Academia fights Donald Trump, but not antisemitism.

Sombreros are a serious threat, but somehow Hamas isn’t. Welcome to the wacky world of academia.

photo: Clay Banks/Unsplash

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This is a guest essay by Ted Goldstein, a Jewish poet and educator.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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It is good to know the Ivy League can still fight for the things it cares about.

It just doesn’t care about Jews.

Recently, after attending a memorial event for the six hostages who were brutally executed by Hamas terrorists, I came home to news that the Ivy League had found both the courage and the resources to fight against U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration — courage and resources that were nowhere to be found in the fight against on-campus antisemitism.

Today marks 707 days since October 7th. That makes 707 days that the Ivy League could have done something about the rise of antisemitism on campus and the outpouring of academic love for the barbarity of Hamas. But, in 707 days, the universities instead chose to do nothing. And it was a choice. Negligence of this magnitude cannot be ascribed to apathy.

Now, after 707 days of choosing to do nothing, the universities have decided to do something. Not to fight the scourge of Jew-hatred they have let fester. Not to protect their Jewish students from keffiyeh-clad Hamas supporters. Not to open an academic dialogue. They have decided to band together to fight for federal funding.

Regardless of how one feels about what the Trump Administration is doing, one thing is painfully clear: It would have been much cheaper for the universities to fight antisemitism rather than the federal government. Instead, they chose to assuage the antisemites and challenge the government.

What a waste.

At the end of all this, I doubt that the universities’ policies will change much, and I certainly doubt that they will do anything to protect and promote Jewish students on campus. If the universities had any interest in protecting Jewish life on campus, they could have done something in the past 707 days. Especially when they had a favorable presidential administration in charge.

I do, however, think that a lot of lawyers will make a lot of money. Between the funding being withheld and the legal fees to be paid, the bill for this fight will be astronomical. The Ivy League is flush with money, but lacking in courage.

These universities are all piss and vinegar when it comes to students wearing sombreros on Halloween, but when students cosplay as keffiyeh-clad Hamas operatives, donning the green and white headbands and chanting the same things they chanted when they paraded Shani Louk’s mutilated body around Gaza City, the administrators are nowhere to be found.

For institutions which have, for years, promoted and provided safe spaces and trigger warnings to protect students from microaggressions, their inability to do anything about these macro-aggressions against Jewish life reflects not an inability to act but rather an unwillingness. Had the universities invested half as much time and money into protecting Jewish students and Jewish spaces, as they did in fighting the microaggressions of Halloween costumes and dirty jokes, they could have avoided this entire confrontation.

The hypocrisy is sickening.

Defenders of the universities might say that this is all irrelevant since the current administration is clearly not acting in good faith. I have no illusions that the federal government is attacking the universities out of its deep love for Jewish students and Jewish culture.

But the universities are certainly not acting in good faith either. And therein lies the problem. The Jewish students are caught in a vice, between the political will of two much greater forces, between the illiberalism of postmodern progressivism and the vengefulness of the new populism.

We are but pawns in their political game. A century of Jewish life at the Ivy League is coming to an end. Jewish life on campus will end the same way it started — with quotas, because we do not fit into the racial world the universities wish to create. When Jews first came to the Ivy League, we were not “white” enough to deserve equal treatment. Now, Jews are too “white” to deserve equal treatment.

Perhaps it is a testament to the shapeshifting nature of the Jewish People that we have been able to change our racial makeup in a matter of three generations. Or perhaps it is a testament to the adaptability of academic antisemitism.

However, in all of this tumult, one thing has become painfully clear: Jewish students don’t matter. So kudos to the Ivy League for finding the wealth and courage to fight the Trump Administration. They could have spent that money on educating students about antisemitism, they could have spent it on bringing in speakers and hosting debates, and they could have spent it on security services for the on-campus Jewish spaces.

But they didn’t. They chose to spend that money fighting against accusations of antisemitism rather than fighting the antisemitism itself.

I am sure that, at the end of the day, the government and the universities will settle, the lawyers will make a killing, and Qatar will make up whatever shortfall the universities face. The Jews, of course, will inevitably get blamed by both sides, and Jewish life on campus will slowly dwindle back down to the levels it was at 100 years ago.

If any of these universities were truly acting in good faith, they would set up their own independent operations to fight antisemitism in addition to fighting the Trump Administration. But we are 707 days into this war, and I can see no reason why the universities would suddenly find their conscience now.

So congratulations to the lawyers who will make a killing from this. Congratulations to Qatar for successfully destroying American academia from the inside. And congratulations to all of the Ivy League presidents who receive seven-figure salaries and generous severance packages when they leave office. They are the real winners here.

Perhaps one day a truly courageous academic will rise from the academic abyss to challenge the status quo and stand up for true intellectual inquiry and scholarly independence. Perhaps one day. But that day is not today.

Today is day 707 — 707 days of barbarous captivity, 707 days of academic cowardice, 707 days of night.

Perhaps tomorrow will be the day that the universities wake up to their own craven iniquity. Perhaps, but I’m not holding my breath.

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