Writer Claims Jewish Studies Programs in American Higher Education Are a Waste

Writer Claims Jewish Studies Programs in American Higher Education Are a Waste

Generally speaking, anything with the word “studies” attached to it is suspect.

Dominic Green writes at the Jewish Chronicle:

The terrible waste that is Jewish Studies at American universities

In 1972, the United Negro College Fund asked the New York ad agency Young & Rubicam to help raise donations that could send young black students to college. The Mad Men’s pitch was “A mind is a terrible thing to waste, but a fine thing to invest in.”

The ghost of Young & Rubicam survives on the 28th floor of 3 World Trade Center after its agglomeration into VMLY&R. Give them three martinis and ask them for a campaign for funding Jewish Studies programmes in American universities, and they might come back with “Money is a terrible thing to waste, and Jewish Studies a terrible place to invest in.”

“Who Teaches Judaism in America?”, a survey commissioned by the Ronn Torossian Foundation, is the proof. Over the past 60 years, idealistic Jewish donors have poured millions of tax-deductibles into Jewish Studies. Not just to give their tradition the academic study it deserves, but also as a way of inculcating Jewish identity and strengthening American Jewish life.

The Torossian study shows that their money is wasted. These programmes are giving a kosher stamp to anti-Israel propaganda and delegitimisation. The study examines attitudes to Israel among the professors in 1,136 US colleges offering programmes in Jewish Studies and the spin-off fields of Israel Studies, Hebrew and Holocaust Studies between May 2021 and Spring 2026. Four in ten faculties have signed anti-Israel petitions. They include 14 endowed chair holders, the big beasts of the departmental jungle. At Ivy League colleges, 72.3 per cent of Jewish Studies faculty publicly denounced Israel. Columbia University topped the Ivies with 77 faculty boycotters, 27 events and statements for Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine (which was founded after the October 7 attacks), and five departments committed to boycotting their Israeli peers.

In the cheap seats, New York University came top, or bottom, in the nation with 148 faculty boycotters. Marion Kaplan, professor emerita of modern Jewish history, three-time winner of the National Jewish Book Award and Guggenheim Fellow, signed every major petition. Just over half (51.9 per cent) of all audited records documented “anti-Israel public signals”.

Statements that the survey does not consider anti-Israel: supporting a two-state solution, criticising the Israeli government, opposing settlement expansion and calling for accountability on civilian casualties.

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