Northwestern President Michael Schill defends deal with protesters in House antisemitism hearing
Northwestern University President Michael Schill found himself on the defensive on Thursday throughout a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on campus antisemitism, repeatedly providing nonspecific answers, in some cases refusing to answer specific questions and occasionally becoming combative.
Schill said that he had made a deal with an anti-Israel encampment — which he acknowledged was dangerous and engaged in antisemitic activity — in the interest of protecting Jewish students. By the end of the hearing, he faced calls from Republicans for his resignation or ouster.
He declined to answer various specific questions about incidents on campus, including whether Jewish students were assaulted, harassed, stalked or spat on, citing ongoing investigations; when those investigations might be completed; whether it was acceptable for faculty to obstruct police officers; and whether he would have made a similar deal with an encampment of Ku Klux Klan members.
Asked whether it’s acceptable for students or faculty to express support for terrorism, Schill responded, “are you saying, OK meaning, is it something that I would do?… Our professors and our faculty have all of the rights of free speech.”
He said that there have so far been no students suspended or expelled in connection with antisemitic activity but that investigations are ongoing and that some staff had been fired.
The Northwestern president, who is Jewish, indicated he’s proud of the university’s deal with protesters, which has been widely condemned in the Jewish community, describing it as a “hard decision” with a “good result.”
“The danger posed grew every day it stayed up,” he said. “Every day brought new reports of intimidation and harassment,” as well as “antisemitic behavior that was making our Jewish students feel unsafe.”
He said that he saw three options for dealing with the encampment: allowing it to remain indefinitely, which was not an option; sending in police and staff to make arrests, which he said was impractical because of a lack of personnel and “too high a risk to our students, staff and police officers”; or negotiating with demonstrators.
He downplayed the nature of the concessions the university had made to the demonstrators, claiming that many of the agreements made had already been in the works before the encampment or were connected to preexisting programs. He claimed the university had not actually conceded to any of the demonstrators’ demands.
Pressed on details, Schill downplayed the deal as “just a framework of an agreement that was reached with the students at 4 o’clock in the morning” and at one point told committee members to consult Northwestern’s website for specifics.
And he said that “nothing in the agreement… specifically addressed the interests of Jewish students, other than getting rid of that encampment.” He claimed that the deal “gave them the ability to feel safe on campus.”
Local and national Jewish groups have said that the deal instead normalized and rewarded those engaging in hateful activity, without any support for the Jewish community.
Schill acknowledged that no Jewish or Israeli students, nor the university’s antisemitism task force, nor the full university Board of Trustees, were consulted before he made the agreement, claiming that would have been “impractical.” But a professor who is an outspoken promoter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was consulted.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee chair, argued that Schill’s deal had created a poor precedent for other university chairs, in effect encouraging them to also make concessions.
“President Schill’s testimony today clarified his leadership imperils Jewish students and that he has failed at virtually every turn to take antisemitism on Northwestern University’s campus seriously,” the Anti-Defamation League Midwest said in a statement.
Northwestern’s antisemitism task force collapsed, with the resignations of seven members, after Schill’s agreement, though he said the school plans to implement a new task force.
Lawmakers highlighted a series of concerns about the initial task force, including the fact that it had no members who were experts on antisemitism, and some who were openly anti-Israel and supported antisemitic slogans.
Schill responded that the task force’s focus was intended to be broader than antisemitism, a mission he concluded was “impossible.” He also claimed the members had resigned in part because the task force was “unable to reach a consensus on what antisemitism was.”
The Northwestern president downplayed the significance of the hundreds of millions in funding Northwestern has received from the Qatar Foundation, saying that all of that funding went to support the Northwestern campus in Qatar.
He said he was unaware until recently that Northwestern’s journalism school had partnered with the Qatari state-run media outlet Al Jazeera, that he was “concerned” about it and would review the partnership.
Schill appeared at the hearing alongside Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway and University of California, Los Angeles Chancellor Gene Block; Schill took the brunt of the questioning, but the other two presidents also came under the committee’s microscope.
Holloway, who also struck a deal with protesters, offered a similar justification as Schill, characterizing his decision as a quick and proactive move to prevent disruptions to exams.
“We made a choice. That choice was to engage our students in dialogue as a first option, instead of police action,” he said. “If ever there was a time to dialogue and focus on civil discourse, it is now… It was made clear that we were going to allow the encampment and consider it a speech act in the spirit of First Amendment free expression” unless it disrupted university business.
Holloway was also pressed on Rutgers’ Center for Security, Race and Rights, whose leader and featured speakers praised Hamas and spread Oct. 7 denialism; the center also hosted a speaker convicted of providing material support for terrorism.
Holloway described the activity as “wildly offensive” and said “there is very little I find easy about the center. I personally disagree deeply with a lot of the ideas that come from that center.” But he said that there are many events on campus of which he is not aware and that he has no plans to shutter the center.
He was also pressed on Rutgers’ relationship with Birzeit University in the West Bank; the school has glorified terrorists, Hamas won a recent student election, several students were arrested for planning terrorist attacks and Jews are banned from the campus.
Holloway said Rutgers “partner[s] with institutions all around the world” and said he was unaware of the details about the university and would look into the issue further.
Holloway said that four students have been suspended and 19 others received other forms of discipline.
Block, unlike the other two presidents, did not make a deal and ultimately called in police assistance to clear the encampment after a violent clash between encampment members and counterprotesters.
He struck a somewhat different tone than the other presidents, acknowledging that the school had mishandled the situation and acted too slowly.
“With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk,” he said.
Yet, as Block was testifying to the committee, demonstrators reestablished an encampment on UCLA’s campus.
Block said no UCLA students have been suspended or expelled, but that more than 100 investigations into antisemitism and islamophobia are ongoing, in addition to police probes into the violence.
In another notable moment, Block pushed back on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) attempts to downplay the severity of anti-Israel activity on campus.
Omar described the encampment as “peaceful” and protected by the First Amendment, characterized the encampment members as the ones being harassed and ultimately blamed Block for the attack on the encampment by counter protesters. She also brushed aside an incident in which a Jewish student was blocked from walking down a public pathway on campus to a class building.
“This encampment was against policy, it violated time, place, manner [restrictions],” he said, before being cut off. He also said it’s “really inappropriate” for students to be blocked from any part of campus, regardless of whether other pathways were available.
House Republicans to ramp up efforts to combat campus antisemitism
Congressional Republicans are vowing action to address antisemitism on college campuses nationwide, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) launching “a House-wide effort” this week to crack down on universities unable to control anti-Israel protests that on some occasions have grown violent.
Johnson said at a press conference on Tuesday that House Republicans would expand the ongoing efforts to tackle antisemitism beyond the House Education and Workforce Committee, which has investigations into six universities underway.
The chairs of the House Energy and Commerce; Oversight; Judiciary; Ways and Means; and Science, Space, and Technology Committees will separately investigate “the billions of federal taxpayer dollars that go to these universities,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said at the press conference.
“Antisemitism is a virus and because the administration and woke university presidents aren’t stepping in, we’re seeing it spread,” Johnson said. “We must act, and House Republicans will speak to this fateful moment with moral clarity. We really wish those in the White House would do the same. We will not allow antisemitism to thrive on campus and we will hold these universities accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus.”
“That’s why today we’re here to announce a House-wide effort to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses,” he continued. “Nearly every committee here has a role to play in these efforts to stop the madness that has ensued. The federal government plays a critical role in higher education, and we will use all the tools available to us to address this scourge.”
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who chairs the Education and Workforce Committee, revealed that in addition to her ongoing probes, she will have the presidents of three other schools testify next month on their responses to protests and instances of antisemitism on their campuses. The presidents of the University of California, Los Angeles; the University of Michigan; and Yale University will be brought in to testify before Foxx’s committee on May 23.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, noted that her panel “oversees agencies that dole out massive amounts of taxpayer funded research grants… We will be increasing our oversight of institutions that have received public funding and cracking down on those who are in violation of the Civil Rights Act.”
“Imagine being a Jewish American, knowing that part of your hard-earned paycheck is going to fund an antisemitic professor’s research, while they threaten students and actively indoctrinate and radicalize the next generation,” McMorris Rodgers said.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said that his panel was reaching out to the State Department and Homeland Security Department to find out “how many students on a visa have engaged in the radical activity we’ve seen now day after day on college campuses.”
“The overriding question is real simple: Are individuals advocating for the destruction of our dearest and closest ally, the State of Israel, and engaged in this antisemitic behavior, is that a national security threat? We think it is,” Jordan said.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) hasn’t directly addressed the expanded GOP investigations, but is pushing for the House to consider a bipartisan antisemitism bill in response to the campus incidents.
Jeffries said Wednesday he has no current plans to visit colleges that have been plagued by unrest and anti-Israel encampments. He said he also hasn’t looked at proposals for cutting funding to colleges that are not cracking down on antisemitism, but slammed Republicans for pushing to cut funding to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which investigates antisemitism accusations on campuses.
“Ultimately, it was House Democrats led by [Rep.] Rosa DeLauro [D-CT], that were able to restore the proposed extreme MAGA Republican cut that would have adversely impacted the ability of the Department of Education to combat antisemitism and all other forms of hatred on college campuses,” Jeffries said. “We don’t need rhetoric from some of my Republican colleagues, we need real action.”
The New York congressman expressed support for Columbia University and the New York Police Department’s response to anti-Israel demonstrators who broke into and took over an administrative building on campus.
“As far as I can tell, the efforts by the NYPD were thorough, professional, and they exercised a degree of calm in a very tense situation that should be commended,” he said during a press conference, adding that he did not see any incidents of excessive force.
The Democratic leader said that peaceful protest and civil disobedience are “an important part of the fabric of America” but that protests that threaten others or engage in antisemitism or other bigotry are unacceptable.
He said he had no comment on Democratic lawmakers who have visited the encampments at Columbia to offer support. He also declined to comment on remarks by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) accusing some Jewish students of being “pro-genocide,” noting that he hadn’t spoken to Omar directly.
On the Senate side, where Democrats are in the majority, Republicans have been largely unified in calling for consequences for schools that cannot get their campuses under control, but otherwise lack the power to force any action.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) organized a press conference on Wednesday for a group of GOP senators to condemn the encampments, which he referred to as “Little Gazas.”
“These ‘Little Gazas’ are disgusting cesspools of antisemitic hate full of pro-Hamas sympathizers, fanatics, and freaks,” Cotton said. “President Biden needs to denounce Hamas’s campus sympathizers without equivocating about Israelis fighting a righteous war of survival.”
“The State Department needs to yank the visas of foreign students in these ‘Little Gazas’ and DHS needs to deport them,” he added. “The Justice Department should investigate the funding sources behind these ‘Little Gazas,’ and the Department of Education needs to withhold funding for colleges that won’t protect the civil rights of their Jewish students.”
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the No. 3 Senate Republican, similarly called for revoking federal support for universities that fail to uphold civil rights laws.
“We have laws in this country to protect against violence, to protect students. Students have a right to be protected. Jewish students, all students on campus, from harassment, from discrimination,” Barrasso said at the weekly leadership press conference. “If not, those colleges should lose their federal funding.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered two floor speeches on the matter within two days. His Tuesday speech likened Columbia protesters to ‘student Nazis of Weimar Germany’ in a call to restore order on the university’s campus, while his Wednesday remarks urged the Biden administration to not focus “on virtue-signaling and political theater to appease the leftist agitators of their base.”
While Republicans have generally been more vocal about their concerns on the matter, there have been some bipartisan calls for action in the upper chamber.
Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) have asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) to hold a hearing on antisemitism on college campuses in his capacity as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), the top Republican on the committee, has requested the same.
Asked by JI in the Capitol on Wednesday about organizing a hearing about antisemitism on college campuses, Sanders replied, “Well, the issue of bigotry on campus is something that we are concerned about,” before abruptly entering a senators-only elevator.
Cassidy told JI in November that Sanders had declined to call a hearing on campus antisemitism. Sanders delivered a Senate floor speech on Wednesday largely expressing support for anti-Israel protests on college campuses and rejecting many of the accusations of antisemitism leveled at anti-Israel demonstrators.
Sanders’s office did not respond to JI’s subsequent request for comment on the matter, nor did a spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Daily Kickoff: The chaos on campus
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how administrators are addressing protests, encampments and clashes on campus, and report on today’s expected vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sheryl Sandberg, Ofir Akunis and Amy Schumer.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Israel today for meetings with top officials, including President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Blinken’s visit to Israel follows a two-day trip through the region that included meetings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia aimed at discussing cease-fire negotiations and a day-after plan for Gaza. The trip comes as Israel prepares for a Rafah operation, following Netanyahu’s comments earlier this week that such a move was imminent, “with or without a deal” to reach a cease-fire and free the remaining hostages. More on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comments about a potential Rafah invasion below.
“Bringing the hostages home is at the heart of everything we’re trying to do,” Blinken tweeted earlier today. “We will not rest until every hostage — woman, man, young, old, civilian, soldier — is back with their families, where they belong.”
Thousands of miles away from high-level diplomatic conversations aimed at ending a monthslong war, American college administrators are conducting their own negotiations — with anti-Israel student protesters — in an effort to restore calm on campuses across the country in the waning weeks of the spring semester.
With final exams and commencements around the corner, this time of year is usually one of packed libraries, graduation celebrations and senioritis. Not so this year on a number of campuses, where student protesters from Columbia to Northwestern to the University of North Carolina to UCLA continued to sow chaos on campus, in some cases moving from the encampments they constructed last month to take over university buildings, as they did with the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. In other cases students commandeered university property, as students at UNC did when they took down an American flag and hung a Palestinian flag in its place.
At UCLA, overnight protests turned violent, with clashes between pro- and anti-Israel student demonstrators breaking out in the area around the encampment. At Columbia, police with riot shields arrested dozens of protesters in Hamilton Hall, effectively bringing an end to the protesters’ siege of the administrative building. Overnight, the campus encampment was cleared after two weeks.
Administrators from Evanston, Ill., to New York to Chapel Hill, N.C., have varied in their approaches to the demonstrators and their demands. Read below for more on the concessions that administrations have made to campus protesters below.
Following Columbia protesters’ takeover of Hamilton Hall earlier this week, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates released a statement condemning antisemitism and the extreme tactics of the students.
“President Biden has stood against repugnant, antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life. He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days,” Bates told JI. “President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful — it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.”
Batesdid not say whether Biden planned to speak about the issue publicly, or to meet with Jewish students. In a proclamation announcing Jewish American Heritage Month, which begins today, Biden addressed the situation on many campuses.
“Here at home, too many Jews live with deep pain and fear from the ferocious surge of antisemitism — in our communities; at schools, places of worship, and colleges; and across social media. These acts are despicable and echo the worst chapters of human history,” Biden said in the proclamation.
Meanwhile, a new Harvard/Harris pollfound that 80% of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas; that number drops to 57% among the 18-24 year-olds surveyed. Those numbers are perhaps best reflected in a statement released by College Democrats of America on Wednesday, showing support for the encampments and anti-Israel protesters.
Today in Washington, Jewish students from Northwesternwill meet with legislators to discuss their experiences on campus in recent days, ahead of a House vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. More on the legislation from JI’s Marc Rod below.
The events on campus are raising concerns among congressional lawmakers. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday called on Columbia administrators to “bring order to their Manhattan campus” and compared the behavior of Columbia’s student protesters to the “brand of aggressive lawlessness” shown by “the student Nazis of Weimar Germany.”
A day prior, a group of 21 pro-Israel House Democratssent a letter blasting Columbia and accusing administrators of failing to break up the campus’ anti-Israel encampment. The legislators alleged that failing to do so constitutes a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights. The letter, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Dan Goldman (D-NY), describes the encampment as “the breeding ground for antisemitic attacks on Jewish students, including hate speech, harassment, intimidation, and even threats of violence.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) is preparing a measure to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her comments last week referring to Jewish students as either “pro-genocide or anti-genocide”; the Minnesota congresswoman made the comments while visiting Columbia University.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC)invited the heads of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to speak at a hearing later this month focused on “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.”
Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans’ campaign armsare planning to use footage that has emerged in recent days in ads targeting vulnerable Democrats who have not condemned the protests. Among those the NRSC and NRCC plan to target: Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Bob Casey (D-PA) and Jon Tester (D-MT), as well as Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is mounting a Senate bid in Michigan.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said yesterday at a Senate hearing that “what is happening on our campuses is abhorrent.”
“Hate has no place on our campuses and I’m very concerned with the reports of antisemitism,” Cardona said. He added that “unsafe, violent” protests and attacks on students are not protected by the First Amendment.
Cardona said that support for Hamas, the “from the river to the sea” slogan and calls for Jews to go back to Poland or be killed are “absolutely not” acceptable. He told lawmakers the department needs additional funding and investigators for its Office of Civil Rights to respond to the spike in incidents and investigations.
northwestern negotiations
Jewish leaders slam Northwestern agreement with anti-Israel protesters
After an anti-Israel encampment was erected at Northwestern University last week, the school’s president on Monday reached an agreement with protesters to end the encampment — acceding to several of their demands in the process, which drew strong condemnation from many in the Chicago and national Jewish communities, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Message received: In a letter to university President Michael Schill, the Jewish United Fund — Chicago’s Jewish federation, which also oversees Northwestern Hillel — excoriated the administrator for embracing “those who flagrantly disrupted Northwestern academics and flouted those policies. The overwhelming majority of your Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni feel betrayed. They trusted an institution you lead and considered it home. You have violated that trust,” the letter said. “You certainly heard and acted generously towards those with loud, at times hateful voices. The lack of any reassuring message to our community has also been heard loud and clear.”
Resignation call: The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. “For days, protestors openly mocked and violated Northwestern’s codes of conduct and policies by erecting an encampment in which they fanned the flames of antisemitism and wreaked havoc on the entire university community,” the groups said in a statement. “Rather than hold them accountable – as he pledged he would – President Schill gave them a seat at the table and normalized their hatred against Jewish students.”
Notes from New England: Brown University administrators reached an agreement with encampment organizers to put the issue of divesting from Israel up for a vote when its largest governing body, the Corporation, meets in October.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused the International Criminal Court on Tuesday of a decades-long bias against Israel as it weighs issuing arrest warrants for Israeli officials on charges relating to the war in Gaza. Schumer said in an exclusive statement to Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs that he has “always had deep concerns about the ICC’s long term, anti-Israel bias. And I am urging the Biden administration to send a very strong stance against possible arrest warrants that the ICC could issue against top Israeli officials.”
Reported charges: Schumer’s statement comes in response to a series of reports in recent days alleging that the ICC is planning to order the arrests of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and members of his war cabinet over their handling of the war in Gaza. The New York Times reported that if the warrants were issued, the officials would be charged with preventing humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza and with responding too “excessively” to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks. Senior members of Hamas leadership would also be charged with committing war crimes as part of the case.
NSC comment: Reached for comment on the probe, a National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement to JI on Monday that, “As we have publicly said many times, the ICC has no jurisdiction in this situation and we do not support its investigation.”
Johnson’s call: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called on the Biden administration to join him in urging the ICC not to issue arrest warrants for top Israeli officials on charges relating to the war in Gaza. Johnson said in a statement provided exclusively to JI that it is “disgraceful” that the ICC is “reportedly planning to issue baseless and illegitimate arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials.”
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on the hill
House vote on IHRA codification likely to divide Democrats
The House is set to vote today on the Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA), which would codify the Trump administration executive order declaring that antisemitism is a prohibited form of discrimination on college campuses, as defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Outlook: The vote is one in a series of moves by House Republicans to respond to escalating anti-Israel protests on college campuses. Even though it has 15 Democratic co-sponsors in the House, the support of more than 30 Jewish organizations, including Democratic Majority for Israel, and strong bipartisan support in the Senate, the bill is likely to see opposition from a significant number of Democrats due to the codification of the IHRA definition, and its examples stating that some criticism of Israel is antisemitic.
Two proposals: Discussion in the run-up to Wednesday’s vote has also appeared to pit the AAA and another bipartisan antisemitism bill, the Countering Antisemitism Act (CAA), against each other, even though major Jewish advocacy groups and some of the bills’ sponsors sponsors see the two bills as complementary, not competing.
Going deeper: Like the AAA, the CAA also endorses and utilizes the IHRA definition, albeit without its examples, and states that it “should be utilized by Federal, State and local agencies.” CAA also has strong bipartisan support in both chambers, as well as the backing of some more liberal-leaning Jewish groups that haven’t endorsed the AAA.
What they’re saying: Rep. Kathy Manning (D-NC), the lead House sponsor of the CAA, told JI she’ll vote for the AAA and called on Congress to promptly consider the CAA. “I support passage of H.R. 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would require the Department of Education to continue considering the IHRA working definition as it investigates anti-Jewish discrimination and enforces federal civil rights law,” Manning told JI. “Making use of this definition would enhance the Department’s ability to respond to antisemitism on college campuses.”
House members urge ‘highest possible funding’ for Holocaust education amid campus antisemitism
Amid rising antisemitism on college campuses and around the country, a bipartisan group of 20 House members urged key leaders to provide “the highest possible funding” in 2025 for the Never Again Education Act, which provides funding and resources for Holocaust education efforts through the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Quotable: “The distance in understanding between today’s youth and those who witnessed or survived World War II is widening,” the lawmakers warned in a letter to the leaders of the House Appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the issue. “It is critical to institutionalize education about the events and ideology of the Holocaust before this knowledge is lost to history. Tragically, this reality is closer than we think.”
Drawing connections: The letter points to surveys showing shrinking knowledge of the Holocaust among millennials and members of Gen Z and research suggesting links between inadequate Holocaust education and antisemitic beliefs. It draws a direct line between the encampments and other anti-Israel and antisemitic activity at a growing number of colleges and a lack of education about the Holocaust.
Signatories: The letter was signed by Reps. Buddy Carter (R-GA), Kathy Manning (D-NC), Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Mike Bost (R-IL), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Katie Porter (D-CA), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Nikema Williams (D-GA), Jared Golden (D-ME), Joe Neguse (D-CO) and Maxwell Frost (D-FL).
U.S. hasn’t seen moves needed to support Rafah invasion, Lloyd Austin says
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Tuesday the U.S. still hasn’t seen the steps it expects from Israel before it can support an Israeli invasion of southern Gaza city of Rafah, the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated Israel’s intentions to conduct operations in the city, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
No steps: The U.S. has said for months that it will not support a large-scale operation in Rafah without a plan from Israel to protect civilians from throughout Gaza who are sheltering in Rafah. Austin told members of the House Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the U.S. has so far not seen steps by Israel to remove those civilians from harm’s way.
But: He did say, however, that the U.S. sees “some signs that they are moving towards that direction,” but “we have not seen a number of things that we believe will have to happen.” He said an Israeli plan must include provisions not only for moving “the preponderance” of civilians, including housing and medical care. Austin also said that “there have been far too many civilian deaths already” and that the U.S. “would want to see things done in a much different way” in Rafah.
Force protection: The defense secretary was pressed on how the U.S. will address attacks — which have reportedly already begun — on U.S. troops assembling and operating a humanitarian aid pier on the Gaza coastline. Austin said that Israel would “do everything possible” to provide security for the mission, a prospect that some Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), suggested they found troublesome, given concerns about Israel’s military operations in Gaza. He also said U.S. troops would have the right to defend themselves, including returning fire from the pier if they are attacked.
Elsewhere in Washington: Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) blasted the Biden administration over a report that it’s considering allowing Palestinian refugees from Gaza to the U.S. “Not a single Hamas sympathizer should be let into this country, and I will use every resource at my disposal to ensure this radical Biden policy never sees the light of day,” Scott said, claiming, “We have no clue who is coming into our country.”
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Q&A
Ofir Akunis ready to fight antisemitism as Israel’s new consul-general in N.Y.
When Ofir Akunis arrives in the U.S. today to begin his tenure as Israel’s consul-general to New York, he will be, like many of the envoys Jerusalem has sent to the city in recent years, on his first diplomatic posting, but with many years of political experience under his belt. But unlike some of the other Likud politicians sent to the Big Apple, who were popular with the party base but headaches for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for various reasons, Akunis, 50, spent most of his political career being identified closely with the prime minister. He spoke with Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov during Passover, three days before he was set to begin his new role, saying that he will not be cowed by the increasing antisemitism in the city that he will call home in the coming years.
Wartime challenges: “I feel that I am starting in a historic era, with what is going on in the entire West, not just in the U.S. and New York and college campuses. I spoke and met with almost all of my predecessors, and I think that it is the most challenging time in the last 30 years, if not more, for a consul-general of Israel in New York,” Akunis told JI. “I like challenges. When I’m challenged, I know how to express our stances. Our position is just as Zionists and Israelis. When I resigned from the government, I said I am doing so as a Jew, a Zionist and an Israeli, in that order. Zionism comes from Judaism and being Israeli comes from Zionism. That is how I plan to act – as a proud Jew. I don’t plan to apologize to anyone…certainly not for the chain of events beginning on Oct. 7.”
Campus concerns: “Certainly, the current events require an immediate intervention in what is happening on campuses. I view the incitement and the violence with horror. They are built on antisemitic foundations, not only anti-Israel ones… It’s clear as day that this is organized and funded. We see students who have no idea what they’re talking about when you ask them what ‘from the river to the sea means.’ If you support Hamas and Islamic Jihad, you’re saying you want to destroy Israel and establish a Muslim caliphate instead,” Akunis said. “We have to fight them off, with basic unity with the Jewish communities and groups of Israelis who live there. We have to operate as one body. That is how I plan to act. I feel that this moment requires unity. I visited New York less than a month ago and felt there was unity between the Jewish community establishment and the Israelis on this, and I hope it will be preserved. When we stand united, we will succeed.”
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner: In The Atlantic, University of California, Berkeley School of Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky reflects on a recent incident that culminated with anti-Israel student demonstrators disrupting a dinner in his home. “Overall, though, this experience has been enormously sad. It made me realize how anti-Semitism is not taken as seriously as other kinds of prejudice. If a student group had put up posters that included a racist caricature of a Black dean or played on hateful tropes about Asian American or LGBTQ people, the school would have erupted — and understandably so. But a plainly anti-Semitic poster received just a handful of complaints from Jewish staff and students. Many people’s reaction to the incident in our yard reflected their views of what is happening in the Middle East. But it should not be that way. The dinners at our house were entirely nonpolitical; there was no program of any kind. And our university communities, along with society as a whole, will be worse off if every social interaction — including ones at people’s private homes — becomes a forum for uninvited political monologues.” [TheAtlantic]
AI Alliances: In Bloomberg, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba touts efforts by Abu Dhabi and Washington to invest in the field of artificial intelligence. “To secure the advantages AI offers, governments must race to realize the technology’s potential — and limit its harm. Who controls the data and computing power? What rules are necessary to create fair and responsible access in both emerging and mature markets? Where is the clean energy needed to operate the data centers that are the brains and muscles of AI? To meet these challenges, the UAE is working with the US and other partners to write a new playbook for this breakthrough technology. It involves resetting government regulations, reimagining public-private sector collaboration, and reshaping our relations in the world. And it is based on core principles that enable AI to flourish, while putting in place a regulatory framework to ensure its just and ethical use.” [Bloomberg]
Where Is the Outrage?: The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus interviews Sheryl Sandberg about her new documentary, “Screams Before Silence,” about the sexual violence that took place on Oct. 7. “The world that assails Israel for its conduct of the war in Gaza should be speaking out about Hamas’s concerted assault on women. The terrorist group can deny this all it wants, but any repudiations are belied by the facts: The sexual violence was not isolated but repeated and methodical, from bloody venue to bloody venue. … Where is the outrage? Where is the condemnation? ‘I think politics are blinding us,’ Sandberg, the former chief operating officer of Facebook, told me in a Zoom call. ‘I think people have become so polarized and so bought into their frameworks that they’re not able to see information that doesn’t align with those frameworks.’ Sandberg paused, then added, ‘I think there’s some antisemitism happening as part of this.’” [WashPost]
Encampment Conversations: In The Wall Street Journal, Dr. Michael Segal, a Harvard alumnus, shares what he learned from a conversation with students involved in the school’s anti-Israel encampment. “Today’s demonstrators aren’t showing the same intellectual vitality. In our discussions, they professed a vague vision of Arabs and Jews all living together in peace, sharing the land. I told them that this vision died on Oct. 7, and that outsiders interpret their ‘from the river to the sea’ signs as calling for the brutality of that day to be repeated throughout Israel. They told me that the slogan was years old, but I pointed out, and they agreed, that the original version was ‘from the water to the water, Palestine will be Arab.’ They told me that [the] original slogan wasn’t anti-Jewish because the Jews of the Middle East once referred to themselves as Arab Jews. I allowed that such a vision wasn’t entirely crazy, recounting my experience with how Arab doctors, nurses and patients get along fine with their Jewish counterparts in Israel’s hospitals. But although this is a cheery vision, the events of Oct. 7, which many groups at Harvard rushed to praise, and similar events going back a century, killed that vision. I was surprised by how much the students didn’t know. None had heard of the Farhud, the 1941 slaughter of Jews in Baghdad — something that can’t be blamed on the 1947 partition plan for the Palestine Mandate.” [WSJ]
Around the Web
Foggy Bottom Factor: The State Department determined that five IDF battalions committed human rights violations prior to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks; four of those battalions have resolved the violations, while Foggy Bottom mulls action against a fifth, the Netzah Yehuda battalion.
Moscow Meddling: U.S. intelligence officials cautioned that Russia is using AI, fake social media accounts and its own state-run propaganda to exploit divisions in the U.S. over the Israel-Hamas war.
Trump Time: In an in-depth interview with Time magazine, former President Donald Trump discusses his relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the possibility of a two-state solution and Israel’s prosecution of its war against Hamas.
Omar’s Aim: Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) introduced a resolution to block more than $650 million in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, citing Saudi Arabia’s human rights record and the UAE’s support of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.
Hitting the Houthis: Reps. Mark Green (R-TN), Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Joe Wilson (R-SC), Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Del. Aumua Amata Radewagen (R-AS) introduced the “Combating Houthi Threats and Aggression Act” to impose additional sanctions on the Houthis and their backers.
RJC Targets: The Republican Jewish Coalition said it will back “credible” primary challengers to Republicans who voted against last month’s Israel funding bill.
First in JI: Twenty-seven Republican governors signed onto a statement recognizing May as Jewish-American Heritage Month and standing “in solidarity with the Jewish community, especially at a time when Jewish people around the world face persecution.”
Prize Patrol: Fox News Israel-based reporter Trey Yingst was awarded the Axel Springer Academy’s George Weidenfeld Prize for his reporting; Axios‘ Barak Ravid was given the White House Correspondents’ Association’s award for journalistic excellence.
Released: A Tennessee man jailed on charges of shooting a gun near a Jewish day school in Memphis last year was released on bond.
Guess Who’s Back: A Cornell professor who is on a leave of absence after coming under criticism for praising the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks returned to the Ithaca campus to join anti-Israel protests at the Ivy.
PEN-ned In: The Atlanticreports on the challenges facing PEN America — including the decision not to hold its annual conference following a series of speaker cancelations — as it faces criticism for its refusal to accuse Israel of genocide.
Labor Pains: A group of former Google employees who were fired for protesting the company’s ties to Israel filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over their terminations.
Done Deal: WeWork struck a new restructuring agreement with its top backers to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy; the deal omits founder Adam Neumann, who had floated a proposal to purchase the company back for upwards of $500 million.
Schumer in the Spotlight: Varietytalks to comedian Amy Schumer about her rise to fame and, since Oct. 7, antisemitism she has faced and the responses she’s gotten over her support for Israel.
Active Voice: The Wall Street Journalinterviews musician John Ondrasik, also known as Five for Fighting, about his outspoken support for Israel and concerns about support for Israel in the entertainment industry.
Across the Pond: U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron pushed back against calls to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terror group, saying that such a move would “weaken” London’s negotiating position.
Down Under: Prosecutors in Sydney, Australia, charged four teenagers with a plot to purchase weapons and carry out a terror attack against Jews.
Court’s Call: The International Court of Justice rejected a Nicaraguan request to order Germany to halt its transfers of weapons and aid to Israel.
Lapid in Abu Dhabi: Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid is in the United Arab Emirates today; The New York Timestalked to Lapid over the weekend for the debut edition of its new weekly series, “The Interview.”
Searching for Answers: The Wall Street Journalreports on the efforts of Israeli parents to discover how their children — who were killed in Gaza after being taken hostage — died.
The Best Defense: 1948 Ventures’ Aaron Kaplowitz said that Israel’s defense technology could be used to address issues from climate change to energy costs.
Aid Endeavors: World Central Kitchen resumed its Gaza operations weeks after an Israeli strike killed seven aid workers; in a Washington Post op-ed, founder José Andrés explains the decision to return to the enclave.
Remembering: Writer Paul Auster, author of The New York Trilogy, died at 77. Dr. Werner Spitz, a forensics expert who played a role in numerous high-profile cases, including that of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., died at 97.
Pic of the Day
Secretary of State Tony Blinken met on Wednesday in Tel Aviv with the families of American-Israelis being held hostage by Hamas terrorists. A statement from the Hostage Families Forum said that Blinken expressed “cautious optimism” about the potential for a deal to secure the release of some of the remaining hostages.
From left: Lee Siegel, the brother of hostage Keith Siegel; Blinken; Aviva Siegel, who was held hostage by Hamas for 51 days; and Elan Siegel, the daughter of Aviva and Keith.
Birthdays
Israeli entrepreneur and software engineer, founder and CEO of Conduit, Israel’s first billion-dollar internet company, Ronen Shilo turns 66…
Progressive political activist, literary and political journalist, Larry Bensky turns 87… Retired national director of the Anti-Defamation League, now national director emeritus, Abraham Henry Foxman turns 84… Assistant professor at Yeshiva University and editor emeritus of Tradition journal, Rabbi Shalom Carmy turns 75… Deborah Chin… Boston area actor, David Alan Ross… Brigadier-general (reserves) and former chief medical officer in the IDF, he was also a member of the Knesset for 10 years, Aryeh Eldad turns 74… Of counsel at D.C.-based Sandler Reiff where he specializes in redistricting law, Jeffrey M. Wice… Former member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-CO) from 2007 until 2023, Edwin George “Ed” Perlmutter turns 71… Austrian-Israeli singer-songwriter, Timna Brauer turns 63… Real estate entrepreneur, he is a co-founder of the Israeli American Leadership Council (IAC) and supporter of FIDF, Eli Tene turns 61… Member of the board of governors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester, Rina F. Chessin… Member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, David R. Karger turns 57… Israeli judoka, she is a member of the International Olympic Committee and the head of the merchandise division of Paramount Israel, Yael Arad turns 57… Majority leader of the Washington State Senate, he is a co-owner of minor league baseball’s Spokane Indians, Andrew Swire “Andy” Billig turns 56… Senior attorney in the Newark office of Eckert Seamans, Laura E. Fein… Political columnist at New York magazine since 2011, Jonathan Chait turns 52… Radio personality and voice-over artist, Gina Grad turns 46… Attorney and co-founder of I Am a Voter, a nonpartisan civic engagement organization, Mandana Rebecca Dayani turns 42… D.C.-based political reporter, Ben Jacobs turns 40… Senior video journalist covering investigative and national news for the Washington Post, Jonathan Gerberg… Member of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova, Marina Tauber turns 38… Operations manager at GrowthSpace, Jenny Feuer… Principal at Forward Global, Omri Rahmil… Photographer and digital media editor at the Jewish Women’s Archive, Hannah Altman turns 29… Sam Zieve-Cohen…
UCLA professor’s ‘wake-up call’ to anti-Israel hostility on campus
When Sharon Nazarian started teaching a new class on Oct. 4 at the University of California Los Angeles, designed to look at antisemitism from a global lens, she couldn’t have known just how timely the topic was about to become. Three days after the class began, Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and launched a massive terror attack that killed more than 1,200 Israelis. In the wake of the war that followed, rates of antisemitism skyrocketed on college campuses around the U.S.
“I have to admit that when I designed the class, ‘The Globalization of Antisemitism: A Survey of Transnational Trends,’ largely based on my Anti-Defamation League experience,I had no idea what Oct. 7 would bring,” Nazarian, the former senior vice president of international affairs and current board member of the ADL, told Jewish Insider.
“Everything that you have read about in terms of the challenges on U.S. campuses showed up directly in my class and with my students,” she said, calling the class, made up of 25 students from diverse backgrounds (an estimated 30% of whom are Jewish), a “wake-up call” about today’s students.
The class ran in the global studies department – which Nazarian, a former adjunct professor at UCLA from 2005-2017, said provided a more diverse group of students than doing so through the Jewish or Israel studies departments would have.
“Students are unwilling to hear theses that challenge their own worldview. Students today have far less knowledge of history and analytical thinking skills than previous generations, and this becomes a huge challenge when teaching critical issues such as antisemitism,” Nazarian said, noting that social media — TikTok in particular — has contributed to “the relativism trap.”
“I asked students which figure personified pure evil to their generation as Osama bin Laden did to ours; they mentioned President Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan,” Nazarian said. “I listed Hitler, Stalin, Mao. You get the point.”
When Israel responded to Hamas’ attack by launching a ground invasion of Gaza, “the tone of students in class shifted – they questioned my perspective,” Nazarian said, adding that after Oct. 7, students wanted “to hear me constantly speak to Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians and complained to administrators that I did not offer a safe space for them to do so.”
“The idea of Jewish victimhood is one [students] are not willing to accept. They are so entrenched in the narrative of Palestinian victimhood that there is no space for the concept of Jews as victims,” Nazarian added.
UCLA’s administration responded by disciplining Nazarian about keeping the focus of the class on the Jewish experience around the globe, she said. “They tried (unsuccessfully) [to have me] stay away from thorny policy issues in the Israel/Gaza dynamic, but nevertheless I was trapped.” In spite of this, Nazarian said it is important to make clear that “UCLA welcomed my class. They didn’t have to allow me to teach this, it was a privilege.”
A senior majoring in global studies who was a student of Nazarian’s, who asked not to be named due to the campus climate, also noted a “significant” shift in the class after the Israel-Hamas war started. “Before, the class was about everyone being curious. After Oct. 7 there were a lot of heightened emotions,” she said. As protests around campus were held during class, the environment became “really charged,” she said, adding that “a lot of people just stopped coming.”
The student said she came into the class with “quite a bit [of knowledge] on U.S. foreign policy and Middle Eastern diplomacy.”
“[Other classes taught that] Israel is an ally, but I never before studied how Israel is internally,” the student, who is not Jewish and “leans pro-Israel,” said.
She said that pro-Palestinian students in the class appeared comfortable to speak up, while most Jewish students did not, which she said mirrors the overall climate on campus. “It’s been really hard [for Jewish students],” she said. “The other day there was a big banner on campus that said Israel is committing Nazi-style occupation. It’s difficult for me to see so many pro-Palestinian rallies taking over and getting so boisterous. Everything is a little bit scarier.”
Nazarian echoed that the Jewish students in her class generally did not engage. “But [they] told me privately that it felt it was useless to try to challenge what was being said by their classmates,” she added.
Nazarian said the end of the semester was particularly fraught, when some students requested from the head of the department to miss the final lectures and asked to not be penalized for missing class despite 20% of their grade being for class attendance.
“The UCLA administrator strongly suggested that I offer them other ways to make up for those lost points, meaning allowing them not to show up to class,” Nazarian said, which she found “utterly shocking.” According to Nazarian, the administration said that policy was to accommodate students not only given the stresses on them post-COVID, but also due to mental health issues. “Of course, this was not the case; they simply didn’t want to hear my narrative,” she said.
The UCLA administration did not immediately respond to JI’s request for comment about the course.
The views Nazarian observed in her classroom echo a new narrative that has spread in the Middle East and beyond, recasting Jews as oppressors. That radical view is prevalent among Americans between the ages of 18-29, who sympathize with Palestinians over Israelis, recent polls show.
Still, Nazarian said some of the students had a genuine interest in learning and kept an open mind. One student was active in Students for Justice in Palestine and said he signed up to hear another perspective. Another student expressed that most of his high school class had become alt-right and neo-Nazis; he wanted tools to counter those extremist ideologies.
Nazarian, who was born in Iran, noted that a design flaw was that only about a quarter of the students had any formal Middle East education. She said that if the class runs again, a prerequisite needs to be required for such courses “since any discussion of ‘anti-Zionism is antisemitism’ demands a more in-depth understanding of Middle East history and politics.”
While Nazarian does not know if she personally would offer the course again, she said she would like to see similar ones — looking at the threats of global antisemitism and how that leads to an array of global challenges — at universities worldwide. “This information should encourage universities and administrators to do more,” she said.
“We need more of what I’ve done,” Nazarian continued. “I tell donors not to push away from universities, just repurpose your dollars and invest in antisemitism education.”
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