Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is making a bold offer to Jewish students perceiving greater antisemitism on campus: transfer to colleges in Florida, which has taken a strong stance on the subject.
In his annual State of the State speech to the combined houses of the Florida Legislature in Tallahassee on Jan. 9, Mr. DeSantis said Florida would make it easy to do by waiving minimum credit hour requirements for transfer students, waiving application deadlines and encouraging universities and colleges to use their authority to grant students with financial hardship in-state tuition.
“This week, Jewish students across the country are returning to campuses that have outright condoned antisemitism,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Over the coming months, they will have a tough decision to make. Do they pack up and leave, or do they stay and continue enduring a hostile environment? If they do decide to come to Florida, we will welcome them with open arms.”
“The pro-Hamas activities and rampant antisemitism that we’ve witnessed throughout the country on these campuses have exposed the intellectual rot that has developed on so many college campuses,” he said. “In Florida, our universities must be dedicated to the pursuit of truth, the promotion of academic rigor and integrity, and the preparation of students to be citizens of our republic.”
Mr. DeSantis, in his speech, tied the move to his campaign against wokeness in the state’s colleges and public school system.
“We reject the modern trend of universities that subordinate high academic standards in favor of promoting an ideological agenda. To this end, we have eliminated so-called DEI from our public universities. DEI is a highly ideological agenda. In practice, it stands for discrimination, exclusion, and indoctrination—and it has no place in our public universities.”
“We have also overhauled faculty hiring to avoid ideological litmus tests and required all tenured professors to undergo review every five years so poor performers can be eliminated.”
Some see the outbreak of antisemitism as having been fed by a DEI-fueled worldview taught in schools and colleges that terms Israel “an apartheid state,” an expression of imperialism and colonialism, and its Jews as white oppressors.
Jewish and other students have experienced more antisemitism since the Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel and massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas, and Israel’s ensuing invasion of the Gaza Strip to destroy Hamas.
Students demonstrating in support of Hamas often accuse Israel of “genocide” and include the pro-Palestinian chant “From the river to the sea,” which Jews often regard as expressing an intention to wipe Israel off the map and Jewish Israelis with it.
Jewish students have reported being harassed, like one at Harvard surrounded by demonstrators hemming him in with Palestinian-style keffiyeh cloth so that he couldn’t get away. Classes have been interrupted by protesters with bullhorns. At the University of Maryland, a vandal wrote “Holocaust 2.0” on the sidewalk by a memorial students had put up for those killed or taken hostage on Oct. 7.
About 11 Jewish students at the Cooper Union in New York were locked into its library by an administrator on Oct. 25 to protect them from a mob of demonstrators who stormed past security and pounded on the library’s door.
Three presidents of elite universities, meanwhile, raised a furor on Dec. 5 when, testifying before Congress, they said they wouldn’t necessarily ban calls for genocide against Jews as prohibited speech under their universities’ speech codes.
Such codes can be very sweeping; according to the Harvard Crimson, students reported as “hate speech” and “offensive” chalk graffiti on an Emory University sidewalk that said “Trump 2016.”
Two of the presidents, Penn’s Liz Magill and Harvard’s Claudine Gay, who said the banning of genocide calls “would depend on the context,” have since resigned.
Mr. DeSantis and his state government have taken strong stands since Oct. 7 in supporting Israel and supporting the right of American Jews not to live in fear. He authorized college leaders to investigate violent or threatening speech and use the state’s law enforcement power to prosecute it.
He called for deporting foreign college students who expressed support for Hamas by saying they were part of it.
He called for a special legislative session to raise existing sanctions against Iran, which helped Hamas plan, plot, and pay for the attacks and funds Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorist group on Israel’s northern frontier.
The legislation, which passed Nov. 8, put more companies on the state’s scrutinized companies list, prohibited state and local governments from contracting with them and state investments such as its pension fund from being invested with them. It also requires the federal government to certify Iran had stopped supporting international terrorism before Florida’s sanctions were lifted.
It contained $15 million available for grants to Jewish day schools and preschools to improve security, money that can pay for lighting, cameras, fencing, and shatter-resistant windows.
Mr. DeSantis decried President Joe Biden’s $100 million in aid to Gaza shortly after the attack, saying, “We know Hamas is going to commandeer that money, and Hamas is going to use it to advance terrorism.”
He dispatched emergency flights to Israel. Some were to bring home American travelers, mostly Floridians, stranded when the war broke out and airlines halted flights. Others were to ship to Israel charity, such as clothing, toiletries, and medical supplies for displaced civilians and reservists.
A family on one of those flights was present at the governor’s speech on Jan. 9.
“Many Floridians were stranded in Israel after the war broke out and were not receiving adequate assistance from the U.S. embassy or the State Department, so the state of Florida stepped up. We organized evacuation flights, and we rescued more than 700 Americans and brought them back home to the state of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said.
Passengers included Allison Zur, her husband, and two children, who were present at the speech.
The state is now going further. The legislature last year passed a bill stepping up enforcement of antisemitic incidents.
Now, it is considering a bill to define antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” and rhetoric and manifestations “directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals, their property, community institutions, and religious facilities.”
It gives examples, such as “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jewish individuals in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of a religion.” Another is using “dehumanizing” stereotypes that Jews hold disproportionate institutional power and secretly control the media, economy, or government. Another is “accusing Jewish people as a collective of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group or for acts committed by non-Jewish individuals.”
The bill passed the Florida House Judiciary Committee by a 19-1 vote on Jan. 8.
“Since Oct. 7, 2023, Jewish students on U.S. college campuses have borne the brunt of antisemitic incidents, including violent assaults, intimidation, and harassment by fellow students,” the ADL said on its website.
A map of such incidents, mostly the rallies, shows them concentrated in big cities, particularly in the Northeast, South Florida, Southern California, and the Bay Area.
It also shows them in college towns like State College, Pennsylvania; Athens, Georgia; Columbia, Missouri; Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Lawrence, Kansas; Grinnell, Iowa; and Boulder, Colorado.
Harassing Incidents reported by the ADL include flyers thrown in yards and images projected on buildings.
A bill Mr. DeSantis signed on May 1, 2023, makes such activities illegal. They can be felonies if perceived as threats.
