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Inside the College Democrats’ antisemitism problem

As anti-Israel encampments on college campuses sprung up at dozens of universities last week, the national leadership of the College Democrats of America (CDA) asked the group’s Jewish and Muslim caucuses to draft a statement condemning the antisemitism that was quickly appearing among some protesters. 

The byzantine process that followed would lead the College Democrats’ top Jewish leader to accuse the influential organization of ignoring antisemitism at campus protests to further a one-sided, anti-Israel agenda, after the organization’s leadership nixed the inclusive statement that had been created by the top Jewish and Muslim activists in the group.

Allyson Bell, chair of the CDA’s national Jewish caucus and an MBA student at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., got to work writing a statement about antisemitism with Hasan Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair and a senior at Wake Forest University. The two of them turned in a draft of a statement detailing antisemitism at Columbia University and stating that the College Democrats “absolutely and irrevocably denounce the antisemitism that has taken place at Columbia University and other college campuses over the past week,” according to a document shared with Jewish Insider.

But College Democrats’ national leaders weren’t pleased with this draft, Bell stated. “They wanted us to write a 50/50 approach, to both protect the peaceful side of the protesters and stand against antisemitism,” Bell told JI on Wednesday night. So she and Pyarali gave it another stab. (“It’s been really tough for people to work together on this issue, so I’m so glad that we’ve been able to work together,” Pyarali told JI.)

This time, the draft statement began with a denunciation of antisemitism and a statement of support for the “broad and interfaith coalitions of students who call for a ceasefire, release of the hostages, and a two-state solution where both Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace.” This too, was voted down. 

The statement that was ultimately released by the College Democrats on Tuesday ignored the middle path proposed by Bell and Pyarali. Instead, the statement described “heroic actions on the part of students around the country to protest and sit in for an end to the war in Palestine and the release of the hostages.” It called Israel’s war against Hamas “destructive, genocidal, and unjust” — language that Bell had never seen. An Instagram post with the statement touted the endorsement of Pyarali and the Muslim caucus, with no mention of the Jewish caucus — except a comment on the post from the Jewish caucus’ own Instagram account. 

“This should not have ever been released without Jewish students’ support. Protect Jewish students, do better,” the College Democrats’ Jewish caucus commented. 

“It’s a hurtful thing, not only to not feel heard, but also to know that the organization you’re in doesn’t believe that the antisemitism is happening and doesn’t care enough about it to even include the factual things that we’ve seen on video,” explained Bell. 

For months, the Democratic Party has faced criticism from young activists for President Joe Biden’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas. In March, a cadre of influential progressive activist groups, including the Sunrise Movement and March for Our Lives, signed onto a “youth agenda” that focused on climate change, gun violence prevention, immigration reform and reaching a “permanent ceasefire” in Gaza. Debates over Israel and antisemitism have roiled progressive organizations since Oct. 7. 

College Democrats touts itself as the official collegiate arm of the Democratic National Committee, the party’s campaign apparatus. The group endorsed Biden’s reelection campaign, and in the past it has served as a crucial tool for reaching young people in an election year, even as the organization has drifted far to the left of the national party in recent years. Spokespeople for the DNC and the Biden campaign declined to comment when asked if they support the message adopted by College Democrats.

The statement sharply diverged from the path charted by Biden, who has supported Israel in its war against Hamas after the Oct. 7 terror attacks that killed more than 1,200 people in Israel, while also seeking humanitarian protections for Palestinian civilians. College Democrats’ national communications chair, Sohali Vaddula, a New York University undergraduate, told JI on Wednesday that the group “has opposed President Biden’s support for Israel in terms of providing military aid, which would further the genocide that’s ongoing.” 

On Tuesday morning, hours before CDA came out in favor of campus protests, a White House spokesperson slammed the violent tactics and antisemitism exhibited by some anti-Israel protesters at U.S. college campuses after activists at Columbia violently stormed a campus administrative building. Biden offered a similar message in a Thursday morning speech, the president’s first major remarks on the campus protests. 

The College Democrats statement recognizes antisemitism halfway through, with a line that university administrations “need to protect students from all forms of hatred — antisemitism and Islamophobia — without impeding on the rights of students.” It refers to antisemitism having increased “in the weeks following October 7th” with no mention of what occurred that day. College Democrats did not issue a statement on the violence in the Middle East until December, two months after the Hamas attack, when they issued a call for a cease-fire and hostage deal. They refrained from doing so sooner because the issue was “controversial,” said Vaddula. 

“This issue has always been controversial, even before Oct. 7, and especially after Oct. 7,” Vaddula said. (She was not an executive board member at the time and wasn’t involved in that decision.) 

The College Democrats’ Tuesday statement says the group stands alongside protesters who are calling for an “immediate permanent ceasefire, releases of hostages, and a two-state solution where both Palestinians and Israelis can live side by side in peace.” But this is not what most of the protesters are demanding. Chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — widely seen as a call for the extermination of the Jewish state — are heard frequently from protesters, who also often chant about “intifada.” More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada two decades ago. Other language and signage exhibited at encampments across the country state that Zionists are not welcome among the protesters.


“It’s hurtful to see so many progressive allies look at the situation as a black-and-white issue, where they can’t hold in themselves, in their hearts, empathy for the Israeli people, for hostages, for Jewish people who are victims of antisemitism,” said Stephanie Hausner, now the chief operating officer at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a former senior leader with both CDA and the Young Democrats of America. “As someone who was deeply involved in the organization, both College Democrats and Young Democrats and the Democratic Party, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in those spaces.” 

“I have not seen one student encampment talking about a two-state solution with both sides living side by side,” one former longtime Democratic Party staffer and White House aide observed. 

Pyarali, the Muslim caucus chair, disagreed: “I think the majority of people are standing for a two-state solution, and at least we want them to know that at least the majority of College Democrats are,” he told JI on Thursday. “We do think it is possible to be supportive of Israel without being supportive of this genocidal campaign.” 

Stephanie Hausner, now the chief operating officer at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and a former senior leader with both CDA and the Young Democrats of America, which serves young professionals, lamented the group’s approach to the protests and the war.

“It’s hurtful to see so many progressive allies look at the situation as a black-and-white issue, where they can’t hold in themselves, in their hearts, empathy for the Israeli people, for hostages, for Jewish people who are victims of antisemitism,” Hausner told JI. “As someone who was deeply involved in the organization, both College Democrats and Young Democrats and the Democratic Party, it’s really hard to see what’s going on in those spaces.” 

Young Democrats’ Jewish caucus chair, Zach Shartiag, echoed that assessment. “Our organization has turned a blind eye, even in my mind pre-10/7, to issues of antisemitism,” he told JI. 

“The Jewish caucus had not signed off on this particular statement because we felt like this one was more representative of what our organization wanted to support,” College Democrats’ national communications chair, Sohali Vaddula, a New York University undergraduate, told JI . “We just don’t want statements to focus entirely on antisemitism because that is a double standard. We should also be focusing on the rising Islamophobia on campuses. There are other students that feel unwelcome on these campuses, not just Jewish students. We wanted to highlight that and not make it one-sided. We felt that the Jewish caucus was making it one-sided.” 

“Jewish Dems and the Democratic Party firmly stand with Israel and support its right to self-defense, especially in the aftermath of the horrific attacks perpetrated by Hamas,” Jewish Democratic Council of America CEO Halie Soifer told JI on Thursday. “President Biden, the head of the Democratic Party, has never wavered from his staunch commitment to Israel’s safety and security, while Republicans in Congress blocked emergency aid to Israel for more than six months. We stand with Israel and any statement to the contrary isn’t representative of the vast majority of Democrats and President Biden.”

Vaddula, the College Democrats board member, acknowledged that the Jewish caucus did not approve of the group’s final statement. But, she added, condemning only antisemitism would present a “double standard.” The statement was adopted by a vote of 8-2 among executive board members. She said the group didn’t need to specifically mention instances of antisemitism “because we didn’t feel that the existence of antisemitism at the protests was in question.”

“The Jewish caucus had not signed off on this particular statement because we felt like this one was more representative of what our organization wanted to support,” she said. “We just don’t want statements to focus entirely on antisemitism because that is a double standard. We should also be focusing on the rising Islamophobia on campuses. There are other students that feel unwelcome on these campuses, not just Jewish students. We wanted to highlight that and not make it one-sided. We felt that the Jewish caucus was making it one-sided.” 

By ignoring Islamophobia, as the first drafts did, “certain students and identity groups [would] feel excluded from organization,” said Vaddula. When asked about Jewish Democrats who feel excluded, Vaddula said “there’s a seat at the table and the Democratic Party for everybody.”

Ultimately, she said the reason for not aligning with the Jewish caucus came down to the Jewish caucus’ difference of opinion on the war on Gaza. Vaddula said the Jewish caucus might not be “representative” of the Jewish community and cited groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, an anti-Zionist organization whose positions opposing the Jewish state represent a far-left fringe of the U.S. Jewish community.

“Unfortunately, the Jewish caucus just wasn’t willing to denounce genocide,” said Vaddula. “We felt like maybe that wasn’t the best representative sample of Jewish College Democrats or just Jewish young Democrats in general.” (In a follow-up conversation on Thursday, Vaddula clarified that “well-informed people of goodwill will continue to disagree when we use the word ‘genocide’ to describe the situation in Gaza, and of course, there is room for them in College Democrats.”)

“It does feel like the administration, or at least members of the executive board, believe that Jewish students are pro-genocide or anti-Palestine simply for being Jewish,” Allyson Bell, chair of the CDA’s national Jewish caucus and an MBA student at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C., said. “That conversation hasn’t even been had, but it’s assumed. And like I said before, it’s isolating. It’s alienating. It’s disheartening, and it’s hurtful. I feel for my caucus members. I hate that we’re in this position where we’re trying to figure out like, How do we get heard? How do we share how we’re feeling without getting in trouble for it?”

“When I look at organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and all these other organizations, some of whom actually are Jewish and are also calling out a genocide, I think it’s important to think about the larger messaging that we’re sending out,” Vaddula added. “I think that is in line with what most of the Jewish groups are saying.” (A March Pew poll found that 62% of U.S. Jews say the way Israel is carrying out its war in Gaza is acceptable, and 89% see Israel’s reasons for fighting Hamas as valid.)

Bell, the Jewish caucus leader, said that in conversations with other top College Democrats, someone implied that she supported genocide, even though no one had discussed the matter with her.

“The irony of saying that to a Jewish student — I honestly just can’t wrap my head around it at this point,” said Bell, who signed onto the December statement supporting a cease-fire. “It does feel like the administration, or at least members of the executive board, believe that Jewish students are pro-genocide or anti-Palestine simply for being Jewish. That conversation hasn’t even been had, but it’s assumed. And like I said before, it’s isolating. It’s alienating. It’s disheartening, and it’s hurtful. I feel for my caucus members. I hate that we’re in this position where we’re trying to figure out like, How do we get heard? How do we share how we’re feeling without getting in trouble for it?”

College Democrats’ turn away from Israel is striking against the backdrop of the organization’s long history of alignment with Israel and pro-Israel organizations such as AIPAC, which is now viewed as a target by many progressive activists. AIPAC used to bring the leaders of both College Democrats and College Republicans on bipartisan missions to Israel, a tradition it continued as recently as 2017. The leaders of both groups also used to travel to Washington each year for AIPAC’s annual policy conference. 

“College Democrats owe it to their president and national party, not to mention the Israelis and Palestinians still committed to peace and coexistence, to avoid incendiary statements that will only exacerbate the already explosive situation on campus,” Jonathan Kessler, former leadership development director at AIPAC and founder of the peacebuilding NGO Heart of a Nation.

Despite the Gaza war and campus unrest, in an April Harvard Kennedy School poll, 18- to 29-year-olds ranked the Israeli-Palestinian conflict near the bottom of a list of most important topics; it ranked 15th out of 16 topics mentioned. But Vaddula and Pyarali both told JI they are struggling with College Democrats’ endorsement of Biden in light of his support for Israel. 

“I’ve spoken to so many people who have seen his unfettered support as so soul-crushing, because we voted for Joe Biden with the thought that this is someone who’s gonna bring dignity back, someone who’s gonna bring compassion back to the White House,” said Pyarali, who called Biden “complicit in genocide.” Pyarali said Israel was “justified in their targeting of Hamas” after the “horrific” events of Oct. 7, but “it’s never been about targeting just Hamas.” He called the war genocidal from the beginning. 

The College Democrats’ Jewish caucus chair said the experience over the past week has made her question her future with the organization.

“At this point, I’ve kind of just decided that it’s worth speaking out about, even if it means that I need to move away from College Democrats of America,” Bell said. “This is important enough that I think more people need to be speaking out in support of Jewish students and the rising antisemitism that is happening across college campuses, even though currently it’s not a popular stance.”

Extremist rhetoric escalates among campus anti-Israel protesters

As an attempt to shut down the anti-Israel encampment that has been on campus for more than a week, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik entered negotiations with student protestors. Among her interlocutors is Khymani James, a student quoted in national news outlets including CBS News who was described as a protest organizer in a recent interview with the Columbia Spectator.

Newly unearthed footage of James, posted on his public Instagram in January and published by The Daily Wire on Thursday, reveals a radical side of the Columbia junior. In the video, which James described as a recording of a conversation with a school official who called to discipline him after he posted a threat against Zionist students, the Columbia junior spoke at length about his hatred of Zionists and his belief that they should not be alive. (James was also recorded in a video at the encampment encouraging protestors to form a human chain to keep “Zionists” out of the camp.)

“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” James said in the January video. “Zionists, along with all white supremacists, need to not exist.”

“Be grateful,” he said, “that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists. I’ve never murdered anyone in my life and I hope to keep it that way.” A Columbia spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Thursday that such statements are “unacceptable, full stop,” but declined to comment specifically on James’ case and whether he will face disciplinary action. (At 1:30 a.m. on Friday morning, James released a statement expressing “regret” for the comments in the Instagram video. “Every member of our community deserves to feel safe without qualification,” wrote James, who added that Zionism “necessitates the genocide of the Palestinian people” and “I oppose that in the strongest terms.”)

As similar encampments have spread to dozens of universities around the country, James isn’t the only student protestor promoting violence against Zionists. A growing number of campus activists have veered into extremism — including demanding the expulsion of Zionists from their campuses, calling for the destruction of the state of Israel and promoting their messages in terrorist-aligned social media channels. At Columbia, some protestors called on Jewish students who walked by to “go back to Belarus” and “go back to Poland.”

Student organizers of campus anti-Israel encampments at several universities have taken to Telegram, a messaging app, to spread their message and elicit support, donations and advocacy from other students and outside supporters. 

A channel run by the organizers of the encampment at New York University, which was shut down by the university on Monday, posted a message on Wednesday encouraging supporters to follow another Telegram channel called “Resistance News Network,” where organizers said people could stay informed about updates on the situation in Gaza. (It is not known who sent the message, as Telegram allows users to remain anonymous.)

“Resistance News Network” is a channel that is closely associated with Hamas and other terrorist groups. Its pinned post — the post to which it directs all new members of the channel — is a message posted early on Oct. 7 with a video from Hamas’ military chief, praising the group’s terror attack in Israel and calling on supporter to take up arms. Several times a day, the Telegram channel posts messages praising Hamas attacks on the “Zionist enemy” in Gaza and quoting propaganda from other terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis. 

NYU spokesperson John Beckman told JI that the “matter has been referred to our Bias Response Line for investigation.” 

“NYU takes very seriously instances and allegations of antisemitism, exhortations of violence, and our responsibility to create a safe and welcoming environment for all NYU students,” Beckman said.

The “Resistance News Network” channel has cheered the anti-Israel encampments, and on Thursday it posted a message from Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization — calling on Arab students to “follow … the example of American universities.” 

Members of the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at The Ohio State University shared a message with the “Resistance News Network” channel on Thursday asking members of the Hamas-aligned Telegram channel to support them and to stand with other SJP chapters. 

“We ask for you all to pray for the safety of our brothers and sisters in Gaza, and to support your local SJP as they combat the controlling powers that have stripped the world of any decency,” the message said. 

An Ohio State spokesperson said “there is no ongoing encampment or continuous demonstration at Ohio State,” noting that the gathering had been broken up by campus officials earlier on Thursday. But the spokesperson declined to comment on the SJP chapter seeking support in a Hamas-aligned forum.

At Princeton, a university staff member posted a photo to the social media platform X of a person at the encampment — where at least one professor has held their classes this week — holding a Hezbollah flag.

Harvard Law group to host NYU Law student leader who blamed Israel for 10/7 attack

A Harvard Law School student group is hosting a conference this week that will feature a public conversation with Ryna Workman, the former president of NYU Law’s student government who lost their job at a law firm and was removed from student government after sending a campus-wide email in October blaming Israel for the Hamas terror attacks on Oct. 7. 

“This week, I want to express, first and foremost, my unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression toward liberation and self-determination,” Workman wrote in an Oct. 10 email to the NYU Law student body. “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.” Workman has stood by this statement and refused to condemn Hamas. 

NYU Law dean Troy McKenzie disavowed the statement, writing at the time that Workman’s email “does not speak for the leadership of the Law School. It certainly does not express my own views, because I condemn the killing of civilians and acts of terrorism as always reprehensible.” Winston & Strawn, the law firm that had offered Workman a job, rescinded the offer, saying Workman’s comments “profoundly conflict with Winston & Strawn’s values as a firm.” 

Workman will speak on a Wednesday panel at the annual conference hosted by the Bell Collective for Critical Race Theory, a student group at Harvard Law School. The three-day on-campus conference, called “Censorship and Consciousness,” highlights pro-Palestinian activism, with a keynote address by Palestinian journalist Motaz Azaiza. Other topics covered at the conference include censorship in prison. 

Workman’s event is called “The Palestine Exception: A panel on repression and resistance.” Workman will appear alongside Rabea Eghbariah, a Harvard doctoral student who has claimed the Harvard Law Review censored a piece he wrote about Gaza; Fatema Ahmad, executive director of the Muslim Justice League; and Yipeng Ge, a Canadian physician who was suspended from his medical residency at the University of Ottawa after making a series of anti-Israel posts on social media.

The conference’s co-sponsors include the Harvard Black Law Students Association; HLS Lambda, a group for LGBTQ+ students; the Harvard Law Association’s Women of Color Coalition; and Harvard PalTrek, which brings students to the West Bank. 

A Harvard spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.

Bill de Blasio presses the ‘progressive case for Israel’ at Harvard

Bill de Blasio, the former mayor of New York City, wasn’t sure what to expect when, a week ago, he met with a diverse group of students at Harvard Law School to defend his long-held belief that progressive values are compatible with, if not contingent upon, maintaining support for Israel.

The topic of the event was sure to be met with at least some resistance, particularly on a campus like that of Harvard University, where instances of anti-Israel activism have drawn national scrutiny in recent months.

But de Blasio said he was largely encouraged by the response to his talk, billed as “The Progressive Case for Israel” and held in a classroom at Harvard’s Wasserstein Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 28. “We had a real dialogue, and folks were struck by that,” de Blasio told Jewish Insider in a recent interview. “There was actually a sustained discussion.”

Even as the tenor of the discussion “was at times heated” and “at times a little tense,” he acknowledged, “it was still civil in the scheme of things.”

“I heard views I would call left-wing, views I would call right-wing, views I would call pro-Israel and views I would call pro-Palestine,” de Blasio recounted. “I heard a range in the course of an hour, and no one left the room, no one walked out. People stuck with it. I actually saw some hope in that.”

De Blasio, who recently concluded a semester-long fellowship at Harvard, was asked to speak at the university by the Alliance for Israel at Harvard and the Harvard Jewish Law Students Association, which co-hosted the event.

“Bill de Blasio served for two terms as mayor of New York City, which has the highest Jewish population of any city across the globe,” Marc Heinrich and Ari Spitzer, co-presidents of the Harvard Jewish Law Students Association, wrote in a joint email to JI. “We were honored to co-host Mayor de Blasio and hear him speak to the greater Harvard Law School community about how New York’s Jewish community impacted his core values as a public servant.”

As a veteran Democrat who built strong relationships with Orthodox Jewish leaders in Brooklyn while in office, de Blasio, 61, said he was eager to reflect on such experiences at the Harvard event. “I talked about meeting Holocaust survivors, and, very powerfully, one woman who showed me and my family the tattoo on her arm from Auschwitz,” he said, recalling “a shock of recognition that the violence associated with antisemitism was so real and so recent and, horribly, continuing all over the world.”

“That’s one of the reasons that, to me, we cannot underestimate for a moment the challenges Jewish people face in this world, and why the State of Israel is absolutely needed as a refuge,” de Blasio insisted. “That does not negate other legitimate issues that need to be addressed, and it certainly doesn’t negate the valid concerns of Palestinians. But my central thesis is, progressives are supposed to stand up for oppressed peoples.”

The invitation to speak at Harvard, de Blasio elaborated, was also an opportunity to “dispel” what he described as “a horrible stereotype that suggests that some vast number of progressives are not supportive of the State of Israel.”

“I think that’s just absolutely inaccurate and based on no evidence, and I think it’s important to bear witness,” he added. “There’s a lot of us who support the State of Israel. Many of us don’t agree with the Netanyahu government, but we support the State of Israel.”

Speaking with JI, de Blasio emphasized that he is troubled by the direction of Israel’s right-wing governing coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose effort to advance a controversial judicial overhaul has drawn mass protests across the Jewish state. “I think the actions of the Netanyahu government are extremely worrisome,” he said. “I am worried about the future of democracy in Israel.”

He clarified, however, that such concerns, which have recently been echoed by a growing number of Democratic leaders, are consistent with a pro-Israel outlook. “You can still love Israel and support the State of Israel but acknowledge it has a democracy problem,” he said, “just like I love America and acknowledge my own country has a democracy problem.”

“The notion that sometimes people are accused of antisemitism if they disagree with the current Israeli government is obviously outlandish and needs to be called out,” de Blasio added. “That came up in the dialogue, and I said, ‘I know so many leaders who are deeply respectful of the Jewish experience and happen to disagree with the Israeli government, and there’s no contradiction.’ I think that has to be understood better.”

Last summer, de Blasio raised some eyebrows when he dropped his support for AIPAC during a brief run for an open congressional seat in Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. His objection to the pro-Israel lobbying group, which he had long defended, was that its political arm had recently targeted a fellow progressive Democrat, Nina Turner, in a Cleveland-area House primary. 

During that election, Jewish voters in Cleveland had expressed reservations over Turner’s approach to Israel, which drew attack ads from pro-Israel groups including a super PAC affiliated with AIPAC.

In an interview with JI last June, de Blasio defended his decision to denounce AIPAC, noting that he did not agree with all of Turner’s Middle East policy positions but remained loyal to her as a friend. The New York Democrat, who visited Israel during his second year as mayor, maintained that he “can simultaneously be a very proud progressive and a very proud supporter of Israel,” adding, “I don’t see any contradiction.”

The recent event at Harvard was, in many ways, a continuation of that argument, as he reiterated his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and underscored his opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, among other things.

His remarks came days before Harvard’s Arab Conference, where an outspoken supporter of BDS who has been accused of antisemitism, the former Women’s March leader Linda Sarsour, delivered a keynote address in which she exhorted students to protest “apartheid” Israel. The consulting giant McKinsey & Company, which sponsored the event, announced on Monday that it had “stepped away” from the conference after learning that one speaker, whom it did not identify by name, “had a history of antisemitic comments.”

The weekend speech from Sarsour followed other examples in which debates over Israel have stirred controversy at Harvard. Last year, the editorial board of its student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, endorsed the BDS movement, drawing a sharp rebuke from the student president of Harvard Hillel, among others.  (The paper’s news team covered the Blasio event last week.) In 2016, third-year law student Husam El-Qoulaq, invoked an antisemitism trope during a question-and-answer period at an event with former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

In January, meanwhile, the Harvard Kennedy School said it would grant a fellowship to the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, Kenneth Roth, after the school’s dean had reportedly vetoed its initial offer amid concerns over Roth’s apparent hostility to Israel.

“I think, in academia, it’s important to respect and hear a diversity of voices,” de Blasio said of the Roth dustup. “That’s my only comment on that.”

As a visiting fellow at the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health this past semester, de Blasio said he had been invited to speak with Jewish and Muslim groups but never had the chance to engage with students together, as he did last week.

“It’s great to speak to people of different viewpoints separately, but it’s especially powerful to bring everyone in the room and be like, ‘let’s hash it out,’” he told JI. “I don’t mean that’s like, you know, kumbaya. I don’t mean it’s going to be easy. But if we’re not devoted to that kind of open dialogue and having the tough conversations, then we are accepting of an absolutely unacceptable status quo.”

During the question-and-answer session of the discussion, de Blasio, who is now a visiting fellow at New York University and American University in Washington, D.C., said he heard from both Palestinian and Muslim students who voiced what he characterized as “very real concerns” about the content of his argument.

“What I tried to do was listen and give them the chance to get their whole statement or question out, even if I disagreed with some elements of it, and answer as someone who respects the Muslim community,” he explained. “Beginning with the atmosphere of, I believe, respect and willingness to listen, doesn’t mean watering down my views. But I do think encouraging dialogue, being willing to take tough questions, is valuable unto itself.”

One student attendee, Ben, a second-year law student at Harvard who declined to share his last name, affirmed the former mayor’s assessment in an email shared with JI. “I couldn’t get over the diverse perspectives that we got to hear from: Israelis, Jewish progressives, right-wing evangelicals, pro-Palestine activists,” he said in a message sent to the Harvard Jewish Law Students Association after the event. “It was intense, exciting and thought-provoking.”

De Blasio, for his part, said he considers it a minor if ultimately meaningful achievement that the conversation did not devolve into a shouting match or result in a walk-out.

“This is a microcosm of what we have to do for our country and for the Middle Eastern region in general,” he suggested. “It was a very, very small, localized first step at Harvard, but it was better than never being in the room together.”

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