Anti-Semitism is Becoming Mainstream in Higher Education

Anti-Semitism is Becoming Mainstream in Higher Education

In order to know this is true, one need look no further than college campus demonstrations against Israel and Jews. It’s truly disturbing.

From the Jewish News Syndicate:

Something is rotten in the state of higher education

Having already attended many forums discussing antisemitism and heard many reports about increasingly vitriolic campus Jew-hatred, the penny dropped hard in Feb. 2016 when an incident at Vassar College made the news.

Rutgers Professor of Women’s Studies Jasbir Puar addressed students and faculty claiming that Israel intentionally kills Palestinian teenagers, harvests their organs “for scientific research,” and “maims” and “stunts” the growth of Palestinians by preventing basic commodities from reaching them.

These false accusations were reportedly met with no challenge whatsoever from the Vassar faculty members and students in attendance. There was not even a whispered doubt about the credibility of her sources or the validity of her thesis.

The following year, Puar published a book through the prestigious Duke University Press called The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability in which she repeated her lies. In 2018, the book was awarded the Alison Piepmeier Book Prize by the National Women’s Studies Association, giving those lies a stamp of approval.

As a graduate of Rutgers (class of 1978), I wrote to the president of the university about the Vassar incident, but never received a reply.

For a short time, the Vassar incident was much discussed in the media. Some criticized Puar, others defended her, others excused her, but the controversy soon faded. It should not have done. It should have sent shock waves through the academic community. It should have sounded the alarm about a precipitous deterioration in academic standards and integrity at leading universities and colleges. It should have made people realize that “intersectionality” is no replacement for scholarship and the pursuit of knowledge. It should have led to dozens of lectures at institutions of higher learning about the difference between scholarship and polemics, representation and misrepresentation.

Most importantly, it should have been made crystal clear that anti-Israel discourse tainted with one of the oldest antisemitic tropes—the blood libel—has no place on campus or anywhere else.

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