JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.

A campus partnership could challenge Chabad's big tent policy; Robert Kraft’s antisemitism ad draws public ire; and a conversation with the Berkeley professor ‘sitting in’ his own office

UP FIRST

The Education Department doesn’t offer hair and makeup before the photographer pops in to the press conference, but here I am questioning Secretary Miguel Cardona about antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus in February. (Photo: U.S. Dept. of Education)

Welcome to Antisemitism Notebook — a new, weekly newsletter where I’ll be helping you make sense of what has felt like a bewildering surge of hostility toward Jews since Oct. 7. Alarming incidents have swept college campuses and city streets, throwing our community into a crisis. Coverage of antisemitism has leapt off the Forward’s pages and landed on the cover of national magazines, including a recent declaration that “The Golden Age of American Jews Is Ending.”

But this furor didn’t begin in October, and it won’t end after this war is over — the struggle to understand what it means to keep Jews safe, and in a position to thrive, in the United States is long and complex.

I’ve spent years reporting on the grim — and often confounding — reality of contemporary antisemitism. I’ll bring to this newsletter what I’ve learned, both before and since Oct. 7, to help you navigate this thicket of facts and feelings. My guiding light is a question that Susan Datz Edelman asked me last spring, when I interviewed her for an article about neo-Nazis projecting swastikas on local landmarks in her hometown of Jacksonville, Florida.

Susan said the hardest part was not knowing how serious the threat was.

“You can’t react proportionally,” she told me. “What is it that’s out there?”

That’s a question I’ve tried to answer in all my reporting, joining with my colleagues to visit college campuses across the country last fall to see what it was really like to be Jewish on campus in the early days of the war, and carefully examining the huge volumes of data on antisemitism that have been released in recent months.

I’ve also spoken to Arab and Muslim students whose activism has been painted as a menacing threat. I’ve asked experts what to make of those flashy television ads calling out “Jewish hate”, and documented the surge of federal investigations and lawsuits related to antisemitism and Islamophobia in higher education.

I’ll bring that same inquisitive spirit to this newsletter. But I also want to hear from you. What’s keeping you up at night? What don’t you understand? What’s giving you hope?

The ADL and Chabad have different approaches to campus politics. Will a new partnership change that?

A student at Columbia University wraps herself in an Israeli flag during a fall protest. (Photo: Getty Images)

As reports of antisemitism on college campuses — and lawsuits about it — have skyrocketed since the onset of the war in Gaza, the Anti-Defamation League has launched its “Not On My Campus” campaign. The group announced in January that it would begin publishing a “report card” for prospective students grading universities on how they handle antisemitism, edging into territory that had long been the purview of Hillel International’s annual college guide.

“We need to recognize we’re all part of the same community.”

– Rabbi Mendel Matusof, Chabad at the University of Wisconsin

And at the ADL’s national conference last week, chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt unveiled a new partnership with Chabad on Campus that he said had taken several years and “a ton of work.”

Details are scarce, but the ADL plans to start training Chabad’s campus rabbis — called shluchim — and the two groups will launch a joint portal to log reports of antisemitism.

This jumped out to me because it has the potential to run counter to a special sauce that has helped Chabad thrive on campus: the autonomy of its shluchim. That has included lots of flexibility around Israel, and few of the political litmus tests that have turned some Jewish students off from engaging with Hillel in recent years.

In contrast to Chabad’s “take all comers” approach, the ADL has been warning about the threat it believes is posed by anti-Zionist Jews — especially since Oct. 7. Greenblatt has repeatedly compared them to white supremacists; during his keynote last week, he likened Jewish Voice for Peace, which boasts a large campus presence, to David Duke and the Proud Boys.

“I don’t even know what that means,” said Rabbi Mendel Matusof, who has welcomed JVP members to the Chabad at the University of Wisconsin over the years. “We need to recognize we’re all part of the same community.”

(Both the ADL and Chabad emphasized in statements that the partnership was one of many they each maintain, and Rabbi Avi Weinstein, the chief operating officer of Chabad on Campus, said: “There has been no shift in policy. We welcome every Jew, no matter their opinions on Israel or other topics.”)

Matusof’s open approach to Israel — he’s a strong supporter, but doesn’t want any Jewish students to feel unwelcome — first made headlines five years ago, after Nesha Ruther, a leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, joined his Chabad.

Ruther, who is now 25, isn’t so sure that she’d do so today. She sees Chabad’s partnership with the ADL as a sign of the shrinking Jewish tent on campuses and noted that “so many people are operating from a place of deep fear.”

“In the past there was more space to hold differing opinions and still come together as Jews and still hold great amounts of pride and joy for one another,” she told me. “Unfortunately, I don’t see that being as likely in the future.”

IN THE NEWS

Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, managed to dodge a congressional hearing on campus antisemitism in December, but she’ll now testify in April. (Photo: Getty Images)

Columbia’s turn in the hot seat: Maybe the savviest move that any college president has made in the last few months was Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, skipping out on the infamous December congressional hearing about campus antisemitism (she cited a scheduling conflict). All three presidents who showed up were roundly criticized for their answers, and two — Harvard’s Claudine Gay and M. Elizabeth Magil of UPenn — have since been forced to resign. Shafik’s reward? Testifying at an April hearing devoted specifically to her school: “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.” [Inside Higher Ed]

IHRA wins in Indiana — did it lose?: The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism is either the “gold standard” or a threat to free speech, depending on who you ask. Now, it has either been endorsed by or defeated in the Indiana legislature, depending on who you ask. After months of debate, lawmakers passed a bill Friday to define antisemitism in the state’s education code that relied on IHRA’s language but removed references to the group’s name and examples included with the definition that referenced Israel. [The Associated Press]

GOP leaders ask if DEI is causing antisemitism: Jay Greene, a senior researcher at the Heritage Foundation, says yes. “According to this worldview, oppressors deserve to have their privilege taken away, while the oppressed deserve restitution for collective or historic wrongs,” Greene said at a Capitol Hill hearing last week. “Justifying unequal treatment based on group identity can yield horrific results.” [The Hill]

Meet the man behind a flurry of federal antisemitism complaints: Zachary Marschall, editor of the conservative website Campus Reform, has filed at least 12 of the 50-plus new investigations into colleges and university since Oct. 7. “I did it because I kind of felt that there’s no excuse not to do it,” Marschall said. [JTA]

Holocaust restitution gets a refresh: The world’s leading Jewish restitution group updated its standards for returning Nazi-looted artwork, with the support of more than 20 countries. One big change: New pressure on museums to return other stolen artwork, often from colonial conquests. My colleague Mira Fox covered this fascinating phenomenon for us last year. [JTA]

FORWARD FACE IN THE FIGHT: RON HASSER

Ron Hasser, a professor at U.C. Berkeley, has been camped out in his office since last Thursday to protest antisemitism on campus. (Photo: Courtesy)

One week after sequestering himself in his office on the University of California, Berkeley campus to protest anti-Zionism and antisemitism there, Professor Ron Hassner is drawing in nosh. Pizza delivered by mail, bottles of wine, fruit baskets and gift cards have been pouring in from as far away as Brazil and Australia. And his office has been full of students, some stopping by as late as midnight to talk about antisemitism and protests against Israel on campus.

Despite the fact that Hassner is not showering during the protest to mimic a Jewish mourning ritual, his wife and two kids still come to visit every day, and Hassner has moved his undergraduate course — “War in the Middle East,” as it so happens — to Zoom.

Hassner, the school’s Israel studies chair, is emphatic that faculty shouldn’t bring their personal views into the classroom. But he makes no bones about where he stands on campus unrest that has swept the country since Oct. 7. “The anti-Zionists and BDSers and antisemites on my campus have no chance at all of affecting the state of Israel,” Hassner told me. “Their only hope is to scare Jews away.”

And he has a message for the legions of Jewish leaders professing concern about the issue: “Show students that you’re willing to make some sacrifice for them,” he said. “Inconvenience yourself a little.”

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