A virulent, novel strain of anti-Zionist antisemitism is loose on the American campus.
In the wake of October 7, 2023’s barbaric terrorist assault on southern Israeli kibbutzim, a rave party, and a small military base, the Jewish state has been denounced loudly by extremists. As a consequence, Jewish students and faculty in the United States find themselves as unwelcome in the quad or the classroom as a troop of uniformed IDF soldiers. For pro-Hamas demonstrators, as for the terror organization itself, there is essentially no difference.
Apparently the result of a lab leak containing intellectual materials gleaned from various “studies” programs, where experimentation with conceptual “gain of function research” had gone on in relative obscurity for some time (Gender Studies, Middle East Studies, LGBTQ Studies, Critical Legal Studies), a potent “new-new antisemitism,” as it’s being called, is on the loose, spiked with heavy doses of esoteric and markedly volatile ideologemes. “Intersectionality,” in its more dubious applications, reduces all moral and political questions to matters of “oppressor” and “oppressed.” “Critical race theory” brands Jews not only as “white” (a term used on campus to mean “structurally racist”) but “hyper-white” (the whitest, therefore most racist of all). Theories of “settler colonialism” misrepresent Jews as colonizers in their own indigenous lands and the State of Israel as somehow illegitimate, despite its rather unique birth certificate, bestowed by the United Nations itself in 1947. Moreover, what the proponents of all these ideologies have in common is that they point to Jews and Israel as uniquely blameworthy personifications of all the “evils” attributed to the West, historically, by its occidentalist critics.
And thus, Andrew Pessin’s bracing essay, with its foreboding title, “The End of the Academy as We Knew It,” was first in a new series of urgent entreaties, commissioned by the Telos-Paul Piccone Israel Initiative, in response to the current emergency at Columbia University and beyond, including related matters of comparable concern.
For clearly, what happens on campus does not stay on campus, just as events off-campus, on the other side of the globe even (what “river”? which “sea”?), inform what is taught and learned there, as well as what students can be expected to take with them when they graduate (besides burdensome debt). In this light, one can no longer dismiss “woke” misbehavior (however tired the term) as an insignificant amalgamation of highfalutin fads confined to the margins of the high culture industry at a few “elite” (expensive, brand name) institutions. These institutions, plainly, comprise an important site for the production, reproduction, and distribution of ideology, and as such they must be of concern to the critical theory of the contemporary.
Our higher education system is severely battered, in short, and in need of fixing. Open support for the violently anti-Jewish, misogynist, homophobic Hamas terrorist organization, among a powerful, determined, tactically sophisticated minority of students and faculty, is one sure sign that long-standing problems, rooted in both curriculum and administrative policy, have reached a turning point.
Following upon Pessin’s head-turning inaugural essay: equally powerful reflections by Andrei Markovits, Cary Nelson, David Pan, Julius Bielek, Corinne E. Blackmer, Russell A. Berman, Michael Kochin, and others.
Notes
* On “Palestine Avenue,” as referenced in the title of this post, see Andrei Markovits, “Palestine Avenue,” in the German-language publication Konkret, February 2024. An expanded English version appears here in TelosScope.
Dr. Gabriel Noah Brahm (aka Gabi Abramovich) is Director of the Telos-Paul Piccone Institute’s Israel Initiative, Professor of English and World Literature at Northern Michigan University, and Visiting Researcher in Political Science at Tel Aviv University. A frequent contributor to such leading journals of thought and opinion as The American Mind, Fathom, Perspectives on Political Science, Society, and Telos, he is co-editor, with Cary Nelson, of The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel (2014). He received his B.A. from UCLA and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz. As a dual Israeli-American citizen, he has double, not dual loyalties. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @Brahmski.
I was just in Hellas (aka the Hellenic Republic, aka Greece) and the antisemitism (the unique focus on and condemnation of Israel’s attempt to secure its existence) was marching in the streets and plastered on any available surface. Truly shocking stuff.
This is hyperbole. The left, and even many on the far left, accept Israel’s existence, its rejection not even close to being its “most significant credo”. What it does reject is both the occupation, invasion, decimation and infliction of death upon the Palestinian people, and the equation of antisemitism with criticism of the Israeli state’s unceasing violence. It seems the “Manichean” worldview of reducing whole peoples and cultures to “good” and “evil” is more a projection of the author’s fears than a reflection of the current reality.
@Adk, Thanks for your no-doubt well-intentioned comment. But do you really expect anyone to believe in the moderate intent behind blood-curdling cries like, “We don’t want no two states, we want ‘48”? I guess “From the river to the sea…” is likewise meant as a pacific plea for harmonious coexistence, and not plainly the latest instance of a vindictive, persistent and terribly destructive tradition of rejectionism at the core—sadly for all concerned—of the Palestinian narrative in its most influential form? At least thus far. How about, “We are all Hamas”? Do they/you not know who Hamas is, what they did last October, are doing still to our hostages underground and their human shields above? Or did you mean stuff like, “There is only one solution, Intifada revolution”? “Globalize the Intifada”? Ah, it means a peaceful “shaking off,” is that right? Like the First and Second Intifadas, for example; each of them, however different in certain respects, doubtless, yet essentially the same in being “mostly peaceful” at heart (like the slogan made a mockery of by the BLM riots, which, granted, were not remotely as murderous); is that right? Or did you mean the “Intifada of Knives”? Was it butter knives, then, used to spread honey on crackers handed out in beneficent gestures of goodwill? Forgive me, but I can’t see the fundamental ability to distinguish between good and evil itself as equivalent to “Manichaeism.” Nobody says Jews are perfect and their murderers are all bad. I’m sure some of them are kind to small children and animals. Again, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts—I’ve responded as best I can in brief, merely by noting some of the most obvious ironies that should be clear to anyone paying attention to what this series of essays is designed to grapple with. Perhaps have a look at some more of them (why stop with my humble little yeoman’s work of providing a little introductory announcement) and get back to us after you’ve had time to reflect on what our terrific authors are really seeking to investigate from a range of perspectives?
@GN Brahm: Focusing on a few extremist and opprobrious slogans and being repulsed at the uprising (“intifada”) of the oppressed, not only tends to reduce comprehension of the big picture to passionate if not rabid partisanship but reveals more intimidation than courage against fear — thus the all-too-human resort to the reductionism of synecdoche, e.g. “the Palestinian narrative”, as if Hamas, or a commentator, can speak for “them”, the ones being erased; or Netanyahu, for all Israeli desires. Likewise, there is no one “perspective” that can legitimately and credibly encompass a whole variegated protest movement to a few conveniently targeted tropes. Please, do investigate “a range of perspectives”. And fear not, though all hands bear bloody bodkins, and all are guilty. “Murder cannot be hid long .. truth will out.”
Okay, I get it. Nothing is anything, but, rather, everything is many things. There’s no one this, no one that, no one nothin’. But then again, what if the truth were otherwise, and it turns out you’re a victim of selective nominalism syndrome (SNS), which, when actively symptomatic, drives those who suffer from it to take every figure of speech and/or term-of-art as literally and simplistically as possible? Don’t worry though! It’s a widespread affliction nowadays, and manageable, if you just strictly limit yourself to saying stuff like “things are more complicated than that,” or “there’s more than one perspective,” while railing against “reductionism,” and, of course, the “reification” of thought no more than five times a day. Indeed, as I am glad to see (you’re making progress!) the latter buzzword doesn’t appear even once in your comment. Bravo! Please bear in mind, however, there’s more than one reading of this, my comment in reply to yours, as well. And in any case—thanks much for your interest in this stuff. Seriously, I agree that it is complicated, doubtless. You are right about that. So—I shan’t try to speak for everyone from every perspective about everything all at once any longer. From now on, when I write something, it’s going to be from my perspective, about a limited number of things, at a certain point in the ongoing unfolding of particular stuff (events, trends, whatever) that happens to be under discussion at the moment. Cool idea! Can’t wait to give it a try… And lastly, for now—again, thanks for checking out our stuff. Maybe some of the other authors in this series appeal to you more? Replies to your comments that are a bit playful, btw, and yet indicative enough, in regards to how I really do happen to see things, are not meant harshly at all, nor can I provide you with fully adequate answers to (complicated) questions about questions about…but then who could. Only what comes to mind in passing, as we haven’t got all day. Ciao.
Harsh replies, I don’t mind. But condescending ones? Not interested. Ciao.
That was not my intent, adk. I’m sorry if it sounded that way. I will bear your thoughts on these matters in mind, for surely one can never be too nuanced, whether in one’s own writing or when reading others.