Jewish students are not OK. They do not feel safe. We know because they are telling us. Believing them isn’t hard.
We believe members of the Black community who say they feel unsafe when law enforcement pulls them over. We believe Muslim Americans who say they feel unsafe when a mosque is vandalized. We believe members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community who say they feel unsafe when scapegoated for the spread of COVID-19. We believe members of the LGBTQ+ community who say they feel unsafe when bigots attack their dance clubs.
Simply put, when members of our greater community tell us they feel, and are, unsafe, we defend them. We show up at their places of worship and pray with them; we march with them in pride parades; we patronize their businesses; we listen to them and hear what they are experiencing and give them the support they say will be meaningful to them. All the while, we don’t relent in allowing for other people’s right to hate and their right to express that hatred in ways that do not threaten anyone’s safety.
Jewish kids have been telling us for months they do not feel safe. Jewish Chicago Public Schools students were fearful for their safety during anti-Israel walkouts earlier this year. Protesters yelled antisemitic slurs during a recent City Council meeting. And 73% of Jewish college students said they experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism during the first three months of the 2023-24 school year alone — a number we should assume is exponentially higher five months later.
Encampments up the antisemitism ante. Encampments on college and university campuses are not peaceful protests against war. They are platforms for antisemitism, and administrators who do not act aggressively to shut them down risk becoming complicit.
When protesters at the encampment at Northwestern University chanted, “Long live the intifada” and “We don’t want no Zionists here,” and posters at the University of Chicago encampment on Monday read, “Globalize the intifada,” Jewish students know these messages are calling for the killing of Jews everywhere. When protesters at the encampment at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign chanted this weekend, “From the river to the sea,” Jewish students know they are calling for the eradication of Israel, the only true haven for Jews located in our ancestral homeland.
This is also the Jewish experience at the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, DePaul University and at Roosevelt University and Columbia College downtown. Protesters in recent months have regularly yelled in Jewish students’ faces, harassed and vandalized Jewish institutions, and celebrated Hamas, a terrorist group whose charter calls for the murder of Jews anywhere in the world.
Let’s be clear: Encampments on college campuses are not First Amendment-protected protests, and the actions of the students and agitators participating in them are not speech. “Oct. 7 will happen to American Jewish students 10,000 times over” is not protected speech. Yet it is tolerated on campus. We should be outraged that human chains are formed to prevent Jewish students from getting to class, rabbis and universities must tell Jewish students they cannot guarantee their safety on campus, and graduation ceremonies are canceled because of antisemitic protesters. This is hate with a clear intent to intimidate Jewish students. Yet it’s allowed.
University leaders can start to reverse the trend by enforcing their own codes of conduct and campus policies to restore calm and safety for all students. Specifically:
- Enforce time, place and manner of restrictions and permitting requirements.
- Ensure there are serious consequences for violations, including suspensions and expulsion if necessary.
- Prohibit professors from canceling class or exams to encourage students to participate in protests.
- Do not allow students who choose to participate in these hateful protests to make up work or receive credit for exams missed for attending a protest.
- Prohibit people who are not students from being on campus without approval — an important action given calls to action from the U.S. Palestinian Community Network to join the Northwestern encampment and similar actions at U. of I.’s flagship campus.
The environment on college campuses is a natural extension of record levels of antisemitism in America and a growing tolerance of hate against Jews. But that’s not an excuse.
We rightly believe other targeted communities when they say they are unsafe. So, are Jewish students just not believable? Or is antisemitism that baked into the collegiate DNA that no one sees it, even when it’s camping right in front of you?
David Goldenberg is the Evelyn R. Greene Midwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, and Rebecca Weininger is the ADL’s Midwest assistant regional director for advocacy.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
