Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Bonus Episode: Are ANY colleges confronting the madness? - With Andrew Martin & Santa Ono

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

Watch Call me Back on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CallMeBackPodcastTo contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts, visit: https://arkmedia.org/Dan on X: https://x.com/dansenorDan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenorLast week, three federal agencies — including the Department of Education — announced a comprehensive review of the funding relationships between the federal government and Columbia University in regards to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Like most universities, Columbia receives a great deal of federal funding. The Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, created by the Trump Administration, announced that it will visit 10 university campuses that have  seen a shocking rise in antisemitism since October 7, 2023.According to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, “Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now, as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed on elite university campuses. Unlawful encampments and demonstrations have completely paralyzed day-to-day campus operations, depriving Jewish students of learning opportunities to which they are entitled. Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”According to Maya Sulkin in the Free Press, “even though Columbia formed a Task Force on Antisemitism weeks after Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, and issued two reports that revealed shocking instances of Jew hate on campus—not just among students but professors and administrators—the college has done little to root out the problem.”As a result, on Friday the Trump Administration announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants to  and contracts with Columbia. Following these developments, one could be left with the impression that higher education is doomed. Yetwe were struck by the reaction from the Call Me Back community to a conversation we had with the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Daniel Diermeier, last November, in an episode titled “How Vanderbilt University is getting it right.” It reminded us that some universities have impressively navigated the past 16 months.Vanderbilt is one of them. Another is Washington University. The Chancellors of both universities (Washington University Chancellor Andrew Martin and Vanderbilt’s Diermeier) recently issued a set of principles that every university should be able to adopt. They summarized these principles in a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, titled: “Universities Must Reject Creeping Politicization.” You can read it here: There have been other universities, like the University of Michigan, which in the months after October 7, 2023 experienced massive disruptions. Yet according to conversations we have had with current Jewish students, the university administration has been doing much better than others. University of Michigan President Santa Ono has taken promising steps on a number of fronts, including the University’s relationship with Israel, that could also serve as  a model.So, against the backdrop of chaos at Columbia and Barnard this past week, we sat down with WashU’s Andrew Martin and Michigan’s Santa Ono at the ADL’s “Never is Now” Summit in New York City, for a candid conversation about what has happened at each of their universities, lessons learned, and charting a path forward. Additional items:ADL’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card: https://www.adl.org/campus-antisemitism-report-card-Free Press reporting on Columbia University:https://www.thefp.com/p/exclusive-trump-administration-cancels-https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-columbia-antisemitism-federal-fundingCREDITS:ILAN BENATAR - Producer & EditorMARTIN HUERGO - EditorYARDENA SCHWARTZ - Executive Editor of Ark MediaGABE SILVERSTEIN - Research Intern YUVAL SEMO - Music Composer

It's seven o'clock p.m. on Saturday, March 8th here in New York City. Shavuotov. It's two o'clock a.m. on Sunday, March 9th in Israel as Israelis transition to a new week. Shavuotov to you too, after what has been a tumultuous week in both places. I want to spend a moment on the tumult in one of those places here in New York City, up in Morningside Heights and specifically Columbia University. On Monday, three federal agencies, including the US Department of Education, announced

a comprehensive review of the funding relationships that the federal government has with Columbia regarding Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. That's the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which, among other things, bars discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program receiving federal funds. Like most universities, Columbia receives a lot receiving federal funds. Like most universities, Columbia receives a lot of federal funds. The federal task force to combat antisemitism that was created by the Trump administration

announced that it will be visiting 10 university campuses that have attracted a lot of attention for the shocking rise in antisemitism since October 7th, 2023. And according to Education Secretary, Linda McMahon, just confirmed, and I quote here, Americans have watched in horror for more than a year now as Jewish students have been assaulted and harassed

on elite university campuses. Secretary McMahon goes on to say, institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia's apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution's fitness to continue doing business

with the United States government." Now, we will link in the show notes to excellent reporting by Maya Skin in the Free Press. But I want to quote from one of her articles here, even though Columbia formed a task force on anti-Semitism weeks after Hamas's invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, and issued two reports that revealed shocking instances of Jew hate on campus, not just among students, but professors and administrators

The college has done little to root out the problem. That's in the free press now the free press Reporting goes on to chronicle all that has happened at Columbia last school year including the takeover for 24 hours of a school building by anti-israel protesters and then last week at Barnard Columbia Sister College, there was another building occupied and more chaos, actually ultimately in the midst of all the chaos, leading to nine arrests by the NYPD. So following all this news,

one could be left with the impression that higher education is doomed. But I'm not so sure. I was struck by the reaction to a conversation I had with the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Daniel Diermeier, back in November in a call me back episode titled, "'How Vanderbilt University is Getting it Right'."

There are examples of universities that have indeed been getting it right since October 7th, 2023. Obviously, Vanderbilt is one of them. Another one is Washington University, a campus I visited as well and spoke at last fall. The Chancellor of Washington University, Andrew Martin, along with Vanderbilt's Chancellor Diermeier recently issued a set of principles that every university should be able to adopt. Chancellors Martin and Diermeier summarize these principles

in a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which I highly recommend you read. I'll post it in the show notes. Then there have been other universities, like the University of Michigan, which in the months after October 7th, 2023, experienced massive disruptions from encampments and anti-Semitic protesters,

some of which I saw firsthand when I visited the campus last spring. But at least based on conversations I've had with current Jewish students at Michigan, the university administration seems to have gotten things under control. The University of Michigan president, Santa Ono, is currently taking steps on a number of fronts, especially as it relates with the university's relationship with Israel, that are promising and may be a model, certainly a model

for countering BDS. Against the backdrop of the chaos at Columbia this past week, I sat down here in New York City with Wash U's Andrew Martin and Michigan's Santa Ono at the ADL's Never Is Now Summit. We sat down for a candid conversation before a live audience about what has happened at each of their universities, the lessons learned, a path forward, and getting back to core principles. This is Call Me Back.

It's 3 45 p.m. on Monday, March 3rd here in New York City. It's 10 45 on Monday, March 3rd in Israel as Israelis wind down their day. And these two are wondering why I'm actually explaining the time. We're time stamping this for for my podcast. I open all my podcasts with a time stamp. We are going to jump right into this conversation. It's a real honor to be with both of you here today who have had two very different experiences, I think, in your respective universities, but both of those experiences and trajectories

speak to this moment we are in and provide an opportunity, I think, for both of you to provide leadership at your universities, but also nationally in higher education. So I want to start with the experience at WashU, Andrew, but specifically a piece you just co-authored with Chancellor Daniel Diermeier from Vanderbilt for the Chronicle of Higher Education and the article is titled, Universities Must Reject Creeping Polarization. And I just want to quote,

it's a long piece that speaks to these principles that you and Chancellor Diermeier just published. But you say in this piece, in a polarized era in which every American institution has become a political Rorschach test, the Israel-Gaza conflict in particular has divided college campuses in public opinion to a degree unseen since the 1960s. And then you go on to diagnose the problem,

and then you say, in describing what you think is the prescription to address this problem, a culture of civil discourse is essential. But we also need rules. The word rules is what jumped out at me. And you write, and those rules must be enforced. Clear policies governing expression, protests, and dissent that include appropriate limitations on time, place, and manner are necessary to provide maximum freedom of expression without trampling on the rights

of fellow classmates and faculty, or obstructing the core operations that support the teaching and research mission of these institutions. So the idea of rules seem to be almost of paramount importance for you and Daniel to highlight in this piece. Why? Rules are important because rules structure the way in which we can interact any place in society, but particularly on a college campus. And we've thought long and hard at WashU first about our mission, focus on education, the research that we do, and the patients that we treat, and we've developed a set of rules

to help drive that mission. I mean a lot of the rules that we have particularly around protest and so forth on the campus are not there to stifle opinion. In fact, we want them, we want opinions to be lifted up. But at the same time, we need to be able to focus on the mission. Teaching has to continue. And so that's why we have those rules. I think one of the challenges that we saw on many campuses last academic year is that we had rules, and then we had campus leaders who chose not to enforce them.

And it is difficult. I mean, it is difficult to enforce rules, particularly when you have people screaming at you, questioning every decision that you make. But I'd posit that if you have rules and you're not going to enforce them, you probably shouldn't have rules or at least rethink the rules that you've got. And can you talk a little bit specifically about the role that encampments have played as it relates to enforcement of rules? Absolutely. My first year as chancellor in 2019, we had a small little encampment by some of our graduate

students and undergraduates advocating for a change in our minimum wage policy. It was not disruptive at all, but it was actually really difficult for us to provide safety and security to students who were sleeping in the middle of our campus 24 hours a day. And so we established a no encampment policy in 2019. As we saw what was happening on other campuses last fall, fall before last, we made the decision that, look, if an encampment was going to come onto our campus, we wouldn't allow it to do so. And we publicized that. I think we have some opportunities to have

perhaps publicized it a little bit better. But we had this policy and we made it very clear to folks that that's what we were going to do. And in fact, in April when things got a little spicier on our campus, we had a protest. We made sure that it happened safely and as soon as they brought out the tents, said you have to go. And on that day, they chose to go. The following week, we had 400 individuals on our campus. Seventy-five percent were unaffiliated

from Washington University. These were community members who were, you know, playing out their advocacy on our campus. This is at a time when our students are in reading period, getting ready for final exams. And they, again, brought out their tents and said, come and please join the encampment. And we said, that's not going to happen on our campus.

And we used our police force to ensure that the stakes didn't go in the ground and there wasn't an encampment on our campus. And we did that because the presence of that encampment would interfere with our mission of education and was make it more difficult to provide safety and security for all of our students. Okay, so I want to talk about the experience of rules and encampments at the University of Michigan because it seems like it has been a bumpier road. I personally last spring was speaking at the University of Michigan with former Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, hosted by FOG, one of the pro-Israel groups that I think you know them.

Facts on the ground. Facts on the ground, that's right, see, you know better than I do. And the anti-Israel groups on campus had literally hacked the ticketing system to the event, to the point that the event had to be shut down, Prime Minister Bennett and I had to be moved around to an undisclosed location. It was quite, it was, and this was months after October 7th.

So can you talk a little bit about what you have experienced in those first few months after October 7th, and then as it relates to the new school year? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I was unbeknownst to you, actually involved in some of those movements. I had the privilege of working with students in Facts on the Ground and other groups, and

they've been incredible. And I received a phone call from the father of one of the leaders of Facts on the Ground saying that he had some concerns about safety for the former prime minister, but also for students attending the event where it was scheduled to take place. There had been another similar talk organized by Fogg. That was perfectly fine. But it became obvious in looking at individuals who had signed up that the audience would not

be completely friendly. And so we were involved in trying to find an alternate location. We're friendly because I think they're real security concerns. Absolutely. And so that was probably the most difficult time for us as an institution. There was a radio clip that was released a couple days ago, that it was precisely at that moment that I was speaking to the chairs of departments about that time.

So this audio clip was from over a year ago, and it actually is me responding to the chairs about, at that time, encampments had already occurred, and there was house hearings and people like Claudine Gay and Elizabeth McGill. And so I was talking to the chairs about what was going on and the question was asked, why is there this focus on anti-Semitism?

And of course I said that, you know, certainly that's a predominant thing that's occurring, it's like encampment on the diag. But we'd also had some instances of Islamophobia. And just to be clear, that wasn't supposed to be a private meeting. That's right. This wasn't intended to be.

No. It was a private meeting. Someone recorded it. That's right. Let's just say a mischief maker recorded it, and then clipped it, and then it has leaked out, and it got a whole life around that time. And then it got a new life coincidentally over the last 48 hours.

That's right. That's right. And so totally coincidental. In any case. So that's what happened. And it was a very tumultuous time, as you said. We're dealing with the encampment. We were able to take the encampment down. We have set up since then rules and we hold people accountable. Individuals who have broken civil and criminal statutes are actually in criminal cases before the courts.

The attorney general, Dana Nestle, has been amazing. And our regents, by the way, have been amazing. They are lockstep. Like Andrew, we are completely focused on ensuring that the core mission of the institution, teaching and learning and healthcare, are uninterrupted. That's the only way to deal with this. So, just staying on that recording, because I know you want an opportunity to address it very directly,

there were two things in that recording that jumped out at me, and I think jumped out at a lot of people who were circulating it in recent days that were disconcerting. One was your reference to quote unquote powerful groups that had organized or shaped the hearings against that featured the university presidents last year, I guess a year and a half ago. And the second issue was this seeming like comparison between yes, there's anti-Semitism, but there's also Islamophobia. And that second one, I will be honest, I'm

particularly sensitive to because there's a tendency, I think, especially since October 7th, to try to universalize the outsized hate, violence and discrimination applied to Jews and sort of universalize it in a way that dilutes the significance of the Jewish experience. According to the FBI, the American Jewish population is roughly, the Jewish population in the United States is roughly 2.4% of the entire US population, but it counts for 68% of hate crimes. So there is something different going on with the Jewish community than other groups are experiencing.

And I think... I agree 100%. Okay. So let me explain. So in terms of powerful groups, I was referring to a number of committees in Congress. And in terms of the common. So like the committees.

The committees in Congress. One of the House Education and Workforce Committee, but there were many other committees. Jim Johnson was I think in charge of one. And so that's what I referred to. In terms of the common Islamophobia is because the question was, why aren't, why isn't there a focus on Islamophobia?

Why so much focus on anti-Semitism? And I said, obviously, because there's so many things going on, there's an encampment, and most of the cases in our office, Title VI office were focused on like 80% of them. But there were cases of individuals who were doxed, who were from the MENA groups on campus.

And so the chairs that were in that room were asking about them. So it was not possible for me not to respond about that as well. But for me, it was no desire at all to dilute the focus on fighting antisemitism. That has been a predominant focus of ours because that is the real issue on campus.

So, among the ways you have expressed solidarity with the Jewish community and spoken out, includes the university's relationship with Israel, which I wanna talk about in a moment, but before I do, just anything other specifically that you've done to make it clear that actions against Israel, or actions against the Jewish community

on campus are gonna be unacceptable, including, from what I understand, something that just happened the last couple days with the rock. Yeah. So can you describe? Well, the first thing I would say is that early on, there was a sort of a BDS kind of vote that was coming from

the student government itself. We call it the central student government. And if you go back and look, and those of you who are affiliated with Michigan know that I personally stepped in to stop the vote. And that's because I thought it was wrong. I've said before. So they were trying to get a vote to get the endowment to divest from Israel Israeli companies and also the sever connections with Israeli institutions okay, and as I've said before I view BDS to be anti-semitism and In terms of in terms of doubling down on our relationship with Israeli institutions, great ones like

Technion and Weissman, we have long-standing relationships. We have 60 projects that have been funded between the University of Michigan and these great institutions. And my response, and the board's response to this call to divest or to cut those relationships was to actually invest even more. And so the three of us have put more money into it and great things have come out of these relationships and more great things will come in the future. And specifically the incident over the last couple days with this... The rock. The rock, yes. Yeah. So the thing is that if you're not from the University of Michigan,

which I'm not, so I need an explainer. It looks like the rock is part of the campus, but it's actually not. It's an Ann Arbor Park and it's surrounded by things like fraternities and sororities, but we actually don't have the jurisdiction to do anything because it's not our land. So if we could, we do review surveillance videos and things like that. If we can identify somebody, but for us to go in, it'd be like going into your house, for example.

Okay, so the audience, as we were talking about, to the rock, there was this moving tribute memorial for the B-Bus family painted onto the rock, and then that was vandalized. Absolutely, and I abhor that. I think it's completely unacceptable. And if I could, I would do something, but it's not on our land.

Okay, and Andrew, on the, the WashU has done a lot with Israeli institutions and just pivoting off of what Santa said here, there is this growing sense, this growing momentum for an academic boycott globally in the context of the BDS movement that we were just talking about. In fact, it's actually one of the most worrying parts and one of the most alarming aspects of BDS as far as I'm concerned, because it's the only one that seems to right now have

legs. Yes. So can you talk about what WashU has been doing with Israel, Israeli institutions that deepens these ties? We've been on the record institutionally for a very long time that BDS is antithetical to academic freedom. As an institution, I mean, if an individual faculty member chooses to collaborate with one individual or another, that's their prerogative. I mean, an individual faculty member chooses to collaborate with

one individual or another, that's their prerogative. I mean that's part of their academic freedom. But to say as an institution you cannot collaborate with another institution or a principal investigator from another institution, that's antithetical to academic freedom. And we've talked about that on our campus for a very long time. We're also deeply committed to institutional neutrality. Part of that means that we don't advance any cause through our investment policies other

than generating maximal return to drive our mission. And so one of the interviews I did with some student reporters sort of doing my every semester interview, there was a long question about whether we were going to divest from Boeing, which was the topic du jour last spring. And it was this two paragraph question, will you divest? And my answer to that question is no.

I just looked at the reporter and said no. I didn't explain why. I explained why for seven years. But we're very clear that our collaborations with Israeli scholars and Israeli institutions bring great value to our university. We want our students and faculty to have the academic freedom to participate in those programs. And we're just not going to choose – we're not going to do anything with our investment policy other than doing whatever we can to increase our return. In terms of the other principles, this document that you and Chancellor Diermeier have published,

which you're hoping other institutions, I think, will sign on to, can you just quickly summarize what these principles are? Yeah, the Vanderbilt WashU principles we think are actually a restatement of what research universities have always been. And at times we've lost our ways. And our institutions in some respects have lost our ways. Look, at the heart of everything we need,

everything we do is excellence, right? We have to make sure that our students and our faculty can live up to their full potential and make sure they have the resources to live up to their full potential. Politics has nothing to do with excellence. We need to support all of our faculty. We also deeply committed to civil discourse. And part of that is actually having reasoned, principled discourse. Part of that also means we need to have diversity of thought on our campuses and create environments where people with diverse thinking about important issues

can interact with one another. And that's something that we're doing at WashU and I know Daniel's doing at Vanderbilt. That we need to center the work that we're doing to help drive our local economies. Much of that is through the work we do in healthcare, but also as large employers and present institutions. And then the final piece is student access. I mean, I think one of the great stories of American higher education over the last 30, 40, 50 years,

one of the areas where the University of Michigan has been an absolute leader is how do you open the doors to super talented students from limited income and ensure that they can thrive on your campuses? And part of our principals are saying, look, that's an important part of our DNA. And the reason why we do that is not just because

it's the right thing to do, although it is the right thing to do, it's key to making our institutions as excellent as possible. If we're leaving talent on the table because students aren't able to afford our tuition, pox on us, and it also means we're not going to be as great as we could be otherwise. Over the weekend when this recording surfaced, I heard from a number of Universe I mentioned this to you a number of University of Michigan alumni and some students Who were making the case that thing the the climate on campus at Michigan had improved considerably for Jews from last year to this year and

And they wanted me to make sure I said that so for for all of you who are here, you're everywhere, you Michigan alumni, I said it, okay. But my response to them as they were pushing their line was, okay, I hear you, but if you, the place can't be perfect, right? So if you were to wave a magic wand, if you could wave a magic wand and improve one thing, what would it be?

And it was interesting because it wound up, it was sort of like a crowd sourced survey, which I didn't intend to be analyzing over my weekend, but such, such are events. And the one thing I heard over and over is the discomfort many students feel in the classroom with professors who are hostile to Israel and as you articulated hostile to Jews. To the point that many students feel that they can't even answer tests and essay questions

the way they want to for fear of seeming misaligned with the faculty member to the point that it could have implications for their grade. By the way, it's interesting because I asked this question, and I was hearing a version of this over and over and over. So you run a massive institution and you supervise directly, indirectly, I can't even imagine how many faculty, how do you impose a standard that is applied throughout the institution that doesn't leave Jewish students

feeling the way they're feeling? What's a combination of offense and defense? That's not because I'm a Wolverine, but honestly, you know, there have to be rules. There have to be conduct that is their accountability for actions by faculty and staff that are inappropriate, that are anti-Semitic. And if you read the New York Times, we're often in it for being holding people accountable. And we've fired staff who have said things that are anti-Semitic.

There are faculty members. There are graduates. How do you deal with that with tenured faculty? That's where it gets complicated. There is a process with tenured faculty as well. But this is one side. The other side, I think, is that we're educational institutions.

And I think one of the most powerful ways that we can address this, not just at Michigan, but once our graduates go out into the world into different sectors, is through education. We've done two things I'm gonna talk about real quick. One is we launched the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, which is really focused on understanding the root causes of antisemitism and actually educating at every level from

K through 12 into the general society why antisemitism has occurred for millennia and how can we actually try to eradicate it. So that's the focus of the Wallenberg Institute. The other institute, like Andrew said, is we have launched an institute for civil discourse. And so we have to intentionally diversify our faculty to have a broad set of ideologies, and we will do that. And we have to bring them together and model to other faculty, but also to students, how to have civil discourse.

And then we have to embed that into the curriculum of all the 19 schools in Ann Arbor. And so that's happening with this Institute for Civil Discourse. And so the other way to eventually win is to get at the fact that people don't have civil discourse. They don't listen to each other. They shout each other down. And we have to be leaders through education. Question for both of you. I go back and forth and I have over since October 7th as I've

watched these mini pogroms emerge at so many campuses. And I question, is this an organic, grassroots, spontaneous or semi-spontaneous uprising? Or is there something else going on here? Are there influences from outside the university that are stoking, organizing, resourcing? And by the way, it's not like one answer, the answer to one of the questions being affirmative will give me comfort because both scenarios are really bad.

But I mean, you're both involved with your own campuses. Obviously, Andrew, you're working now nationally with these other universities. You guys are talking to your peers. What's, like, you guys are insiders in this world. What are you seeing? So the data from the Wash U experience, I think, definitively answers your question.

On multiple occasions, including the April 27th protest, which was the one, we had 400 on the campus, had 100 individuals arrested, 75% of them were unaffiliated with the university. 75% were unaffiliated with the university. 75% were unaffiliated with the university. I don't know who- That doesn't mean necessarily just people coming in from St. Louis who just happened to sign.

It could be- No, no. We know that many of them, we booked them, many of them weren't from St. Louis. They had flown in from around the country to carry out their agenda on our campus at the time that our students were studying. And so I don't know where those networks are coming from. And yes, we did have, we had students and some faculty members and some staff who were involved as well.

But this is not just spontaneously happening on our campuses. And it's certainly the case, it's certainly the case that this social media environment is being leveraged by other actors to sort of spin things up on campuses as well. Just wanna end up by echoing your data in that near the end of the encampment on the DIAG, the vast majority of people had no affiliation

with the university. The second thing is that if you look at what's in the encampments, the kind of materials that are there, they're clearly not from the United States in many cases. And so what I've said to a lot of my friends in government and in media is follow the money. There's something behind what's happening.

And you've got to find those people to actually stop this from happening. Santono, Andrew Martin, thank you for a candid conversation and I look forward to continuing it. Thank you, Dan. Thanks. Thank you. That's our show for today.

If you found this episode valuable, please share it with others who you think may appreciate it. Time and again, we've seen that our listeners are the ones driving the growth of the Call Me Back community, so thank you. To offer comments, suggestions, sign up for updates, or explore past episodes, visit our website, ARKmedia.org. That's A-R-K-media.org, where you can also find transcripts with hyperlinked resources which will hopefully help you deepen your own understanding of the topics we cover. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huérgaux. Archimedia's executive editor is Yardena Schwartz. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Sinor.