Pundits like left-wing journalist Glenn Greenwald portray pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas campus activists as underdogs battling Zionist-dominated university bosses. But when you listen to someone like Northeastern U. Professor of Political Science Max Abrahms, who has had a front-row seat to observe the raw anti-Semitism that has flourished on US campuses since October 7, it seems clear that Greenwald and Company are peddling their own version of the Big Lie.
Aside from a few schools like Brandeis University and Yeshiva University, scholars who are sympathetic to Israel are marginalized and forced into the shadows virtually everywhere else. Abrahms told a Jewish Policy Center webinar on Thursday. Professors say privately that to be a faculty member, you need to be “anti-Zionist” and that if you dissent from this orthodoxy your career advancement opportunities will be limited.
Abrahms said he supports the Trump administration’s efforts to use the threat of withholding federal aid to force schools to expel students who engage in violence and intimidation. But he expressed concern that the hostility to Israel is so ingrained that the federal pressure may not be sufficient to bring about reform.
Abrahms believes that university administrators, not students, are chiefly to blame for the situation, calling them “an integral part of what’s wrong.” These administrators, he said, “create this atmosphere” where anti-Semitism can flourish.
So-called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) plans aimed at helping victimized groups are “inherently anti-Semitic,” according to Abrahms. He said that when he attempted to meet the chief diversity officer at his own school, he was informed that they do not view anti-Semitism “as one of the things they are fighting.” Later, Abrahms learned that the head of the school’s Chabad organization had been told the same thing.
He believes that, by leveraging their financial support, Jewish donors could create a powerful incentive for reform. According to Abrahms, professors sympathetic to Zionism currently “face an incentive system geared toward keeping them silent.”
Donors “need to place conditions” on academic institutions they support, Abrahms said. “That’s the only way to change things.”
