Have American universities become a hotbed of antisemitism?

“Watch out, pig Jews. Jihad is coming. Nowhere is safe.” Those were the chilling words of Cornell student Patrick Dai, who posted threatening messages online. 

Now under arrest, Dai wasn’t taken into custody by campus police but rather the FBI.

It’s a strong indication that while the federal government takes threats of antisemitism seriously, Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation, can’t say the same for leadership at many of America’s most elite schools.

From rallies excusing Hamas’s atrocities on October 7, to letters blaming Israel for what happened on that tragic day, to Jewish students being beaten for being vocally opposed to pro-Palestinian demonstrations, to an angry mob cornering Jewish students in the library and indifferent faculty suggesting they hide in an attic, Ruderman says that this may be one of the worst times to be a Jew in the United States.

“This is a bad time in America – the worst I can remember,” states the social activist. “We’re seeing an explosion of hate. Not just anti-Israel, but anti-Jewish.”

The numbers support such a feeling. Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, told the Senate that the antisemitic threat is reaching “historic levels.”

“The Jewish community is targeted by terrorists really across the spectrum,” he warned. “In fact, our statistics would indicate that for a group that represents only about 2.4% of the American public, they account for something like 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.” 

The fears of sending children to colleges who won't prevent antisemitism

Ruderman, the father of four, admits that he’s hesitant to send his children to institutions where campus leaders are either unwilling or incapable of adequately protecting their Jewish students. 

“We are people who care about our Jewishness and care about our children. We need to send our kids to a place where the administration cares about the safety of Jews. If we don’t, we’re negligent as parents,” he asserts. “That’s why I’m telling my kid to go to Brandeis [Ruderman’s alma mater and where he is a board member]. ‘They will protect you and not put you in an unsafe situation.’ Jewish kids in most universities are forced to put their head down.”

Ruderman blames the toxicity on campus to foreign funding by governments looking to push a specific agenda. 

“These demonstrations you’re seeing on campus are a product of funding that’s been poured into this situation for years, if not decades,” he says.

In tandem, the theory of intersectionality – where one marginalized group’s oppression is equal to another’s – has also become the dominant philosophy peddled on campuses across the country.

“To equate intersectionality between minority groups and throw the Palestinians in there is looking at the conflict from a very American point of view,” he says. “To say Jews are an occupying force who took over as colonialists, who conquered Palestinian land of which they are justified in fighting back, is the common narrative we’re seeing now,” he says.

“They overlook the fact that Palestinians never had a state,” he continues. “That there were always Jews in the Land of Israel, that there was a partition plan that was rejected by the Arabs, and they chose war instead. 

“What I don’t understand on a philosophical level is even if you believe in a two-state solution or a one-state solution, how do you get behind a terrorist organization that videotaped themselves doing the most barbaric things like baking babies in ovens, decapitating children, and kidnapping the elderly?”

Within the first 24 hours, and even before Israel fought back after the October 7 attack, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee stated that students “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence” for a massacre that left some 1,200 dead, 240 kidnapped, and 4,500 wounded. 

Ruderman points out that it took Harvard President Claudine Gay three statements to even begin to draft something resembling a condemnation of Hamas. 

“Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas,” she wrote. “Not even 30 student groups speak for Harvard University or its leadership.”

Subsequently, Gay announced that she launched an antisemitism advisory board but fell short of punishing those who signed the letter. 

For Ruderman, an advisory board is too little too late. 

Naturally, some private donors have decided to take matters into their own hands and pull their funding from universities that are allowing a flagrant anti-Israel bias to permeate the campus. But Ruderman thinks that this, too, won’t move the needle much.

“You hear calls of ‘Don’t give money to UPenn or Harvard,’ but their endowments are worth billions of dollars. I don’t think they care,” he says. “I think their moral clarity is also warped.”

He does, however, applaud the Biden administration for taking the matter seriously, as many of these schools receive federal funding; and should that funding be revoked, it would be something that would make campus leadership think twice. 

“I met Biden once in my life,” says Ruderman. “What he told me was ‘I grew up and spent more time in Jewish homes than in Catholic ones. I have a strong alliance with the Jewish people. I will protect the Jewish people.’”

As such, the Biden administration announced that it will launch a new task force against antisemitism on college campuses, where the departments of justice and homeland security are partnering with campus law enforcement to track hate-related threats and provide federal resources to schools.

“Biden may be last pro-Israel president we see from the Democratic Party,” Ruderman laments. 

Ruderman says we’re also seeing students and private organizations taking action when universities will not.

The X (formerly Twitter) account StopAntisemitism has regularly posted photos of people who have posted incendiary rhetoric against Jews or have brazenly taken down the posters of kidnapped Jews put up across the country. Each of their posts names and shames the perpetrators, often leading many to lose their job.

One such example was NYU law student Ryna Workman, whose job offer at prestigious law firm Winston & Strawn was rescinded when she issued a letter expressing her “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression” and that Israel bears “full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

While such practices of “doxxing” [online harassing] those who express extreme pro-Palestinian beliefs are deemed controversial, Ruderman doesn’t see an issue with publicizing what people are already doing in public.

“If you’re proud of your reaction, tell people who you are and face the consequences,” he says. “If you put your name on something as an adult, why are you embarrassed by the fact that you put your name on something? Stand behind what you do. I don’t understand the issue.”

Moving forward, though, this torrent of hate, Ruderman fears, could lead to another antisemitic attack on American soil.

“With the level of hate, it’s being fueled not just by agitators but the mainstream media,” he says. “What’s shocking for Americans is that this has been the best country for Jews. And this has been historically true – a safe haven. Jews have prospered and done well. But maybe that’s not how it will be moving forward.”

What keeps Ruderman optimistic, though, is the American people themselves.

“I do believe that most Americans don’t have this fuzzy moral clarity,” he said. “Most Americans do believe that Israel is on the right side of history, that it’s a friend of the US, and that Jews are not evil.”

To help turn the tide against Jew hatred, Ruderman calls on universities to have the moral clarity to “take this stuff head-on. Antisemitism is always there under the surface. When you make it uncomfortable for people to be antisemitic, it stays underground. But if you give people permission to be antisemitic, it’s open season. It rises up and is uncontrollable.” ■