(RNS) — This spring, the American Jewish Committee began speaking with the Association of American Universities and the American Council on Education about developing a common position on both antisemitism in institutions of higher learning and the Trump administration’s approach to it.
The result, published May 6, was a carefully balanced joint statement that on the one hand recognized antisemitism has “found unacceptable expression on U.S. campuses in recent years” and applauded the Trump administration’s “priority of eradicating antisemitism” but on the other declared the administration has “taken steps that endanger the research grants, academic freedom, and institutional autonomy of America’s higher education sector.”
In the statement, the AJC asserts its belief that when such government actions are “overly broad” (as they evidently have been), “they imperil science and innovation, and ultimately detract from the necessary fight against antisemitism while threatening the global preeminence of America’s research universities and colleges.” As for the AAU and the ACE, which represent 71 major research universities and 1,600 colleges and universities respectively, they say their member institutions “pledge continuing consequential reform and transparent action to root out antisemitism and all other forms of hate and prejudice from our campuses.”
“For people who are extremely enamored with what Trump has done, there was a lot of distress,” Sara Coodin, the AJC’s director of academic affairs, said in an interview.
Among the distressed was the Zionist Organization of America, which said in a press release, “In the current campus context, the AJC statement’s demand for supposed ‘academic freedom’ is really a call to continue giving universities billions of U.S. tax dollars, while giving Islamic Arab Hamas-supporters the ‘freedom’ to block and prevent Jews from attending classes; the ‘freedom’ to demonstrate for the death of every Jew in the world (‘globalize the Intifada’),” and so on.
Likewise, Jonathan Tobin of the right-wing Jewish News Service lumped “the supposedly centrist AJC” in with “leftist and anti-Zionist rabbis” as merely paying lip service to being against antisemitism because of “what they say is Trump’s ‘overly broad’ approach to the issue.”
A student wrapped in an Israeli flag listens to pro-Palestinian protesters gathered on campus at the University of Texas at Austin, Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)
According to Coodin, there has also been pushback from the professorial left, which apparently takes exception to mainstream Jewish organizations kvetching about antisemitism in their places of employment. In my own view, the wholesale labeling of colleges and universities as antisemitic has been hyperbolic, but it is beyond question that manifestations of antisemitism, real or perceived, have been taken far less seriously on many campuses than real or perceived manifestations of racism, Islamophobia and homo- and transphobia — as if the expression of hostility to Jews amounted to no more than criticism of white privilege.
In finding flaws with the Trumpian campaign as well as recognizing campus antisemitism, the AJC has not been entirely alone among mainstream Jewish communal voices. In April, after the government threatened Harvard with the moral equivalent of a hostile takeover, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote a column for the Times of Israel roundly criticizing the university but allowing that “imposing or suggesting extremely severe penalties that don’t tie to the issue of reducing antisemitism, such as investigating its tax-exempt status,” was counterproductive.
But opining in the press, which is Greenblatt’s stock in trade, is a very far cry from hammering out joint positions with organizations that represent those you’re concerned about. Combatting antisemitic beliefs and behavior these days — off campus as well as on — is a big challenge. So is combatting the Trump administration’s appalling assault on higher education. The AJC deserves credit for its effort to meet them both.
