Jewish college students expressed outrage on Dec. 5 over what they say is the failure of higher education institutions to deal with the rise in threats and acts of antisemitism on campus amid the latest conflict between the Jewish state of Israel and the terrorist group Hamas.
During the press conference following the weekly House GOP meeting, Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student Talia Kahn lamented that her campus, where she also attended as an undergraduate, has “an extremely toxic antisemitic atmosphere.”
She accused MIT President Sally Kornbluth of refusing to deal with antisemitism on campus.
Ms. Kahn said 70 percent of MIT’s Jews feel coerced into shielding their Judaism and viewpoints.
She noted that an Israeli student, whom she did not name, has not come out of his dorm because he fears for his safety. That student’s name and other personal information were “sold online for a bounty,” she said.
Ms. Kahn said she “was forced” to leave the study group for her doctoral exam when group members voiced that those who were murdered at the Nova music festival near Gaza “deserved to die because they were partying on stolen land.”
Ms. Kahn accused MIT administrators of failing to combat antisemitism on its staff and faculty, including the chaplain “declaring that Israel has no right to exist” and faculty members “dismissing student concerns for their safety by telling them that if they are scared, they should just go back to Israel.”
New York University student Bella Ingber said that antisemitism at her school has consisted of vandalized and torn posters of hostages held by Hamas and protests where students and faculty members were calling for intifada. She said she was physically attacked by a student in the school library for wearing an American-Israeli flag.
Ms. Ingber said she had heard calls on campus for gassing Jews and “Hitler was right.”
Nonetheless, she said Jewish students at NYU will not surrender.
“We are not going anywhere,” said Ms. Ingber. “Antisemitism and the support for terror should have no home at NYU or on any other college campus.
“We made the promise of ‘Never again,’ and ‘Never again’ is now.”
University of Pennsylvania student Eyal Yakoby stated that, while he appreciated the opportunity to address the media in Congress about antisemitism on his campus, he “should not be here today.”
“I should be studying for my upcoming finals.”
Mr. Yakoby said that two days ago, he and “most of [us on] campus sought refuge in our rooms as classmates and professors chanted proudly for the genocide of Jews while igniting smoke bombs and defacing school property.”
He blasted University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill for her silence in the wake of the vitriol.
The remarks by the students came moments before the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing featuring testimony from Ms. Magill, Ms. Kornbluth, and Harvard President Claudine Gay.
“This moment is an inflection point,” cautioned the committee’s chairwoman, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.).
The university presidents defended their schools against the criticism of failing to sufficiently combat hatred toward Jews on campus and laid out the steps—including increasing security—they are taking to address antisemitism.
“Harvard must provide firm leadership in the fight against antisemitism and hate speech even while preserving room for free expression and dissent,” she continued. “This is difficult work, and I admit that we have not always gotten it right.”
Ms. Magill cited actions such as forming an antisemitism task force.
Ms. Kornbluth, who is Jewish, said she has condemned the Oct. 7 attacks—the greatest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust—and that there is a new initiative at MIT to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia.
