Nina Wiener: US must take campus unrest seriously, change school admins - interview

The United States and other countries must take the anti-Israel campus protests seriously as threats to the West and promote changes in the leadership of academic institutions, Israel Scholarship Education Foundation co-founder and Columbia University alum Nina Avidar-Weiner told The Jerusalem Post in an interview, following a May fundraising mission for former soldiers seeking to study after their service.

“It’s not a little prank, and it’s not just students having time on their hands,” said Avidar-Weiner. “It goes much deeper, and Congress, governments, [and] leaders have to take this issue very seriously.”

The phenomenon of encampments and protests, which escalated when her alma mater’s campus was occupied by pro-Palestinian activists, was “a very disturbing development because it’s not just in the colleges,” she explained.“These are people who know no bounds and are led by violent people, and this violence leads to anarchy,” said Avidar-Weiner.

“Many of the leaders of this whole movement want to destroy Western civilization. We are part of Western civilization, so I think we should listen to them. We should stop being naive,” she pressed.

The 91-year-old educational leader, who was a 2023 Independence Day torchbearer, said that she hoped that the US was waking up and preparing to counter the situation. The fact that donors had withdrawn their support and firms and employers were more reluctant to hire from activist universities and colleges contributed to her sense of optimism that leaders understood the extent of the severity of the situation.

“Every country has to create new laws,” said Avidar-Weiner. “You have to work with the top echelon at the university and change a lot of people. Change them. Just change the administration if you have to.”

Avidar-Weiner noted that the post-Oct. 7 massacre protest movement was not spontaneous but something that “Arab countries have been preparing for for a long time.”

'Antisemitism on campus was built over decades'

“It’s like the tunnels [system] in Gaza. It wasn’t built in one day. It wasn’t built in one year. The antisemitism on campus was built over decades with some money from Arab countries. I remember 10-20 years ago that they were receiving money,” explained Avidar-Weiner.

“It’s been in the works for at least two decades. The result is here today. The students have learned from the professors. The students have learned from agitators from outside who are... paid to agitate. They’re finding out more and more that it’s the agitators from outside that are pushing the students inside. And the situation is very, very serious because we all know that first come the Jews and then the rest. It’s, in my humble opinion, an anti-Western civilization movement,” she stressed.

AVIDAR-WEINER had spoken to some of the 10,000 alumni and current students given scholarships by ISEF about the environment that they had encountered on campus, including at vectors of anti-Israel unrest like at Columbia and Harvard University.

One Columbia Fulbright physicist had related that after Oct. 7, peers went from being welcoming to outright socially ostracizing the Jewish students on campus. Another Harvard student was told by a professor, “You don’t belong here. You should get out. You belong to a genocidal country.”

“Now he’s going to leave Harvard,” Avidar-Weiner said of the student. “This is a person who has a family – who has to think of his future. And he’s leaving America for a different country to study. He’s changing subjects. So that’s a very sad story. Our donors definitely, definitely are stopping to give to those universities.”

In addition to coming to the US from May 8 until May 19 to raise around $900,000 for the 430 ISEF students studying in Israel, the US, and Europe, Avidar-Weiner said that she was looking to better understand how ISEF could help its students. Many of those that she consulted with were still in shock from the hostility, unsure of how to respond.

“I want to get the advice of our alumni who did study abroad. I just came back recently, and one by one, I want to see who needs reinforcements, who needs help, who needs ideas, who needs connections,” said Avidar-Weiner, who wants to create monthly online meetings between the students to discuss their situation.

“We want to start a dialogue here between our office, our ISEF professors, our alumni, and our students that study abroad to give them a sense of identity, some strength to survive the situation,” she emphasized.

“Then, we have to decide what do we do. I would have liked to write a letter to Harvard. We have to analyze. Some students are afraid. Some students want to fight. I have another student at Stanford – he comes from the army, and he’s fighting a lot. There was an encampment of the pro-Palestinians with tents and all that. He’s arranged tents for the Israelis,” Avidar-Weiner continued.

ISEF, founded in 1977 together with philanthropists Edmond and Lily Safra to promote education opportunities in Israel’s socio-geographic periphery, is also exploring ways to help the southern and northern communities impacted by the Oct. 7 massacre and the ensuing war.

Avidar-Weiner added that she wanted to create stronger communication connections for their alumni. ISEF provided psychiatric help to students from the periphery and extra computers to impacted academic institutions.

“Israelis that live on the periphery of Israel still do not get an equal opportunity, and their economic situation is less good than the ones that live in the center of Israel.

“That has been a problem for decades. At the very beginning, when we started, there was also a social gap, and there was a gap between Sephardim and Ashkenazim. And that was the beginning of our main purpose, to redress an injustice or to reduce an inequality,” said Avidar-Weiner.

“Then, it became really to redress the situation for the children, the youth, and the gifted young people that live in the places that are suffering now from the two wars in the North near Lebanon and in the South near Gaza. And they were hit now and have always had a situation that is not as good economically as the one in the center, she said.”

In January, the ISEF created a special support grant of NIS 700,000 for 433 students facing the challenges of the war.

Avidar-Weiner said that all the ISEF alumni and students impacted by the war and hostility on campuses should know that the organization was there for them and urged them all to connect with one another.

“Let’s be connected,” Avidar-Weiner bade. “It’s the best way to help each other.”