Nearly three years into this unconscionable spike in Jew-hatred, cultivated through decades of academic anti-Zionism, universities still don\u2019t get it. Until they respond as teachers running educational institutions not bureaucrats running Communist re-education camps, the crisis will fester.<\/p>\n
This summer, when a Cornell student refused a second job interview with: \u201cNot interested in working for a jew\u2026,\u201d the response to him was too political and legalistic. Exposed, he doubled down, telling The Cornell Daily Sun that he realized the interviewers were Jewish based on their \u201cfirst and last name, LinkedIn, and physiognomy\u201d \u2013 the last word uniting today\u2019s manosphere with yesterday\u2019s Nazis.<\/p>\n
Defending free speech while fighting bigotry and avoiding thought-policing isn\u2019t easy. But a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about the incident illustrated academics\u2019 overly-politicized and disappointingly sterile approach. Thirty percent of the op-ed bashed President Trump and his appointees, assuming that Cornell officials only investigated this as a possible \u201cbias incident\u201d to placate the administration.<\/p>\n
Cornell, the author argued, \u201cshould not be \u2018investigating\u2019 anyone for what they have said. Its own \u2018Core Values\u2019 statement declares that \u2018free and open inquiry and expression\u2019 \u2014 even of \u2018ideas some may consider wrong or offensive\u2019 \u2014 is fundamental to the university.\u201d Warning of a slippery slope, while shifting the conversation from bigoted language to inflammatory political remarks, the author wondered: If Cornell \u201cpenalizes\u201d the student \u201cfor declaring that he doesn\u2019t want to work for Jews, who will be next? Someone who says Israel is committing genocide? Or that the university should boycott it?\u201d<\/p>\n
This clever category switch is absurd, given how universities spent years squelching speech. Academics have repeatedly \u2013 and unacceptably \u2014 bullied those with dissenting views on issues of race, gender, immigration, among other politically-correct causes \u2013 while protecting blacks, women, gays, but often not Jews. In 2020, students boycotted a Cornell University Law Professor, William Jacobson, for calling Black Lives Matters\u2019 founders \u201canti-American, anti-capitalist activists.\u201d His dean denounced him.<\/p>\n
Other professors have suffered macro-career disruptions over supposed micro-aggressions \u2013 one veteran UCLA prof endured student sit-ins and was saddled with extra colleagues encroaching on his course for correcting grammar in papers.<\/p>\n
While avoiding such assaults on free speech in the future, universities must also acknowledge their record of selective outrage.<\/p>\n
In the Cornell case, apply a simple substitution test for consistency. Flip a switch. Replace \u201cblack,\u201d \u201cwoman,\u201d \u201cgay,\u201d \u201clesbian,\u201d or \u201ctrans\u201d in the sentence \u201cNot interested in working for a jew.\u201d Similarly, the student escalated on X, tweeting: \u201cMy experiences with Jews have not been pleasant\u2026.\u201d Wouldn\u2019t it be \u201cbias\u201d if he overgeneralized about others, saying \u201cmy experiences\u201d with blacks or women or Catholics or Latinos \u201chave not been pleasant?\u201d Universities\u2019 assault on bigotry cannot depend on \u201cthe context\u201d \u2014 when \u201ccontext\u201d essentially means \u201cit\u2019s OK to target Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hysteria and browbeating don\u2019t help. Modeling that spirit, the employer who received the bigoted response posted it without the student\u2019s name. \u201cHe\u2019s just a student, he might not know any better \u2014 it could be people in his environment, or on social media he saw something about Jewish people and he is just following the wave,\u201d the spurned boss, Gabe Einhorn, told the Cornell Sun. (Others online outed the student).<\/p>\n
And this case is particularly confusing. Refusing a Jew because you\u2019re a bigot isn\u2019t \u201cdiscrimination.\u201d The student didn\u2019t offend a fellow Cornellian, which dilutes the assault on the \u201ccommunity.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also, the student sought employment privately \u2013 does it concern Cornell if the university placement office helped, but is it irrelevant if he networked independently? Does placing Cornell\u2019s name on his CV make anything he does on the job relevant to the university? Does that involvement end with graduation?<\/p>\n
Fighting bigotry requires balance, perspective, wisdom. The cancel culture craze revealed how suffocating it is to police every word, gesture, interaction, and how self-destructive it is when universities divert massive resources into creating bureaucracies monitoring students\u2019 thoughts. Moreover, it\u2019s always better to err on the side of fostering free speech than banning it.<\/p>\n
Here, then, is the misfire in the anti-bias conversation, that highlights one of the modern universities\u2019 greatest failures. These are educational institutions. But most universities have allowed bureaucrats \u2013 in Washington and on campus \u2013 to hijack what could be \u201cteachable moments.\u201d Technical legalistic bureaucratese keeps eclipsing the moral language and character building that should be ingrained into campus culture.<\/p>\n
Cornell[s \u201cmission\u201d is \u201cto educate the next generation of global citizens\u2026.\u201d Global citizens are cultivated by thoughtful, challenging professors committed to educating not punishing. Did any of this student\u2019s professors or fellow students \u2013 Jewish or non-Jewish \u2014 contact him, explaining why the statement embarrassed him and the university, then inspire him to be better? And, did any one within the Jewish community, formally or inflormally, do the same, explaining how, especially today, such matter-of-fact bigotry is so morally repulsive?<\/p>\n
Next month, most universities will welcome their new students with orientations. Most will offer anti-bias or sensitivity training reflecting today\u2019s ideological circus, with all the soul of a computer instruction manual. Just as modern professors and administrators fail to build their community through bold, out-of-the-box, \u201cI-thou\u201d moments, these training sessions will fail to begin fostering what\u2019s really needed to create diverse communities filled with critical thought and mutual respect.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s better to assign great, thought-provoking books than to list dos-and-don\u2019ts. Today\u2019s bureaucratic, hyper-politicized, and cowardly professoriate forgets that, as Ralph Waldo Emerson taught: \u201cCharacter is higher than intellect\u2026. A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then again, perhaps these paint-by-numbers posturing sessions are precisely the orientation students need to grab their credentials and parrot back the certitudes imposed by far too many in today\u2019s classroom.<\/p>\n