers; singling out Jews for perceived or actual ties to Israel; subjecting Jews to anti-Israel or anti-Jewish comments both in conversations and online; vandalizing Jewish signs and symbols; forcing students to view course material that is openly anti-Israel; disrupting classes with protests, with some professors offering extra credit for participating in anti-Israel protests; receiving biased treatment from anti-Israel professors; being blamed for Israel’s policies; and facing ostracism by campus groups and students who are strongly anti-Israel.

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Against All Expectations, Georgetown University Actually Does the Right Thing Why should American universities continue to be incubators of leftism, Marxism, jihad and treason? by Robert Spencer

By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/against-all-expectations-georgetown-university-actually-does-the-right-thing/

Jonathan Brown, a professor at Georgetown University, is a living, breathing illustration of a great deal that’s wrong with academic life today. His public statements give the strong impression that he hates America and has contempt for those who live in it, or at least for those who aren’t on the far left. In fact, his hatred doesn’t stop with America alone; as a convert to Islam, Brown has allied himself with a force that has tried to destroy Western civilization for 1,400 years and has even enthusiastically embraced the most noxious aspects of that force, endorsing slavery, including the sex slavery of infidel women.

Given the state of the American intelligentsia, you’d expect such a man to become a cosseted and celebrated member of the academic scene, and you’d be right. Brown stands for so much that is not only un-American but anti-American, that it was inevitable that he would become a rising star on campus, despite the intellectual poverty of his actual output. And sure enough, Georgetown not only gave Brown tenure but made him chair of its Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Alwaleed bin Talal chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service.

Now, however, Brown appears to have crossed the line even for Georgetown. It would have been less surprising if university officials had made him president of the university after he called on the Islamic Republic of Iran to carry out a “symbolic strike” against a U.S. military base, but instead, against all expectations, Georgetown has actually placed him on leave and removed him as chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Is sanity returning to American academia? Well, no. But this certainly is a welcome step in that direction.

Georgetown University interim President Robert M. Groves told a congressional hearing Tuesday: “Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown, the tweet was removed [and] we issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department and he’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”

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Stu Smith On the Fourth of July, These Radicals Made Plans to Topple America At the Socialism 2025 conference in Chicago, mainstream academics called for revolution.

By on July 17th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/socialism-2025-conference-chicago

While the rest of the United States celebrated American independence on July 4, a rogues’ gallery met in Chicago to discuss how to dismantle our constitutional republic. The event, Socialism 2025, was billed as “a four-day conference bringing together thousands of socialists and radical activists from around the country” to discuss “social movements, abolition, Marxism, decolonization, working-class history, and the debates and strategies for organizing today.” Held every Fourth of July weekend, this conference, which meets in person and livestreams to YouTube, is “a place where activists share lessons from their struggles—from Palestine solidarity campaigns to the fight for gender liberation, from striking workers to the struggle to stop the destruction of the planet, the fight against racism, migrant justice, and more.”

As video from the event reveals, this wasn’t just a fringe gathering. The speakers’ roster included dozens of influential figures—Ivy League professors, faculty from top public universities, current and former leaders of the Chicago Teachers Union, Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, and UAW president Shawn Fain. Attendees praised mass rioting, called for dismantling higher education, advocated abolishing the family, and openly called for ending America as we know it.

Multiple professors endorsed using the university as a power base to destabilize the status quo and carry out their political designs. University of Chicago professor Eman Abdelhadi noted that, while the university is “evil” and a “colonial landlord,” she teaches at one because it’s “one of the biggest employers in the city of Chicago . . . a place where I have access to thousands of people that I could potentially organize. . . . This is where I need to build power.” Similarly, Princeton University’s Lorgia García-Peña said scholars should “get the university’s money to do the work you want to do to dismantle the university within”—quickly adding, “hopefully, I won’t end up in court for saying this on the mic.”

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Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Update DEI’s medical school infiltration is frightening. By Larry Sand

By on July 16th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/16/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-update/

According to a recent Speech First report, the nation’s leading medical schools are controlled by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion fanatics, who inflict beliefs such as “weight inclusivity,” racial justice, and gender ideology on their staff and students through policies, forced statements, and curricular mandates.

Filed in the fall of 2024, “Critical Condition” analyzed public records from FOIA requests from 54 of the country’s top medical schools, and the results are alarming.

For example, the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School offers a “Developing Outstanding Clinical Skills” program that teaches students to embrace “weight inclusivity,” arguing that weight-loss strategies foster a “culture of shame.” Students are also instructed to avoid terms such as “overweight” or “obese.”

In a similar vein, the University of California, Los Angeles medical school offers a “Structural Racism and Health Equity” course that teaches students about “fatphobia,” which describes concerns about weight and body size as a form of discrimination or oppression. (You can almost picture a group of paunchy protesters, fists raised high, angrily shouting “Fat power!”)

The hypocrisy here is obvious. Excess weight or obesity increases the risk of death by anywhere from 22% to 91% and Black adults have the highest obesity rates of any race or ethnicity in the U.S. So, downplaying the effects of obesity could really be considered racist.

Duke Medical School has adopted race-based promotion guidelines that reward doctors for recruiting and mentoring “BIPOC faculty” and “targeting specific groups of people,” language attorneys say appear to violate civil rights law.

Brown University’s Medical School now prioritizes DEI over clinical skills in its promotion criteria for faculty. The standards include “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a “major criterion” for all positions within the Department of Medicine. Clinical skills, by contrast, only count as a “minor criterion” for many roles.

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Shai Davidai, outspoken Israeli professor at Columbia, leaves the university Controversial advocate for pro-Israel Jewish students says he is departing voluntarily as school closes investigation against him, plans to continue his activism from New York by Luke Tress

By on July 10th, 2025

https://www.timesofisrael.com/shai-davidai-outspoken-israeli-professor-at-columbia-leaves-the-university/

Shai Davidai, an outspoken Israeli professor at New York City’s Columbia University, said on Wednesday that he was leaving the school and that a Columbia investigation against him had been closed.

Davidai became a prominent and controversial advocate for pro-Israel and Jewish students soon after the October 2023 invasion of Israel, and often clashed with the administration, as the campus was roiled by raucous anti-Israel protests.

Davidai told The Times of Israel that he left Columbia voluntarily.

“I’ve lost all trust in the institution and respect for my colleagues,” Davidai said.

“I feel like it’s a place that is unwilling to change on its own. It’s only doing things when forced by the government or forced by money,” he said. “That’s not a place where I think anyone would want their name to be associated with.”

Earlier Wednesday, Davidai shared a letter from the university saying that an investigation against him was closed without finding any wrongdoing or taking any disciplinary action against him.

The university opened the investigation last year. It was carried out by Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action, which responded to allegations of harassment and discrimination on campus. The office was later replaced by the Office of Institutional Equity, which sent Wednesday’s letter to Davidai, according to a screenshot he shared online.

Davidai said there were aspects of his departure he could not discuss for legal reasons, but that he had told the university, “There is no way that I’ll ever leave before they find me innocent.”

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John D. Sailer How DEI Bureaucrats Control University Hiring Internal documents reveal how administrators use “diversity checks” to influence the hiring process and engage in discrimination.

By on July 8th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/university-hiring-dei-diversity-checks-discrimination

In early 2021, Carma Gorman, an art history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the designated “diversity advocate” for a faculty search committee, emailed John Yancey, the College of Fine Arts’ associate dean of diversity, seeking approval to proceed with a job search.

“I wanted to make sure that the demographics of our pool pass muster,” Gorman wrote. She noted that 21 percent of applicants were from underrepresented minority groups, with another 28 percent self-identifying as Asian.

“The 21% is enough to move forward,” Yancey replied, but he cautioned that concerns could arise depending on how the applicant pool was narrowed. “If 20 of the 23 URM applicants are dropped in the early cut,” he wrote, “then things don’t look good anymore.”

The exchange, which I obtained through an open-records request, offers a window into a diversity practice adopted at many universities. Documents I’ve acquired from institutions across the country—hiring plans, grant proposals, progress reports, and internal emails—show that routine diversity checks are now embedded throughout the hiring process, often enforced with serious consequences for searches that fail to “pass muster.”

This practice raises not only significant legal questions but also highlights how such policies can concentrate power in the hands of individual administrators, granting them effective veto authority over one of a university’s most consequential decisions: the hiring of tenure-track faculty.

In 2023, Texas governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 17, banning racial preferences and the employment of diversity officers. But just two years earlier, the situation at UT–Austin looked very different.

The documents tell the story. As diversity advocate, Gorman—coauthor of the annotated bibliography Decentering Whiteness in Design History—proposed a detailed diversity plan for her search committee. The plan, which I obtained via a records request, outlined a rigorous process for monitoring diversity at every stage of the hiring process.

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Combatting Classroom Chaos A major problem that must be dealt with. by Larry Sand

By on July 7th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/combatting-classroom-chaos/

On April 23, President Trump signed an executive order directing public schools to develop student discipline policies without considering race and ethnicity. The order states, “The Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.”

The administration is justified in taking action. Restoring order to America’s classrooms requires reversing years of misguided federal policies that focused on racial quotas and therapeutic interventions. These policies have harmed academic achievement, endangered students, and made it more difficult for struggling students to get help. To succeed, the administration must respect local control while overcoming strong resistance from a deeply rooted education bureaucracy, whose radical agenda remains its primary goal.

Our current problems were intensified by a 2012 report from the Obama administration, which found that black students were “suspended, expelled, and arrested” at higher rates than white students. In response, the administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to state and local education agencies in 2014, warning of federal investigations if rates of “exclusionary discipline”—suspensions and expulsions—were racially disproportionate.

Not surprisingly, Obama’s redirect has been a disaster. Where schools have tried the racial bean-counting regimen, the results have been less than noteworthy. A North Carolina school districttried to improve discipline by implementing a policy that paid a non-profit over $800,000 to help develop. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools had fewer suspensions during the school year and no expulsions, part of a broader shift toward “equitable discipline.”

However, the district reported a higher crime rate than the previous year. Critics say the changes have worsened conditions for students because disruption in class is not being addressed.

Surveys consistently show that student behavior has declined over the past decade, with school violence and overall classroom disorder now at all-time highs.

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Columbia Cannot Be Trusted To Negotiate by Seth Mandel

By on July 6th, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/columbia-cannot-be-trusted-to-negotiate/

When the Trump administration accused Columbia University of violating the civil rights of its Jewish students, the school risked losing both its federal funding and even its accreditation. At the time, the preferred outcome for everyone seemed to be to have both sides come to an agreement that would alleviate the government’s concerns and reinstate Columbia’s funding.

Now, however, it’s not clear at all that the university can be trusted to negotiate a deal. Nor is it clear that whoever speaks for Columbia today will still be speaking for Columbia tomorrow or next week. It might be time to step back and have Columbia get its house in order before resuming talks.

In late March, Columbia agreed to terms laid out by the federal government in order to have $400 million of federal funding restored. Immediately the faculty and students pushed back on interim President Katrina Armstrong, who had taken over for Minouche Shafik in August. Armstrong wavered. She is no longer the president of Columbia.

Claire Shipman is, having become the institution’s third president in a period of seven months. Last month, Shipman was notified that the school’s accreditation was under review thanks to Columbia’s refusal to reform its practices to bring them in line with federal civil-rights law. Welcome to the big leagues, Claire Shipman.

Before accepting the divine punishment of being made president of Columbia, Shipman was its trustee board’s co-chair, so she isn’t new to this particular fight. In fact, Shipman appeared alongside Shafik and other school officials to testify at an April 2024 congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism. Both Shafik and Shipman were very, very sad about what was happening to Jews on their campus under their watch. Meanwhile, as soon as Shafik and Shipman and Co. shipped off to Capitol Hill, the student body left behind in Morningside Heights built a tentifada encampment in defiance of Shafik’s expressed conciliation.

At that April 2024 hearing, Shipman had said: “We have a moral crisis on our campus.” She wasn’t wrong. But Shipman was part of that moral crisis. Just three months before that hearing, Shipman had argued in a text that “We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board. Quickly I think. Somehow.”

As the Free Beacon reported yesterday, Shipman had a plan to achieve that “somehow.” The board could get rid of Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish trustee who’d been outspoken against anti-Semitism on campus.

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Ian Kingsbury George Mason University’s Disastrous President Gregory Washington has backed racially discriminatory DEI programs and failed to address campus anti-Semitism.

By on July 3rd, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/george-mason-university-president-gregory-washington-dei-anti-semitism

The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and Cornell, among others, have come under fire or been forced out in recent years for failures of leadership on campus anti-Semitism and racially discriminatory DEI programs. Yet Gregory Washington, the president of George Mason University, has managed to keep his job despite similar failures. Mason may not be an Ivy League school, but anti-Semitism and discrimination are problems at nonelite public universities, too. Washington’s track record warrants his resignation or dismissal.

Mason’s Board of Visitors selected Washington in 2020, just as woke fever was reaching its peak. Upon appointment, Washington committed Mason to being “a national exemplar of antiracism and inclusive excellence.” True to his word, Washington built a gigantic diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy, with 7.4 DEI staff per 100 tenure-track faculty members. This was the second-highest ratio among the more than 70 universities the Heritage Foundation examined

Despite President Trump’s executive order calling out DEI bureaucracies for promoting illegal discrimination, and a Supreme Court decision prohibiting racial preferences, Washington has refused to scale back his DEI efforts. His commitment to DEI surpasses his concern for the legal liability those activities impose on Mason.

Washington’s ideological commitments also eclipse his obligation to follow the law when it comes to face-coverings worn by campus protesters. Virginia law forbids wearing a mask to conceal one’s identity in public. Courts have upheld that law—created in response to the state’s experience with the KKK—as constitutional, and the state attorney general advised universities to amend their policies to prohibit face-coverings at protests.

All major public universities in Virgina complied—except for George Mason. Instead, it merely requires protesters to show identification upon request, a policy that is impractical to implement and does not actually align with the law. Washington claimed to favor this approach out of concern for free speech, even though courts have ruled that concealing one’s identity during a public protest is not protected speech.

Meantime, anti-Semitic activity at George Mason is on the rise. The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights has subjected the university to investigation for its failure to protect the civil rights of Jewish students during both the Biden and Trump administrations.

Mason students were arrested for planning anti-Semitic violence in two incidents last year. In the first, police searched the home of two sisters who led the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, finding an illegal gun and “pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read ‘death to America’ and ‘death to Jews,’” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

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The Persistent Presence of Absence The public school exodus continues unabated. by Larry Sand

By on July 2nd, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/the-persistent-presence-of-absence/

The fact that many children are ditching America’s public schools is undeniable. Most recently, Nat Malkus, Deputy Director of Education Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, reported that while chronic absenteeism spiked during the COVID pandemic, it remains a serious problem. In 2024, rates were 57% higher than they were before the pandemic. (Students who miss at least 10% of the school year, or roughly 18 days, are considered chronically absent.)

Malkus goes on to explain that in 2018 and 2019, about 15% of K–12 public school students in the U.S. were chronically absent—a number so high that numerous observers and the U.S. Department of Education are labeling it a “crisis.”

In total, nearly one in twelve public schools in the United States has experienced a “substantial” enrollment decline over the last five years

The problem is especially egregious in our big cities. In Los Angeles, more than 32% of students were chronically absent in the 2023-2024 school year.

In Chicago, dwindling enrollment has left about 150 schools half-empty, while 47 operate at less than one-third capacity.

Additionally, schools identified by their states as chronically low-performing were more than twice as likely to experience sizable enrollment declines as other public schools.

In February 2025, FutureEd disclosed that data from 22 states and the District of Columbia for the 2023-24 school year show significant differences across grade levels, with absenteeism particularly severe in high school.

“In most states, 12th graders have the highest rates of chronic absenteeism, often far exceeding state averages. In Mississippi, for example, the overall absenteeism rate was 24%, but among seniors, it soared to 41%. Several other states have senior absenteeism rates above 40%, with rates in the District of Columbia and Oregon exceeding 50%.”

FutureEd also reports that kindergartners have disproportionately high rates of chronic absenteeism.

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