Jewish students share antisemitism concerns on campus after president’s controversial testimony
Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., repeatedly asked UPenn’s now-former President Liz Magill whether "calling for the genocide of Jews" would violate each university’s code of conduct.
Major universities need to do more than demand their presidents resign to combat antisemitism, according to one academic.
Rabbi Dr. Morey Schwartz, the International Director of the Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning, spoke to Fox News Digital regarding the resignation of University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill and its implications.
"I'm not surprised in the end that she needed to resign. And there was a lot of pressure on her. A lot of people were very disappointed with the way that she, not only herself but the others as well, spoke in the congressional hearing," Schwartz said.
He added, "What I was more concerned about is what goes on in a classroom and not so much about who is the exact administrator. There are times when leadership needs to step down because they can't be leaders anymore, because there is too much negative spin around that person, too many negative feelings around that person, and they need to step down. But I don't know that that's really going to, in the end, be the determining factor that makes a difference in what goes on at the University of Pennsylvania or any of the other schools, for that matter."
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Magill faced heat after she and two other college presidents did not clarify whether calls for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools’ codes of conduct at a Congressional hearing. Many have since applauded Magill’s resignation and called for the others to do the same.
However, Schwartz explained that there’s a "systemic change" that needs to occur to properly address concerns about antisemitism.
"Something went wrong along the way… whether it's the number of credits that have been lessened over the years in terms of what students have to study or if it's rather the sense that we need to be kinder to the students, not challenge them so much because they might otherwise run away and leave us and not come. There's something wrong with education," Schwartz said.
He also blasted the "shallow nature of the statements" from pro-Palestinian protesters attacking Israel.
Students of American University attend a campus protest against ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza in Washington, D.C., United States on November 1, 2023. (Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)
"When they interviewed the protesters where they speak, it's not very critical in the way they think. It's not nuanced. It's not developed. It's not insightful. It's really not educated," Schwartz said. "It's an endemic problem we have in universities, which isn't going to go away because one president resigns and another one comes in, or we take this professor out and that professor. It's a question of what we expect of the professors themselves. We expect education, not indoctrination."
He further lamented that the chants of "intifada" or "from the river to the sea" are likely due to pure ignorance rather than sheer antisemitism.
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"This conflict itself, I think, is like a litmus test for what's actually going on in education. There's something wrong with it. People are not critically thinking, and you can hear it from the way they speak. They learn what they learn from the social media echo chambers they’re listening to. And for some reason, even as college university students in Ivy League schools, they're not interested in going to the library, not even interested in googling the issue and trying to see all sides of it before they sign a petition with their own name on it," Schwartz said.
Since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war on Oct. 7, dozens of universities have been the sites of pro-Palestinian protests. Jewish students have spoken out about their fears of displaying their faith and their anger at schools looking the other way at antisemitism.
Pro-Palestinian protests and demonstrations have popped up across college campuses (Left: (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images), Right: (Photo by Michael Nigro/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images))
As an educator, he emphasized how important it is to "present multiple primary texts which don't agree with each other" to analyze ethical dilemmas such as the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
"I came across lots of wonderful quotes about education, but one of them was actually a quote by Aristotle who said, ‘It's the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.’ And that's what we don't really see," Schwartz summarized.