Police disbanded an encampment made up of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Pennsylvania earlier this month, but anti-Israel protests — some say antisemitic protests — continue to plague college campuses from Drexel University to America’s desert southwest.
The University of New Mexico just offered to buy a plane ticket home to Israel for Gal Arad, a third-year student and sprinter who recorded the second-best result in Israeli history for the 200-meter dash just last week. Both Arad and the university had expressed concerns about his safety.
As the threats continue, Israel’s oldest university is offering them a safe harbor.
Professor Uri Sivan, president of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, told DVJournal it was his responsibility to protect Jewish and Israeli students and professors abroad who fear going to campus.
“We extend a warm welcome to individuals worldwide seeking refuge within Israel’s borders, offering safety and support to those who may feel persecuted elsewhere,” said Sivan. “Our academic community remains open to those seeking safety and security.”
It’s the second time Sivan made the offer to Jewish students and faculty.
The institute issued its first safe-haven invite in the wake of disastrous appearances by Ivy League college presidents before Congress, during which Penn President Liz Magill, Harvard President Dr. Claudine Gay, and MIT President Sally Kornbluth were unable to say that students “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated the speech codes on their campuses.
Magill and Gay were forced to resign amid the fallout.
“Given the feeble responses of quite a few presidents of leading universities… many Jewish and Israeli students and researchers currently face physical and verbal threats that cause them to think twice about everything they do and prevent them from participating in academic activities in those institutions,” Sivan said at the time. “As a result of this situation and given the Technion’s important role in the history of the Jewish people during the last 100 years, we have announced a program for the rapid integration of students and faculty members from around the world looking for an academic refuge during these difficult times.”
Now the institute is updating that invitation as campuses feature cries of “Long live the Intifada” and Jewish students are being singled out for threats — and sometimes violence — by pro-Palestinian protesters.
“If college campuses aren’t willing to step up [against antisemitism] then they’re not deserving of Jewish students’ tuition,” Jewish Federation Senior Chief of External Affairs Jeffrey Lasday told DVJournal.
Sivan’s recruitment may end up paying off.
His new invitation quickly started circulating around MIT. Talia Khan, the president of the MIT Israel Alliance President, posted on social media that she expected students and teachers to accept the offer.
That could cause elite American universities to miss out on top students who were Jewish, according to Khan. She worried American technological innovation would drop because Jews didn’t want to attend U.S. schools.
“I know hundreds of students (Jewish and not) who have left their campuses out of fear,” Penn senior Eyal Yakoby told DVJournal. He hoped that universities would change course so that fewer Jewish students left.
Yakoby is one of two Jewish students suing Penn on claims that it’s rife with antisemitism. The suit said Penn faculty conducted “deliberate and targeted harassment” of Jewish students.
Jewish enrollment has plummeted at Ivy League universities including Penn and Harvard.
Penn once boasted more than 40 percent Jewish enrollment. It’s now 16 percent, with much of the drop happening last decade. At one point Harvard’s Jewish student population was 25 percent. It’s now 14 percent with just 10 percent “Jewish by religion.”
Jewish students choose to attend New York private colleges like Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Touro College. Statistics from the Jewish campus organization, Hillel International, list those three along with Tulane University in Louisiana and Brandeis University in Massachusetts as the top five schools with the largest percentage of Jewish students.
“The brain drain has already begun. The question is how far it will go,” said Yakoby.
Lasday encouraged Jewish students to study abroad, especially in Israel. He believed that would help them see the world from a different perspective and they could then bring that back home.
At the same time, he did not want Jewish students and faculty to permanently leave U.S. colleges. Lasday hoped North American college campuses would be safe for all Jews and their families.
“I would want families to do their research. Which college campuses have vibrant Jewish life…Which school administrations are taking steps to protect their students or combatting antisemitism and are supporting diversity in all forms,” he said.
