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How Stanford Can Do Away with Campus Antisemitism

(Washington Post) Larry Diamond and Jeffrey Koseff - Stanford University has a serious antisemitism problem. It is not only Jews and Israelis who suffer. Many students now censor themselves for fear of crossing a demand for solidarity against "oppression." We have come to this unfortunate conclusion after six months of research documented in a recently released report by Stanford's Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias (which we chaired). Restoring a climate in which ideas can flow freely and the dignity of all groups can be respected will require confronting painful realities. Underlying the hostility experienced by Jewish students and faculty is an ideology that divides the world into "colonizer" and "colonized," the powerful and the oppressed. Just three days after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, a Stanford instructor made this division literally, separating his freshman students by ethnicity into these categories. Such binary thinking easily slides into an antisemitic narrative. It is possible to stop the spiral of polarization and discrimination: Universities must return to core principles and restore a culture of pluralism and tolerance. Schools have an obligation to protect students from identity-based harassment. They must preserve the university's ability to function. Stanford has free speech zones where protests can take place. But parts of the campus where the essential business of teaching, research and administration would be disrupted are off-limits. Students must be held accountable for violations of the rules. Students, faculty and staff must also work to create a culture of critical inquiry. This means weighing their arguments against evidence and competing values - and seeing their peers as human beings of equal worth and potential. Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. Jeffrey Koseff is professor of civil and environmental engineering and oceans at Stanford.
2024-07-16 00:00:00
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