Antisemitism on college campuses is intense. Incidents shot up 700% after the Oct. 6 Hamas attack on Israel. Jewish families have reason to be nervous as another school year begins. Will their sons and daughters be safe?
Last year, Jewish students were blocked from classes, told to “go back to Europe,” and even forced to navigate a Jewish “exclusion zone” at one university. Don’t expect much improvement this fall. Aside from the resignations of three Ivy League presidents, colleges have done little to deter more incidents.
Worse, the safety of Jewish students is being held hostage to Democratic party politics.
A large bipartisan majority in both the House and Senate support a bill — the Antisemitism Awareness Act – that would bolster protection for Jewish students.
The bill says its purpose is to “reverse the normalization of antisemitism” on campuses and punish discrimination “rooted in antisemitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination” prohibited by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Meaning Jewish students would get the same level of protection as Black or Hispanic students.
The bill passed the House in June 320-91. But Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is sitting on it. Apparently Democratic Party bigwigs are afraid to irritate the split between moderate pro-Israeli Democrats and the extreme left wing of the party that supports Palestine. That split is on full display this week, roiling the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
“Schumer is petrified of AOC (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) and the progressive left and doesn’t want to divide the Democrats in the Senate, despite having well over 70 votes for the bill,” reports the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.).
“This is the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history, and he is refusing to combat antisemitism legislatively,” says Lawler, “though he has no trouble writing a book about it.”
Schumer’s book “Antisemitism in America: A Warning” is due out next February. He launched a promotion of it last week.
Words are one thing. Action is needed now.
An advocacy group, the Florence Avenue Initiative, is spending $2 million on an ad blitz calling on Schumer to bring the bill to a vote.
In fairness, Schumer, along with Rep. Jerrold Nadler, (D-N.Y.), the American Civil Liberties Union and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — strange bedfellows — argue that the bill threatens freedom of political expression — a First Amendment right — and will muzzle opponents of Zionism and deniers of Israel’s right to exist as a state. They point to the definition of antisemitism in the bill — taken directly from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition –which includes attacks on Zionism and the right of Israel to exist.
Their concern about muzzling free speech is misguided. The bill expressly states that “nothing in this Act shall be construed to diminish or infringe upon any right protected under the First Amendment.”
The bill doesn’t prohibit any speech, no matter the viewpoint. It bars tolerating a threatening environment on campus. Protesters can condemn the existence of Israel all they want, but they can’t demand that Jewish students disavow Israel to get into the library.
The bill’s definition of antisemitism is already in use by 37 states, by the U.S. State Department and by the Department of Education under an executive order put into place by former President Donald Trump and continuing to this day under the Biden administration.
Lawler nailed it when he explained that the real holdup on this bill is political.
That’s precisely why a law is needed.
Currently, protection of Jewish students depends on an executive order. The will of the president.
That could be flimsy protection under a Kamala Harris presidency. She told The Nation magazine last month, when discussing the anti-Israel protests, that antisemitism needs to be “navigated.” No one would advocate merely navigating racism or bias against LGBTQ students.
Beyond pressing Schumer to pass the bill, donors to colleges and parents need to take a stand. Universities overwhelmed by pro-Palestinian protests last spring have shown very little inclination to discipline protesters. On Monday, the House Education and Workforce Committee received a report from Columbia University that nearly all the student protesters who invaded Hamilton Hall on April 30, smashing windows and taking hostages, are unpunished, and remain in “good standing” with the university.
Dean Josef Sorett, who mocked the Hillel director for describing antisemitic bigotry on campus, remains dean and on the payroll. A disgrace.
For turning their backs on the safety of Jewish students, colleges need to be punished with fewer applicants and less donated money.
This week, it’s reported that not one student from the elite Ramaz high school in Manhattan has chosen to attend Columbia’s liberal arts college, a first in decades. That will send a message that needs to be repeated all across the nation. Antisemitism will not be tolerated.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths. Follow her on Twitter @Betsy_McCaughey. To find out more about Betsy McCaughey and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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“Sen. Schumer and Elite Academia Betray Jewish Students”
“Last year, Jewish students were blocked from classes, told to “go back to Europe,” and even forced to navigate a Jewish “exclusion zone” at one university. Don’t expect much improvement this fall. Aside from the resignations of three Ivy League presidents, colleges have done little to deter more incidents.”
“Worse, the safety of Jewish students is being held hostage to Democratic party politics.”
What do you think would be the Democrat’s Congress reaction if their honored and worshipped “Black people” were treaded in this same way?????
Sen. Schumer and Elite Academia should be charged with discrimination and put on trial!
There are religious Judeo/Christian believing jews who follow the Tora and the 10 commandments, and then there are secular motivated money lending and spending obsessed (Mostly of other people’s money,) Shyluck Schumer’s who always get their pound of your taxpaying flesh, which only serves to corrupt them further, where the bloody return on their financial involvements, only serves to advance they and their party financially, always paid for by the blood, sweat, tears and financial flesh of the taxpaying American people, which often ends up being paid for in the blood spilled of our military. Schumer is the Jewish version of what Golda Mier described of the Palestinians,
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
And America will again unite only when guys like Schumer who love their power, their money and their party more than their own children will exit stage left from American politics, never to be seen again, who love their hate of Trump to the point they would sacrifice a nation to their own greed and fears. Political peace will only come when they love America and their own children, more than they hate Trump and the MAGA he stands for.
inluminatuo: “Political peace will only come when they love America and their own children, more than they hate Trump and the MAGA he stands for.”
This will never happen until Jesus Christ puts a stop to the insane self-serving hatred.
No one can serve two masters. No one can serve the ways of God and the ways of Satan.
Note that just about everything God has declared a sin or an abomination in the Holy Bible, Democrats promote, approve of, encourage and support.
John 8:44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
“Scruffy” -To this day those who enter through the wide gate that leads to their destruction are convinced that abortion is not murder, when man interceeds and in the life and death of American innocence and plays with matters of life and death like a god unto themselves that reflects the image of the Great Consumer, not the great CREATOR. They think they can walk of water in this life, which the dark one just uses as a delusion diverson to the fact they will be moon walking on the lake of fire with hair burning child molesting Michael Jackson in the next life, in a never never land of people who never should have tried to play with God’s creations that they just viewed as inconvenient collateral damage, not the destroyed image of the Creator himself. Secular Social activists dedicate their lives to the same evil entity that Saul Alinsly dedicated his Obama inspiring book, “Rules of Radical’s to, where it is a short step from a Handsel and Gretel’s storybook witch burning oven into a real life Jewish holocaust oven at Auschwitz, and maybe soon if Hamas illegal imports have their way America itself?
““Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history,,,,the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer”
We all know what their reaction would be…
chuck schumer is a big hairy sinking wharf rat who has brought a plague of death to washington dc
a total infestation of evil.