Franciscan University, a Catholic School, Offers Safe Haven to Jewish Students Amid Rise in Anti-Semitism
“Our community will welcome them with generosity and respect”
This is a nice story, but this sort of thing shouldn’t even be necessary.
Campus Reform reports:
Catholic university offering ‘safe haven’ for Jewish students amid rise in anti-Semitism
As Jewish students across the country experience growing anti-Semitism, a Catholic school in Ohio is expanding opportunities for such students to transfer.
Following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre of Israelis, Franciscan University of Steubenville has opened its campus to welcome new Jewish students who have been subjected to bigotry around the U.S.
“But with too many universities preaching tolerance but practicing prejudice, we feel compelled to do more,” Franciscan president Father Dave Pivonka said in a press release. “We are witnessing a very troubling spike in antisemitism and serious threats against Jewish students. We want to offer them the chance to transfer immediately to Franciscan.”
According to the statement, Franciscan has put forward scholarships and an expedited transfer process for Jewish students to transfer immediately despite the university already having record attendance.
“Our community will welcome them with generosity and respect,” Pivonka also stated. “Our religious differences will not cause any conflict. On the contrary, at Franciscan, our radical fidelity to Christ and the Catholic faith demands of us fraternal charity toward our Jewish brothers and sisters, as it does toward all people.”
Dr. Stephen Hildebrand, the vice president of student affairs at Franciscan, told the Catholic News Agency in October that the university had been arranging with the local community to ensure a place of worship for Jewish students as well as developing kosher food options.
“My guess is that some of them, especially if they’re suffering persecution, might want to have the safety of home but have the opportunity to continue their education, so we have the ability to run online courses that we could start in the middle of the semester,” Hildebrand told the news outlet at the time.
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Comments
Thank you Franciscan.
Merry Christmas to you all.
Better people than are running Harvard. Not that that’s hard.
I appreciate their support, but what American Jews have to do is fight to see that ANY and ALL campuses are safe for Jews.
Quitting the Ivy League will rapidly lead to the marginalization of American Jews and severe persecution.
Respectfully, Eric, that’s not how life works.
(Do you work for Harvard?)
If your employer says genocide of Erics might be something he could support, you’d find a new job
If your girlfriend sh*ts in your bed you’d find a new girlfriend. And fresh sheets
If the guy who cuts your hair keeps doing a lousy job, you’d find someone else to cut your hair.
Etcetera.
Etcetera.
And so on.
And so forth.
Obviously, something sick has been going on at Harvard for some time now, and no Jewish undergrad is going to have any effect on any of that. Duh
The true spirit of Christ at Christmas time. Thank you for shining a light in the darkness. And I’m a Protestant.
De-corrupting the term “sanctuary” — one institution at a time.
We live in a strange world. In Europe, the Christian majority and the Jewish minority were almost always at odds, to put it politely. Yet, here in America, it is the Christian community that is a lending a helping hand to the Jewish minority in the face of forces, secular and otherwise, who would destroy both.
I’m no authority on European history — it seems to me that there have always been good people and bad people and everything in between.
But it does strike me that this offer by Fransiscan U. is really rather beautiful.
I’m as cynical as anyone else — but what these folks have done is kind, supportive, straightforward. Unostentatious. Dare I suggest — Christ-like.
In a just, righteous world, Fransiscan U would be flooded with than you notes.
I feel humbled by what they’ve done, and I’ll always pray for them.
(And h/t LI for publishing the story)
For decades, yeshiva students at “Ner Yisroel” rabbinical college (Pikesville, MD) have been attending evening classes as Loyola University, a Jesuit institution. This has been mutually successful for the university and the yeshiva students. So this offer is a slight variation on the same theme.
I don’t know if there is a Jewish community – with an advanced yeshiva – in Stuebenville but both the Hillel and Chabad organizations will need to gear up quickly.
Thank you for the very kind offer, Franciscan. I just hope you offer the professional courses the the [Orthodox] Jewish students will really want.
I congratulate Franciscan University on their act of extending support to students of the Jewish faith and ethnicity in their time of need. I will urge my alma mater, Loyola-Marymount to follow their lead as should all the Jesuit schools and universities.