Not in the Name of Israel and Jewish Studies

This administration’s purported war against campus antisemitism is in fact a crusade against the rights of free expression, academic freedom and due process for everyone involved in higher education in the United States. Those of us in the fields of Jewish and Israel studies strenuously object to being used as pawns in the administration’s venal political games. Threats to cut government-funded research and the deportations of protesters without due process are not solutions to campus tensions and will just intensify the existing polarization.

Teaching about Israel or any contemporary Jewish topic has become a minefield over the past several years. On one side we face campus members who boycott or ostracize anyone who comes from Israel and any academic unit that has “Israel” in its name. On the other side are those within and beyond the academic community whose expectations of advocacy and activism for Israel contradict the scholarly ethos that most of us share.

The campus climate has become difficult to endure for many Jewish students, staff and faculty. The number of tracked antisemitic incidents has skyrocketed since the Hamas terror attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the start of Israel’s Gaza war. Muslim and Palestinian campus members have also been targeted in violent ways. Several task force reports have concluded that, in many cases, university leaders responded inadequately to incidents of campus antisemitism and Islamophobia.

The field of Israel studies has become a target in the campus battles. Today, our events often can take place only under police protection, lectures on Israel are disrupted and antisemitic tropes are used in activists’ fights against Zionism and Israel. Many Israel and Jewish studies faculty have faced internal boycotts and the refusal of colleagues to engage in any communication. As the director of American University’s Center for Israel Studies, I can testify that my colleagues across the country and I are neither activists for a cause nor spokespersons for a government.

Just as an American studies professor should not be held responsible for the actions of the U.S. government, Israel studies professors should not be associated with the actions of the Israeli government. Our job in Israel studies is to teach critically about Israel, just as scholars of Arab studies are supposed to teach critically about the Arab world and scholars of China about China. Our task is to educate and to present a variety of viewpoints and narratives to our students. We present Israel in all its diversity, which includes its Jewish citizens with ancestry in Europe, the Americas, the Arab world and Ethiopia, as well as the Palestinian citizens, who make up about 20 percent of Israel’s population.

We need to take a clear stance when academics are ostracized and boycotted for the actions of their government or of the country they study instead of for their individual positions. We need to make sure that there is a healthy campus climate and no tolerance for any form of antisemitism, racism or Islamophobia. But we need to fix this without external interventions and threats to our academic freedom.

The case against Columbia University, my own alma mater, is just one in a series of attempts in which the Trump administration has used Jewish students and faculty as pawns in its own attack on the higher education system in this country. Recently, the Department of Education notified 60 universities that they may face enforcement actions for failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.

Columbia conceded to the Trump administration’s demands after the cancellation of $400 million in government grants and contracts. Among other things, Columbia’s leadership pledged to adopt a formal definition of antisemitism, to hire an internal security force that will be empowered to make arrests and to place the university’s Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department under the oversight of a senior vice provost.

Our students are not protected by cutting research programs, and our programs have no intention to thrive at the expense of others. The fight against antisemitism must be waged on our own grounds and within accepted legal parameters. Cracking down on universities is how authoritarian regimes act, not democracies.

Everyone deserves due process in a democratic society, including and especially those with whom we disagree. We need to fight against bigotry on our campuses, rebuild our campus communities and relearn civic dialogue by preserving our academic freedoms.