Ep. 232: How antisemitism took hold in American education

Antisemitism in American education isn’t merely a matter of elite universities. It’s being tolerated and encouraged at colleges large and small across the country by woke administrators and faculty. But according to JNS Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Tobin, it’s also happening in K-12 schools, something that is being facilitated by teachers’ unions. He’s joined in this week’s episode of Think Twice by Deborah Project Legal Director Lori Lowenthal Marcus, whose cases involve suing school districts and institutions of higher learning where Jews are being targeted and suffering discrimination. Marcus recently won a significant victory by forcing Haverford College, where administrators and faculty were tolerating anti-Zionist and antisemitic behavior, to adopt new standards that will, if enforced, force them to fundamentally change their approach to Israel and the treatment of Jewish students. What made the difference in the Haverford case was the fact that investigations by Congress and the federal government pressured the school into conceding to the demands of Jewish students. Without that pressure, Marcus says, the school would have stood its ground. The Deborah Project has also been defending students in Philadelphia whose families were forced to move to enable them to go to school without suffering antisemitic targeting. The incident involved a public high school that established a “prayer room” that was a de facto mosque, where Jewish students were falsely accused of assaulting other students. According to Marcus, part of the problem in fighting back against antisemitism in education is the way the entire profession of teaching, at both the K-12 and college levels, has been captured by people indoctrinated in toxic theories. They don’t consider antisemitism to be a problem because Jews don’t qualify as victims in the intersectional mindset, in which only racial minorities deserve help. The other problem is that many Jews are either too intimidated to take action in defense of themselves or their children. Many are also partisans and so prejudiced against President Donald Trump and the Republicans that they oppose their efforts to combat antisemitism even when it is to their benefit.