Yesterday, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) led by former liberal Democrat Congressman Ted Deutsch, issued a statement together with several university groups, misleadingly titled “AJC, AAU, ACE Statement On Shared Commitment To Combating Antisemitism On College Campuses.” Unfortunately, the actual statement was not a “commitment” to combating antisemitism. Rather, the statement was a call for weakening the Trump administration’s effective and praiseworthy measures to finally address the scourge and danger of campus antisemitism – after decades of failure by universities and prior administrations. Among other efforts to weaken Trump’s effective measures, the AJC letter accused the Trump administration’s measures of being “overly broad,” “imperiling science,” “endangering” universities’ “institutional autonomy,” and “endangering academic freedom.”
If we were to listen to AJC and its fellow letter-signers, nothing would change on college campuses. It was only when the Trump administration started under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (for which ZOA successfully led a 6-year campaign to have Jews included) to legally cut the government’s billions of dollars of funding to bigoted, antisemitic, recalcitrant universities, that real change started to happen.
AJC’s “commitment” and playing softball simply didn’t work and doesn’t work. AJC’s “nuance” didn’t and doesn’t work. We are dealing with the non-stop antisemitic, anti-Israel harassment, indoctrination and violence on college campuses threatening Jewish students and Israel – not a genteel garden party. These sometimes-violent protests are led by radical, anti-American, Israel bashers: Students for Justice in Palestine, Islamist antisemites, Soros- and-other-radicals-funded Jew-haters, white supremacists, radical professors, and some Black Lives Matter radicals.
In the current campus context, the AJC statement’s demand for supposed “academic freedom” is really a call to continue giving universities billions of U.S. tax dollars, while giving Islamic Arab Hamas-supporters the “freedom” to block and prevent Jews from attending classes; the “freedom” to demonstrate for the death of every Jew in the world (“globalize the Intifada”); the “freedom” to attack Jews with punches in the face, flagpoles in the eye, and assorted other horrors; the “freedom” for universities to continue to severely discriminate against Jews (and Asians) in college admissions (ignoring the Supreme Court decision); freedom to promote DEI that is racist and discriminates against Jews and others; and the “freedom” to let antisemitic anti-Israel propagandists masquerading as professors continue indoctrinating students into believing every imaginable blood libel against the Jewish state and people.
AJC and others would never tolerate such anti-Jewish actions if similar actions were happening against, Blacks, gays or Muslims. Surely, they would be supporting such Trump actions if they were instituted to protect Blacks, gays or Muslims.
It’s time for AJC, ADL and every Jewish organization to support the Trump administration’s strong measures to tackle campus antisemitism and antisemitic violence. And to profusely thank President Trump; not attack him.