Over the past several weeks, Americans have witnessed what has seemed like a mass outpouring of support for terror on elite college campuses. At Columbia, Yale, Princeton, NYU, UCLA, Northwestern, Texas, and elsewhere, masked mobs have occupied schools with tent encampments, established self-proclaimed “autonomous zones,” clashed with police, harassed and threatened visibly Jewish students, and issued demands for their universities to divest from Israeli “genocide.” Politically, moreover, the protests have displayed an incoherent mix of campus progressivism, hardcore Islamism and Arab nationalism, and revolutionary anarchism and communism, including open praise for North Korea. The only unifying thread would appear to be opposition to Israel and its alleged imperial patron, the United States.
Peloni: “The case for an exodus from the corrupt quads of Columbia and Harvard seems both urgent and clear. The question is: an Exodus to where and for what purpose? To save ourselves as Jews or to help save America from those who seek to destroy us?” It is a fascinating, thoughtful, and challenging discussion in which Cohen ultimately challenges American Jewry to “focus not simply on our safety in America but our responsibility for America.” Full text can be found on Mosaic, here.
Eric Cohen | Tikvah | May 13, 2024
Tikvah’s CEO Eric Cohen delivers a special video address on a Jewish answer to the university crisis. The long-brewing crisis on our university campuses has reached a tipping point. The anti-Israel encampments that recently took over Columbia, Yale, UCLA, and dozens of schools across America—chanting pro-Hamas slogans, harassing Jewish students, vandalizing and trespassing—force us to confront the moral confusion that plagues so much of higher education. This assault on Jews and Israel is also an assault on America and the West. How should American Jews respond? Can our most prestigious universities be saved, or is it time to build new centers of learning that advance our noblest Jewish and American values? Are these storied institutions of higher learning worthy of our children, our creativity, and our support, or is it time for an exodus?
