The Real Problem of American Universities

By Luis Fleischman
Photo by Emily Ranquist

The recent Congressional hearing featuring the presidents of three top American universities sheds light on a more severe problem than antisemitism. 

A recent story by the New York Times laments the fact that the antisemitic incidents that followed the October 7 attacks have led universities to cancel pro-Palestinian activities on campuses. The report also cites those who blame donors’ withdrawals of millions of dollars for the alleged assault on free speech.

 It may well be that the loss of contributions is playing a role.  However, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Campaign (BDS) that has been conducted for the last two decades has affected freedom of speech and has used money as a weapon. 

The BDS campaign has launched a well-funded war of propaganda that has involved students, professors, and academic associations. In addition, groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), also well-funded, have even resorted to violence, as we have seen in Cooper Union, where Jewish students were confined to the library, afraid for their safety. Likewise, Jewish students feel constantly intimidated, often by professors themselves who have taken extreme anti-Israel positions. 

A recent survey showed that most students who support the Palestinian cause and even the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”— a slogan that suggests the end of Israel as a Jewish state— have no clue about the facts of the Middle East, including the names of the river and the sea in question.  

The problem is that it is not just students.

Some professors have expressed  similar positions. More than one hundred professors at Columbia University referred to Hamas’s monstrous attacks in southern Israel as a “military action” carried in the representation of an “occupied people exercising a right to resist.” A professor in Columbia celebrated these attacks as “major achievements of the resistance. At UC Berkley, a professor offered extra credit to students who attended anti-Israel protests, while at UCLA a professor justified Hamas’s attacks by claiming that anything that the oppressed do is legitimate. 

I have spoken with professors who have signed letters condemning Israel but who had no knowledge of the facts of the Middle East, or the knowledge they displayed derived from Palestinian cliches. Some had the decency to admit that the topic requires more discussion. Others accused me of being an agent of Zionist propaganda, and with that, they shut down the conversation. 

So, why would intelligent academics be willing to sign proclamations on topics they do not fully understand? Because of a well-organized propaganda and mobilization campaign whose dogmas seem too obvious to reflect on them. 

Unbalanced views that require substantial discussion or inaccurate assertions are presented as absolute truths. “Israel never offered Palestinian sovereignty” (Rachid Khalidi); “Israel offered peace but applied undue pressure to the Palestinians to say yes or “no (Ahmad Khalidi, Robert Malley); Hamas and Hezbollah are progressive social movements (Judith Butler); The Palestinian Authority is a sub-contractor for Israeli repression (Gershon Shafir). The list of distortions is long. 

But the victims here are the students whose parents pay high tuition and do not gain intellectual stimulation or critical thinking skills. I would say that this pathological phenomenon happens not only with the topic of the Middle East but with other topics as well, particularly those affected by reductionist theories such as “oppressors vs. oppressed,” “settler colonialism,” and other simplistic and hostile notions. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a symptom of a more significant intellectual decline found mainly in the liberal arts.   

A recent report by the Institute for the Study of Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) found that Qatar provided substantial funding to American universities. Universities should have reported this funding to the Department of Education, but they did not. 

Therefore, it is imperative to investigate the following questions: Are these sources legitimate? Have they been adequately reported by the universities? What are the reasons that universities failed to report them? Is funding coming with strings attached, either directly or indirectly? 

Most recently, Dr. Jonathan Schanzer from the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy testified in Congress. In his testimony, Schanzer claims that extremist groups like SJP and others that conduct acts of violence and antisemitism, received funding from American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). AMP, according to Schanzer, is tied to Hamas. Furthermore, AMP has also had access to several progressive Members of Congress.

Such a situation requires a thorough investigation.  

The current crisis in the universities presents an opportunity not only to seriously challenge and weaken BDS but also to reevaluate the quality of education, particularly in the liberal arts. 

About Luis Fleischman

Luis Fleischman is a professor of Sociology at Palm Beach State College, the co-founder of the think-tank the Palm Beach Center for Democracy and Policy Research. He is also the author of “Latin America in the Post-Chavez Era: The Threat to U.S. Security,” and the author of the book, “The Middle East Riddle: The Arab-Israeli Conflict in Light of Political and Social Transformations in the Arab World,” to be published by New Academia.”