Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
This week, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (CoP) signed on to recommendations prepared by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) entitled “What Universities Should Do to Prepare for the Academic Year.” The CoP is an umbrella group for approximately 50 Jewish organizations across the political and religious spectrum. Yet the CoP endorsed ADL’s inadequate and weak recommendations without a dialogue, discussion or consulting with the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) – a founding charter member of the CoP – and many other member organizations.
Despite a frightening and dangerous surge in campus Jew-hatred/Jewish State-hatred, with a few exceptions, the ADL’s recommendations for universities are vague, weak, and inadequate and omit vital tools and do not go far enough to ensure that the civil rights and safety of Jewish students and faculty will be protected.
By endorsing the inadequate, weak ADL statement, the CoP missed a crucial opportunity to urge ADL to strengthen their recommendations to help universities ensure that Jewish students are provided with the physically and psychologically safe learning and living environment they are legally and morally entitled to.
This is not a time for half-measures. Campus antisemitism is dangerous and intolerable today. Among other horrors, hate groups, especially SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine), FSJP (Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine) and WOL (Within Our Lifetime), lead pro-Hamas demonstrations calling for murdering every Jew (“Globalize the Intifada”) and for destroying Israel (“From the River to the Sea”). Such groups also seize and desecrate campus buildings, block Jewish students’ access, and violently attack Jewish students. Antisemitic professors libel and propagandize against Israel, and harass Jewish students. Foreign funding supports anti-Israel academics. “DEI” programs discriminate against Jews and teach discriminatory concepts such as “white privilege.” Universities find ways to circumvent the Supreme Court decision outlawing race-based admissions policies, and instead continue to discriminate against admitting Jewish students and hiring Jewish faculty members; Jewish admissions especially at the most distinguished colleges have dropped to a tiny percentage of their level only a decade ago.
A. Missing items: Below is a list of important items entirely missing from ADL’s recommendations:
- Expelling or monitoring hate groups: The ADL’s recommendations never mention but should urge expulsion or, at a minimum, vigilant monitoring of hate groups such as SJP, WOL and FSJP. SJP has been the main perpetrator of campus antisemitism for years, well before the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023. A 2016 Brandeis University study on campus antisemitism found that one of the strongest predictors of perceiving a hostile campus climate toward Israel and Jews was the presence of an active SJP chapter.
- Expelling violent, etc. students: ADL’s recommendations never mention but should urge expelling students who engage in antisemitic violence and harassment.
- Vetting: The ADL fails but should urge that universities ask prospective students, especially foreign students, in their admission applications about their views and attitudes toward Jews and Israel in their applications, in the same way that students are often asked about their views on African Americans, diversity, equity and inclusion. This will help ferret out antisemites before they reach campuses. And even if students disingenuously claim to have non-hostile attitudes toward Jews and Israel, the question will indicate that universities are serious about eradicating campus antisemitism and will hold students accountable for bigoted behaviors.
- Restoring merit-based admissions and hiring: The ADL statement fails but should urge that universities restore merit-based admissions and hiring. Merit-based admissions and hiring are necessary to end discriminatory practices that have reduced admissions and hiring of Jews to a fraction of what it was decades ago.
- Ending DEI: The ADL statement fails but should urge that universities discontinue, as the U.S. government urges, to finally end all DEI initiatives, which oppose; merit based admissions and hiring; which harm Jews; and which have exacerbated campus antisemitism, and often marginalize and harm Jews by categorizing them as white, privileged oppressors, in disregard of surging antisemitism and the Jewish people’s long history of persecution. DEI also demands “equity” not the more just and fair “equality.”
- Foreign funding: The ADL statement fails but should urge full disclosure by universities of all funding they receive from foreign sources since foreign funding has fueled campus antisemitism and hostility toward Israel.
- Use IHRA definition of antisemitism: The ADL fails but should urge that universities use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, including IHRA’s examples of contemporary antisemitism. The IHRA definition is internationally accepted and an invaluable tool for understanding how antisemitism is expressed today, particularly on university campuses.
- Bring in law enforcement whenever needed: The ADL also fails but should call for actually bringing law enforcement onto campus to arrest violent and trespassing students, etc., when needed.
- Removing antisemitic faculty: ADL also does not mention the need to remove (and not hire) faculty members who libel, propagandize and foment hate against Israel and Jewish and Israeli students. (Just like KKK members who would teach hate against African Americans would be removed and not hired. Hate-mongering is not a matter for “scholarly debate.”)
B. Deficient items: Some of ADL’s recommendations have merit, including opposing BDS and affirming partnerships with Israeli institutions. However, most other recommendations are deficient. Below, in chart form, is a summary of ADL’s deficient recommendations:
| ADL’s/CoP Recommendation | Deficiencies, etc. with ADL’s/CoP Recommendation |
| 1. Universities should review their policies and communicate the policies to their campus community members | Fails to recommend that university policies clearly define antisemitism and incorporate the internationally accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, including IHRA’s examples of contemporary antisemitism. Also fails to call for policies that include strong penalties, including expulsion, for violations. |
| 2. Universities should make their campus communities “aware of” their codes of conduct and policies. | Fails to call for campus communities to be made aware that students and student groups that violate university policies will be punished strongly for violations, including expulsion of students, and revocation of student groups’ status. |
| 3. When an incident of antisemitism is reported and substantiated, university leaders should issue a statement that “establishes clear expectations for respectful campus discourse and conduct.” | Fails to indicate that a statement is insufficient, and that punishments to deter antisemitic conduct must be imposed. Also fails to recommend that university leaders’ statements must explicitly identify the incident as antisemitic, explain why it is antisemitic, and condemn student group perpetrators by name, so that the community will understand the university’s expectations and that these groups are failing to fulfill the expectations. |
| 4. Universities should “liaise with local law enforcement when necessary.” | Fails to clearly and forcefully recommend that universities collaborate with and actually bring in law enforcement to respond effectively to incidents and make needed arrests. |
| 5. A Title VI (of the U.S. Civil Rights Act) officer or coordinator should “lead training and education to prevent discrimination.” | Fails to specify that the training and education must be about antisemitism, using the IHRA working definition of antisemitism as a guide. (ZOA led a successful 6-year campaign to reinterpret Title VI to legally protect Jews from discrimination or harassment.) |
| 6. “The targeting of Jewish students, faculty, and staff and their organizations” should be “unequivocably denounced.” | Fails to call for punishing those who target Jewish students, faculty and staff. Fails to call for expulsions and suspensions of student perpetrators, and defund, ban and de-registrations of groups that target Jews. |
| 7. Notes that Jewish institutions like Hillel and Chabad are “essential.” | Fails to recommend that the university guarantee sufficient security for these institutions and for all pro-Israel groups and programs, so that Jewish students, faculty and staff can participate in Jewish life and in campus activities unimpeded, without fear or worry. |
| 8. “Encourages intentional integration of Israeli perspectives on campus.” | Fails to recommend that universities clearly and forcefully state and enforce rules that disinviting Israeli speakers, blocking academic collaborations with Israel and with Israeli professors, and singling out and harassing individuals who express pro-Israel views in classrooms, meetings or anywhere else in the university are all prohibited activities, and that violators will be punished. |
| 9. Recommends that universities “show up for Jewish students.” | Fails to recommend that universities make it clear and enforce that Jewish students’ religious observance will be respected, protected and reasonably accommodated. |
| 10. Recommends that universities “invest in opportunities for dialoguing across differences” and programs that foster an “appreciation for differing and nuanced viewpoints.” | Fails to recommend that universities issue and enforce policies that Jewish students and faculty must be able to express their views without fear of intimidation, harassment or reprisal; and that violators of this directive will be sanctioned. . ADL’s recommendation for “dialoguing” also appears to be an ineffective call for “kumbaya.” If KKK students and faculty members flooded onto college campuses and attacked, propagandized against and called for the murder of every African-American, no self-respecting African-American organization would recommend “dialoguing” about “differing and nuanced viewpoints.” They would demand to throw out the KKK! There is nothing “nuanced” about attacking and calling for the deaths of Jews. |
| 11. Recommends that universities “provide antisemitism education and training for all students, faculty and staff.” | Fails to recommend that universities use the widely accepted IHRA working definition of antisemitism as a guide, including its contemporary examples of antisemitism. |
| 12. Recommends “communication with Jewish communal institutions on campus about security needs.” | Fails to call for campus security to be increased. |
In sum, the ADL should have issued a far stronger list of demands and recommendations in light of the dangerous and frightening surge of campus and general antisemitism. The CoP should have consulted ZOA and many other CoP members before signing on to the ADL’s weak, inadequate statement. We hope that the CoP will correct this, include ZOA and others in decision making and join ZOA in calling for much stronger action by universities to protect Jewish students and faculty.