|
Trending Topics
|
Jewish Studies Programs Are Giving a Kosher Stamp to Anti-Israel Propaganda
(Jewish Chronicle-UK) Dominic Green - Over the past 60 years, idealistic Jewish donors have poured millions into Jewish Studies as a way of inculcating Jewish identity and strengthening American Jewish life. Yet according to a survey commissioned by the Ronn Torossian Foundation, these programs are giving a kosher stamp to anti-Israel propaganda and delegitimization. The study examines attitudes to Israel among the professors in 1,136 U.S. colleges offering programs in Jewish Studies and the spin-off fields of Israel Studies, Hebrew and Holocaust Studies between May 2021 and Spring 2026. Four in ten faculties have signed anti-Israel petitions. At Ivy League colleges, 72.3% of Jewish Studies faculty publicly denounced Israel. Columbia University topped the Ivies with 77 faculty boycotters, 27 events and statements for Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine (which was founded after the Oct. 7 attacks), and five departments committed to boycotting their Israeli peers. New York University had 148 faculty boycotters. In May 2024, 1,200 Jewish professors signed a petition opposing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. A March 2025 "Not In Our Name" petition recorded 3,400 signatures from Jewish professors, staff and students. How did it happen that the jewel of American Jewish academic life became a weapon against American Jews and Israel? The writer is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute's Center for the Study of America & the West.