America's Talking - Jewish College Students in the U.S. Face Antisemitism, Little Help From Officials

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

The rise of pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. university campuses often feature protesters calling for violence against Jews, leading to Jewish students feeling unsafe and frustrated by the lack of response from school administrators and federal officials. Pro-Palestine sentiment is not new to many of these campuses, but the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and the ensuing war in Gaza have sparked far more frequent and zealous demonstrations. For Ethan Melman, a born-and-raised Chicagoan attending the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, that issue came to a head last fall when he, a Jewish student, attended one of the pro-Palestine protests to investigate. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAelib, chief content officer at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, February 23rd. Anti-Semitism has been on the rise across the U.S. over the past several years. But ever since the terrorist group Hamas invaded Israel in a deadly sneak attack last October, and Israel responded by invading Gaza, where Hamas operates, cases of anti-Semitism have spiked dramatically, particularly on college campuses. The Department of Education has received dozens of complaints about the matter. Joining me today to discuss this disturbing trend is Casey Harper, the Center's

Ward of Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are you, Casey? Doing good, Dan. How are you? I am doing well, thank you. Casey, you interviewed a couple of Jewish students who filed complaints with the Department of Education about these anti-Semitism allegations. What did you learn. Yeah, this is a really interesting interviews. One Jewish student and one of his friends, who's not Jewish, but was very interested in the issue and actually leads a conservative club on campus. I got an inside look into, you know, what has become a very personal issue for many of these students. Of course, there's a war thousands of miles away. Of course, Congress, members of Congress are debating how many billions or do we send any at all to help Israel

and they're five. Do we send money to those affected in Gaza? But even though this conflict is in the minds of many Americans, a political issue that's far away. For some, it's a religious issue. But for Jewish students on university campuses, it's become very personal and they're actually worried about their safety. So one student I interviewed is Ethan Melman. Now, he's over in your neighborhood, Dan, born and raised in Chicago. He's a Jewish student. And he attended one of these pro-Palestine protests that broke out after October 7th. There was a flood around the nation, if you remember, of all these college students protesting against Israel's response, which has, you know, left thousands of Gaza residents dead. The death toll number is in dispute, in my opinion. But this is the University of, you know,

Illinois Champaign, Urbana, right? Is that close to you, Dan? Are you a that neighborhood? Well, a few hours away. A few hours away, yeah. Chicago is, and the suburbs are huge. I know that. Yeah. So, so Melman goes to this protest as a Jewish student. He's kind of infiltrating it. And some of the things that he heard and he recorded, and I did obtain video of this protest, were clearly just, we're calls for violence right outside of, you know, where he lived, where he goes to school, some of the quotes, you know, from those, educate those who think violence is unjust. Another quote was decolonization.

looks like blood-stained knives and searing bullets. There was a sign I obtained a photo of, and it was like a poster, you know, and it says, keep the world clean. And it's got a trash can that the Jewish star of David. So basically keep the world clean, obviously, by putting Jews in the trash or some Jewish culture, however you want to interpret it. And so Melman is recording this. And eventually the protesters there, the pro-Palestinian protesters, realized that he's not really

on their side. He's been recording for a while. So they surround him. They cover him with signs to, you know, keep him from being able to video. He says he was kind of struck by these signs. And they were, you know, yelling all these different things. And so, you know, the protest goes on, of course. He didn't really shut it down or anything.

It was just kind of a dramatic, tense moment of this protest. And he reached out to his university administrators and really got no response. They just told him to seek the resources the university has available, which presumably would be counseling. of some kind, I suppose. And then his friend, Ian Tang, who's the other student who leads the conservative club, he sent a letter to the Department of Education asking them to open, you know, to do something about this, you know, the Department of Education, there's a segment within that agency

that deals with complaints just like this. It's called shared ancestral complaints. And a theme that I've noticed in these is that it seems like very little gets done. He hasn't really seen any action since he sent that letter. He got a response confirming that they received it. But it seems from his perspective, nothing has been done. Nothing's been done by the administrators, despite the calls for violence. Many of these protests, they're calling for genocide of Jews and saying that basically violence

against Jews is justified because Jews are colonizers of this land. And there's a very long history and debate about all that. But I thought it was interesting to take what is a big political debate and see how there are many, many American Jewish students who this has become a reality for them when they walk out their dorm rooms to see calls for violence against their own people. And, well, I can, first of all, I can see how that can be an intimidating situation, Casey, for anybody. I'd feel intimidated, you know, if I was surrounded by a group of people who were protesting

against my heritage, essentially, and screaming and putting signs in my face, et cetera. So these people, or these two that you talk to, they filed a complaint with the Department of Education. We know of at least dozens of other complaints, similar to this one, that were filed from campuses across the country. What did the Department of Education tell you about it, Casey? They were not willing to really say anything to me. I did reach out to them, but they didn't give any substantive response or say that, you know,

hey, this is what we're doing and this is what we've had done. They pointed to a press release. They released in, you know, last fall, several months ago that just, you know, reminded campuses of their duty to, you know, protect these students from this kind of discrimination. So I think that really sums up how these Jewish students feel, though. There was a little bit of lip service last fall, but really nothing else. And I think the interesting thing, the thing to hone in on here, because we do believe in free speech and it's very important.

And so protests inherently can't really be bad. But it's the calls for violence, the specific calls for violence, which I've seen video of not just on this campus, but in others. Because you can imagine a different situation where people are protesting the war of Russia, for instance, you know, protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine and saying, you know, Putin needs to be stopped. We need to fight. Russia.

We need to send aid to them. And that's a political protest. that's very different from saying death to all Russians, right? All American Russians. Right. And I think that's the distinction to make. The calls for violence against that very people, not just the political issue that's happening. And we've seen these protests.

Of course, they've been very public on college campuses. There have also been calls for the complete annihilation of the Jewish state of Israel. So, yeah. So, all right, Casey, the Department of Education has these complaints, is open investigations. Do you see it leading anywhere or is that they just won't hope this whole thing goes away? I mean, I doubt it. I think there is a lot of pressure on this issue because there are so many similar complaints.

I could maybe see something happening. But it seems these complaints can stay open for a very long time, even beyond when students graduate. I think if one university had many, many of these complaints, something could happen. But I think ultimately, it seems like a lot of bluster, just administrative, bureaucratic, threatening. I don't think there's a lot of teeth behind these investigations. The Department of Education has the ability to enforce it, but it doesn't seem like there's a will to take any aggressive action. And the school administrators are, I think, very afraid to offend

either side. I think they're very afraid of being seen as pro-Israel in any sense, because there's such a strong pro-Palestine sentiment on campuses that I think they really could lose their jobs. We've seen university presidents lose their jobs or take a lot of huge. heat for disagreeing with kind of the liberal orthodoxy on campuses. And so I think they're trying to tow that line and just ride it out, be silent and hope the issue goes away. Very interesting. Casey, thank you again for your insight. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square.com.

For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McAulb. Please subscribe and thank you for listening. Some people would call him a loser. He ran for state office. He was beaten. He started a business. He failed. He ran for Congress.

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