What to Do (and Not Do) If You Care About Israel Getting a Fair Shake at a University

by Hugh Fitzgerald

In recent years, American universities have reached new depths in their insensate desire to be with it. Their arts and humanities curricula are comical. In history departments, Europe is slowly fading away as a subject, to be replaced by African history, Islamic history, and race, gender, and queer studies. In literature courses, it’s the same dreary blend of race, gender, and queer studies; sometimes it’s Mix-‘n-Match, as in the faculty searches for professors of Black Queer Studies. Diversity and inclusion are essential in choosing which writers to study. Dead white European males had their day; you can pay less attention to them now. A sign of the times: You can major in English at Harvard, and never take a course on Shakespeare. But don’t leave for class these days without Edward Said, or Homi Bhabha, or Judith Butler, or Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in your backpack or book bag. Good god, there are even places where the clownish Cornel West is taken seriously. That’s how bad things have become.

And, of course, there is the Jewish Problem. Many universities have become safe havens for BDSers. Pro-Israel speakers are seldom invited on campus, while those ready to denounce the Jewish state seldom fail to find an audience. In History or Middle Eastern departments, the anti-Israel brigade makes sure that if there is a token Jew – or even better, a token Israeli — on the faculty, that person will belong to the Peter Beinart or Noam Chomsky school of anti-Zionism. A staunch defender of Israel has little chance of obtaining tenure in such places.

Here is a report on the dilemma faced by Jewish donors who leave a legacy, or who donate while alive, to institutions that turn out to be grotesquely anti-Israel: “Planning for Antisemitism in Planned Giving to Universities,” by Yael Lerman, Algemeiner, March 22, 2021:

A few years ago, a woman contacted the pro-Israel organization where I work, StandWithUs, worried about her late husband’s legacy. He had spent his career as a professor at a University of California (UC) school, and was devoted to both his university and the Jewish community. Upon his death, he left a considerable and irrevocable gift to this UC school. Yet today, the school no longer serves as a consistently welcoming place for Jewish or Zionist students and faculty.

Campus buildings there have been defaced with antisemitic vandalism; anti-Israel classes and events now permeate campus life, including in the professor’s former academic department. His wife said that he would be horrified if he knew what had become of his school, and what he was now financially supporting in perpetuity.

After reviewing the matter, we concluded that there was nothing that could be done legally. This pro-Israel, proudly Jewish, and generous donor had given an unconditional gift to a university where support of Zionist students has become conditional on their denunciation of Israel.

If you care about Israel getting a fair shake at a university, whether you are Jewish or non-Jewish, do not ever give a donation, or leave a legacy, unless it is clearly conditioned on behavior by that university that is spelled out in the deed of gift. The judges of that behavior will be the donor (as long as he or she is alive) or the donor’s family (if it’s a legacy). What kind of behavior would cause the principal of the gift to be revoked? An “anti-semitic or anti-Zionist atmosphere” on campus can be characterized by one or more of the following:

1) a refusal to invite pro-Israel speakers to the campus.

2) the shouting down of pro-Israel speakers when they are allowed to visit the campus.

3) permitting BDS, an organization that the U.S. government (and many others, including Germany, Austria, Spain, Canada), as well as the ADL, have declared to be antisemitic, to operate on campus.

4) a student government inviting pro-Palestinian speakers and “activists” but not pro-Israel speakers, or inviting just a handful of the latter compared to many pro-Palestinian “activists.”

5) a refusal to take antisemitic statements into account in making tenure decisions, as with Marc Lamont Hill and Cornel West.

6) creating an atmosphere in which Jewish faculty and students feel unsafe.

7) anti-Zionist curricula.

8) a series of campus events celebrating “Palestine” and attacking the Jewish state.

…Around the same time, Temple University was courting a different donor to give a seven-figure gift. The donor loved the institution, but was appalled by a particular tenured professor, Marc Lamont Hill, who frequently uses his position to espouse virulent, anti-Zionist rhetoric that meets the IHRA’s working definition of antisemitism.

The university refused to address Lamont Hill’s conduct, but was open to other ideas. It agreed to a major gift given entirely through Israel Bonds, and to be renewed only through Israel Bonds in perpetuity. This was a compromise approach: the donor wanted to make a gift, but knew the university would not budge on addressing the professor’s antisemitic rants. So she compromised by funding a gift in a way that financially benefited the State of Israel.

This was not really a compromise. Marc Lamont Hill still spews his anti-Israel venom and antisemitic rants, without the university moving a finger to discipline him or, ideally, to fire him, as would surely happen were he a white professor who repeatedly engaged in public anti-black rants. Continuing to pay the “major gift” through Israel Bonds because it “financially benefits” Israel – quite modestly – has done nothing to curb Marc Lamont Hill or to discourage the university from hiring, or retaining, or giving tenure to, known and publicly assertive antisemites.

Given what terrible places most American universities have become, especially in the arts and humanities, and in the woke atmospherics of college campuses, why donate to any of them? If you must do so, then specify that the money is to go for a science building, or science faculty, the least likely part of the university to be politically unsavory. Or donate to the university with a specific purpose spelled out, to expand the number of faculty members teaching Jewish or Israeli studies or Yiddish literature. Make clear that the gift is to encourage not only knowledge of, but sympathetic understanding for, the subject being studied. You want to prevent the maddening possibility that someone appointed to one of those chairs you have paid for is a far-left Jewish supporter of the Palestinians. The donor should always make such a gift revocable, if, in his estimation, or after his death, in that of his family, the university has violated its commitment.

Better still, don’t give to an American university. Instead, donate to the Technion, or the Weizmann Institute, or Tel Aviv University, or Hebrew University. Then there will be little need for a donor to worry about his or her intent being violated; the gift will be in good hands.

First published in Jihad Watch.