There has been a great deal of coverage of the toxic environment on American college campuses, and the response of the leaders of some of the best known and sought-after Ivy League universities including at the now infamous Congressional hearing. It is time to talk about what is happening on British campuses.
Jews in the Diaspora have found themselves part of a soft underbelly of the Jewish world, now being targeted in every major Western city. Universities in particular have become the arena for some of the most radical demonstrations of anti-Israel and openly antisemitic outbursts threatening and harassing Jewish students.
Since the October attacks, the campuses of Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol, and now Newcastle have made the news because of this. In each case, a different trigger reflects the same underlying problem.
What is the most mystifying and disappointing fact is the role university leadership and management are playing.
20 Years of partnership
This has become very personal for my family. My brother and I grew up in Newcastle, in the North East of England where my parents built their home and lives. Like many provincial communities in the UK, ours was small (less than 1,500 Jews). This did not stop us from being vibrant and proud of our Jewish identity. In recognition of being part of a wider community and specifically because of my Dad’s business success we endowed a chair in entrepreneurship at the business school of Newcastle University. We sometimes take it for granted, but having built himself up from nothing it is a huge source of pride for us and the Jewish community that my Dad should be honored in this way.
Imagine the distress when we discovered that an honoree of the university has been engaging in the spreading of antisemitic comments via social media, and the gall that the honorary degree received from the university was for her activism against racism. What is more, the university endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance guidelines as its policy to fight antisemitism on campus but seems powerless or lacking the motivation to enforce. While I do not want to give the honoree any more oxygen than is necessary, a quick check for her on Twitter will reveal her comparisons of Israel to Nazi Germany, spreading spurious allegations about organ harvesting by the IDF, and in one particularly bizarre rant she picked a fight with the museum at Auschwitz.
Warm words, zero action
Naturally we engaged immediately with the university’s vice chancellor pointing out what we felt was obvious, that the IHRA was clearly and repeatedly being infringed on social media. I am absolutely sure that the Vice Chancellor is not antisemitic, and as far as I can tell may not even have strong views on the Middle East. However, inaction in the face of this hatred is to empower the hate further. The responsibility for the safety of Jewish students resides squarely on the shoulders of university management, but this is surely not enough. Tolerance is an idea developed in the Middle Ages in Europe to tolerate Jews in Christian environments. The level of tolerance was a very low bar – basically, if you behave yourselves, we won’t kill you.
Universities as institutions have the choice to be part of the problem or part of the solution. The toxic combination of radical Islam and some radical left-wing ideas is producing a new generation of antisemites. Literally every expert that writes on the topic has explained repeatedly that rabid anti-Zionism, especially when it calls for the dismantlement of the State of Israel or compares it to Nazi Germany is the latest mutation of this ancient hatred.
The UK and antisemitism
Britain has a thousand-year history of antisemitism, including the first blood libel, expulsion of Jews and institutional exclusion on the basis of religion (even to the extent that Jews have their own golf clubs because for generations they were not allowed into regular ones). As Dave Rich has pointed out in his excellent book Everyday Hate, there is so much antisemitism that has become embedded into British language and culture that it lies close to the surface and demands that we are permanently vigilant. This doesn’t mean we need to be paranoid or hysterical, but we do need to be aware and vigilant.
Friends and allies
Rabbi David Wolpe in a lecture at Temple Emanuel in New York, pointed out the crucial point that while we are in the midst of an aggressive and global antisemitic outburst not everyone around us are antisemites. Indeed many, perhaps most are not, and would certainly be horrified if they thought they were considered to be, just as if they were considered racist towards others. The vast majority of mainstream institutional Britain is against antisemitism. The main political parties are against it. The media calls it out repeatedly. The Labour Party, recovering from the treacherous Corbyn era is working very hard to root out Jew hatred.
Still action is required. It is not good enough that universities are slow to acknowledge problems as they occur. They apply risk management instead of moral judgment. They hide behind free speech legislation instead of standing up to be counted.
Jewish students do not only deserve to feel safe on campus. They deserve to feel proud as Jews and proud of their love for Israel and their connection to Zionism.
Having concluded that Newcastle University was taking no action at all, we decided to cut ties, removing my Dad’s name from any association. This, at the cost of two decades of warm and successful partnership.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks pointed out that the fight against antisemitism is not simply for the Jews but for humanity. It was the English philosopher John Stuart Mills who remarked that “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
The university has decided to look on. We cannot.
The writer, a founding partner of Goldrock Capital, is the founder of The Institute for Jewish and Zionist Research. He is a former chair of Gesher, World Bnei Akiva, and the Coalition for Haredi Employment.