This week’s hearing on antisemitism at American universities shocked the nation, as the leaders of several elite colleges refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the code of conduct on their campuses.
They talked about “context” and hid behind the First Amendment — which they ignore when they ban conservative speakers, or “microaggressions.”
What we learned is that these university administrators are moral cowards. But to understand the roots of antisemitism, we have to dig deeper.
That was the job of Dr. Pamela Nadell, the antisemitism scholar from American University who appeared on the congressional panel with the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT. But she failed, because she has the wrong understanding of the problem.
Nadell said that antisemitism was an American “tradition.” In fact, the opposite is true: while the United States has experienced antisemitism, it has historically been the least antisemitic country on earth, outside of Israel. Our “tradition” is to embrace Jews.
In 1790, President George Washington wrote to the Jewish community in Newport, Rhode Island, pledging that in the U.S., “All possess alike…
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