The Campus Thought Police

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

What a weekend I had.

Winter break has begun for many of my kids’ friends, who are now in college. Several were over at our house on Saturday evening. And I need to share a conversation I had with one of them, because it gave me hope for the future and it might do the same for you.

V. is a young non-Jewish transman (he/him/they/them) at the same school that K. and D. attend (from the recent columns about their war-related tensions — if you missed those, you can read about that here and here and here).

When I asked him how school was going, he revealed that he hates it there. I was surprised to hear this from a kid who isn’t Jewish and has no particular reason to feel threatened by the current campus dynamics.

I invited him to say more, and he told me: “When you look at any of the school’s promotional materials, it looks really diverse, but it’s not. It’s overwhelmingly white and every single person there has exactly the same opinion about every single issue. Everyone assumes I’m ecstatic there because it’s so accepting of transpeople. But I’m not the right kind of transperson for them. I’m not in lockstep with everyone else on any number of topics, but I’m afraid to ever say so.”

I found this so revealing. If a non-Jewish kid who represents one of the demographics the campus culture reveres the most is afraid to say what he thinks, can you imagine how K. must feel?

V. went on to tell me he’s fully aware that he knows nothing about the current conflict involving Israel and could never offer an informed opinion about it. So he recently decided to take a course about the history of the Middle East. However, he told me, he is also aware that because the course is being offered at this school, it is all but guaranteed to be biased against Israel. That’s how monolithic the campus culture is.

Then he brightened for a moment. “You know, at least there is one professor of Jewish history within the university,” he said hopefully. “Maybe she could be a support for K.”

My first thought was: wow, only one? And then I looked up the professor’s name.

Now, to be fair, this is the first I’ve heard of her, and I don’t have time to go all the way down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out exactly where she positions herself on the current conflict.

But the first thing my internet search yielded, within 5 seconds, was the fact that a Jewish foundation had created an endowment for her professorship — which I assume was because they recognized the importance of having at least one representative of the Jewish perspective on that campus.

And then, just two years later, they revoked the endowment because they were repelled by the stance of the professor in question vis-à-vis Israel.

I’ve been thinking about these revelations ever since. It is inexpressibly troubling to me to imagine an entire university where no one departs from the same far-left playbook and even the token representatives of a given group can be counted upon to stand against their own people if it’s a matter of upholding the college’s ideological orthodoxy.

This defeats the entire purpose of college.

The whole point of education at the college level is to be exposed to a range of ideas and perspectives that challenge your preconceptions and assumptions, and to grapple hard with where you position yourself on any given ideological spectrum.

What V. was describing sounds like literal indoctrination, which is a word people on the right throw around a lot, often — in my opinion — with a great deal of hyperbole. And I don’t believe every college environment is like this one.

At Columbia, for instance — which was scorchingly anti-Zionist even when I was a student there close to 40 years ago — there were proud Jewish professors teaching the history of Israel alongside anti-Zionist Muslim professors teaching the topic from the opposite perspective. There might be fewer Zionist professors there today, but there is at least some positive representation of Zionism to be found among its course offerings and professors.

But an environment like the one V. describes is incredibly chilling, and it moved me beyond words that he thinks so, too, even though he’s not in the crosshairs of the student activists there.

He told me another story to illustrate what he hates about the campus environment. He was in a class in which an indigenous young woman from Alaska was giving a presentation that included the word Eskimo.

“This student is an ‘Eskimo’,” V. told me. “And in the front row of this classroom was a white girl scrolling on her phone, barely listening, until she heard the word Eskimo and that’s when she snapped to attention. And she told the student presenting: “You can’t say that. ‘Eskimo’ is a racist slur.”

I guess an analogous situation would be the number of proud Native American writers I can think of who use the word Indian all the time. Can you imagine a white person lecturing them on the proper, inoffensive words they should use when referring to their own identity? That breathtaking entitlement is baked into the campus atmosphere today, with arrogant children cluelessly lecturing Jews, among others, about our own history, heritage and liberation movement.

Here’s another wildly disturbing aspect of this school environment I forgot to mention in earlier columns. When I asked K. whether she could find support at either the campus Chabad or Hillel, she told me: “The student members of Chabad are nice, but their Jewish orientation is very religious and it’s hard for me to find common ground with them.”

And Hillel?

What I’m about to tell you is the most troubling piece of information of all.

“The minute you join Hillel,” she told me, “you are ostracized by every other student group on campus.”

Lest this sound like an exaggeration, there has been an ever-increasing effort by anti-Israel activists to shut down Hillel chapters on campuses across the country. You can read about that here and here and here.

So what to do about any of this? I keep circling back to this topic because it’s haunting me. I don’t need to tell you that no aspect of this whole struggle is more important than our kids’ well-being, sense of pride, identity, community and connection.

One of my most cherished goals for 2025 is to be part of the force addressing the campus crisis somehow. To this end, I’m going to create a “Collegiate Corner” within JUDITH Magazine, where teens and 20-something Jewish students can contribute and connect.

I also want to figure out how to bring current inspirational Zionist figures into their lives.

And I want to figure out how to create strong, proud young Jews who know our history and don’t feel compelled to apologize for our current incarnation.

Last but not least, I want to understand how righteous gentiles like V. are created.

When V. voiced his fear that his Middle Eastern history course would be wildly biased in keeping with the campus ethos, I told him about this newsletter. I said, “I don’t need you to adopt any of my own opinions, but if you’d like to listen to a range of perspectives as opposed to just one, it’s here for you.”

He immediately said: “I will always — always! — listen, to all sides.”

This is so much more than most adults can do! What brought about V.’s possession of this humility and wisdom? I’m going to do my best to find out and bottle it.

Okay, fam. I will be back with you on Wednesday. I hope you’re all having a lovely holiday season.

In the meantime, as usual, I’m sending all my love to every one of you.

Chazak, chazak.

Am Yisrael Chai.