On May 23, 2024, the Tablet Magazine published a piece with this title, giving voice to several students from US Universities reflecting on how this year of their academic lives felt so different from all others. It’s a heart-wrenching read. And it’s not about Israel, it’s the story of here, at home, in our own academic world. Here are some snippets of the students’ essays:
It was a painful irony that I recently found myself watching a group of faculty protesters occupying the campus library, a supposed bastion of contemplation and learning, to loudly denounce Israel and anyone who will not renounce it entirely. I feel lost in the noise. There are no more quiet places where we can hear one another speak.
Mimi Gewirtz, New York University
Now I have a recurring dream. In it, President Rosenbury calls my name, and I walk across the graduation stage at Radio City Music Hall. Instead of cheers, the entire crowd boos me. I look out into the audience and recognize faces—friends, or rather, former friends. Sorority sisters, or perhaps former sisters. People who have unfollowed me on Instagram and sent hateful DMs all year long. And the boos keep getting louder until I wake up.
Yola Ashkenazie, Columbia University
Today, my friends and I find ourselves physically excluded from a so-called “liberated zone” on campus: an encampment exclusively for those who disavow the idea of a Jewish homeland. Self-proclaimed social justice warriors have cornered and spit on us, followed us around with cameras, and threatened to kick us off campus. When they say, “We want no Zionists here,” they really mean it.
Sabrina Soffer, George Washington University
And what of Brock? As our convocation week is upon us, what marks this year for our students? The “internal field trip” for Dramatic Arts students that paraded disgusting antisemitic tropes as political commentary, barely a month after the massacre of October 7? The disgusting antisemitic rant on his blog by our own professors, a Graduate Program Director in the Department of Sociology? The persistent silence on the systematic use of rape by Hamas by the self-proclaimed feminists of our Faculty of Education, “#metoo except when you’re a Jew”? The continuing failure of our Human Rights and Equity office to include antisemitism in their anti-racism training or literature?
If you are a student graduating this year, or a parent of one, please use the Comments button to send us your thoughts.
Brock Coalition Against Antisemitism 