OPINION: Trump may not be the ideal ally but universities are all at sea on antisemitism
Antisemitic rhetoric is alive an dwell in Trumpland, writes Alex Brummer
Alex Brummer is a Jewish News columnist and the City Editor, Daily Mail
At a recent dinner in Washington DC, a Harvard educated law professor now running a US government agency, rampaged against Donald Trump’s targeting of her former university for antisemitism. As part of his crude budget cutting, the US President scythed $2.2bn of grants from the US’s most prestigious university arguing its response to antisemitism had been inadequate.
In an echo of Labour’s attack on independent school education in the UK, President Trump is also seeking to remove special charitable tax status from America’s great private colleges.
A practising Jewess, my friend believes that the President is acting in contempt of the constitution and weaponising antisemitism as an excuse to hammer ‘liberal’ educational institutions. She has never felt the need to donate to her alma mater in the past. After all it is already America’s best funded college with an endowment of $53bn. But Trump’s attacks had galvanised her and fellow alumni into writing generous cheques.
My pal is resentful of President Trump’s reasons for suspending federal funds arguing it was unjustified. In her view it had nothing to do with the eruptions on campus since October 7 (2023) and everything to do with an autocratic leader’s contempt for intellectualism and science. And since Jews stand at the forefront of such opinion, on both the West and East coasts, Trump’s embrace of the war on antisemitism, as a cause, is no more than a fig-leaf.
Indeed, one doesn’t have to search very deeply to discover that antisemitism is alive and well in Trumpland. Elon Musk, who is responsible for bringing efficiency to Washington, is as the proprietor of ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) viewed as one of the world’s largest purveyors of antisemitic tropes.
Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. suggested the unvaccinated had it worse than Anne Frank. And Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer of New York has been accused by Trump associates of playing the ‘Jew card.’
The difficulty for Trump haters is that the US’s elite universities do have a poor record on combatting antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, resigned last year after she became engulfed in a crisis over accusations of plagiarism. That was the purported reason but behind her departure was insufficient response to antisemitism on campus after the Hamas-led attacks on Israel.
The truth is that Harvard, Columbia and other elite American universities are all at sea on antisemitism. Reports released by Harvard in April found that Trump’s charge is not without foundation. They found that both Jewish and Muslim students faced bigotry and abuse as the protests erupted on the Massachusetts campus last year.
In a letter accompanying the reports Harvard’s Jewish president Alan Garber, a physician and health economist, noted the study had uncovered ‘searing personal accounts’ drawn from 50 listening sessions with 500 students and employees. The taskforce also completed a comprehensive historical analysis of the Jewish experience at Harvard from the 1920s to present.
Jews have long faced quotas at the US’s top universities. One of the great paradoxes is that Jewish economists felt so uncomfortable at Harvard that they migrated to the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It was there that one of the great figures in modern economic thinking Paul Samuelson won his Nobel prize and enabled the next generation of MIT economists, including former Federal Reserve governor Ben Bernanke, to do the same.
The Harvard report produced a set of recommendations designed to address antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias across the University. Whether the recognition will be enough to encourage Trump to back away from his financial sanctions is unlikely.
By reviewing concerns about select courses, events, and programmes, the report identified specific areas where the taskforce feels the university can improve its approach to teaching about Israel and Palestine and to ensuring that all students feel free to express their opinions without fear or reservation. That is all fine except Trump is reported to want a more driven approach which cracks down on the staff and activists fomenting activism on campus.
Israel’s loyal supporters generally have been delighted at Trump’s attitude. However, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg argues that they are wrong to ‘imagine antisemitic animus for impassioned opposition to Israel’s merciless war on Gaza.’ She goes on to quote United Nations rhetoric as justification for campus and faculty protest.
As we have come to learn anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric quickly drifts into antisemitism. That is an abiding lesson of the London Palestinian marches at times deliberately routed past synagogues. Our enemies seek to make no distinction, so why should Jews. Trump may not be the ideal ally and his motives are mixed. But anti-Jewish demonstrations and sentiment on campus should not go unheeded.
- Alex Brummer is City Editor of the Daily Mail and recently was on assignment in the US for the Spring financial meetings
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