From Silence to Rally: A First-Time Attendee's Stand Against Campus Antisemitism

I had never been to a rally. Until this past Sunday. It’s just not “me” - I viscerally hate crowds.

I had never been to a rally. Until this past Sunday. It’s just not “me” - I viscerally hate crowds.

Besides, I thought to myself, what impact could one more person make in a sea of faces? And yet, something compelled me to go this time. That “something” was the anger that I feel towards the treatment that Jewish students have been getting on our university campuses and the administrators’ failure to prevent an environment rife with harassment, antisemitism, and intimidation.

For context, my mother brought me to the United States from the former Soviet Union when I was 10 so that I could grow up in a society free of the kind of pervasive antisemitism that she had to experience there. She brought me here so that my future children could one day grow up in a free society where they could be proudly Jewish without fear of harassment or persecution. It is distressing, therefore, to hear from friends now reluctant to send their children to prestigious universities due to fears of antisemitism, and from students facing intimidation and harassment on those very campuses.

So, there I was, at the rally in Boston in support of Jewish students. Speaker after speaker conveyed their experiences, including several current college students experiencing these events first-hand. One young woman’s words particularly stuck in my mind:

I have learned about human nature, and sadly I have learned what is being taught on our college campuses. I have learned all about hate. I have also learned a lot about ignorance. And arrogance. I have learned that intelligent, well-intentioned people can be easily coerced into hateful and dangerous mobs… I have watched in real time on my own college campus when a professor encouraged student protestors to wear masks so that nobody could identify them.

What am I angry about? What should you be concerned about? Let’s put aside for a minute the issues surrounding what these mobs claim to be protesting about. That is an important, but separate issue.

What should be of great concern to all of us, Americans, is how these lawless mobs are trying to change our country for the worse. Not just for Jews, but for all of us who value freedom, who believe in following the law and who work hard to make a positive contribution to our society.

These groups, who represent a tiny minority of each university’s faculty and students, have decided to take the rest of us hostage to their agenda. For of course, to those who loudly scream about how “resistance is justified by any means necessary” the ends always justify the means.

They have decided to deprive others of the ability to learn. To ruin people’s hard-earned graduations. To put fear into some of their fellow students who don’t agree with their views.

That is not free speech or peaceful protest. It is not well-reasoned argument designed to change minds and to bring people around to their point of view. No. That is harassment, rule-breaking and intimidation. Its goal is simple – to change the rules of our society to allow a small, but noisy, minority to hijack the rest of our lives until we give in to their demands.

It’s bad enough that these mobs openly support Hamas, a savage terrorist organization that had just committed countless atrocities and whose stated goal is the genocide of Jews. It should be concerning enough to any American to see Hezbollah flags proudly displayed at these protests, even though this is a terrorist organization that has killed American citizens and would gladly do so again. The price of freedom is that we have to accept others being free to articulate views that are abhorrent to us.

However, that’s not all that’s happening here. Jews are being harassed in the hallways and not allowed to go to class. The mobs have been shouting for them to “go back to Poland,” showing both the mobs’ venom and lack of education. Jewish students have been spat on, assaulted, and harassed.

A supposed student protest leader at Columbia was recorded stating that Zionists should not be allowed to live. Zionists are those who believe that Israel should be allowed to exist as a homeland for the Jewish people on the land from which our ancestors were expelled two millennia ago. A homeland that centuries of persecution of Jews culminating in the Holocaust have convinced many is needed.

Not all Jews are Zionists, but many are. So when the student mobs claim that they are not against Jews but just against Zionists, that likely includes the majority of their Jewish classmates. It’s a fig leaf to be able to claim that they are not being antisemitic when they clearly are. And when they single out students and tell them they know where they live in conjunction with the rest of their rhetoric, this is clear harassment.

These aren’t people who want to persuade us, or anyone, of their views. These are bullies who want to intimidate and harass until they get their way. If we let them – we will have given up something important that makes our American society great. The freedom to believe what we want and to disagree with whomever we want without being threatened or harassed. Don’t let them get away with it.

When a rabbi at Columbia University sent out a message to all the Jewish students there strongly advising them to stay home for their safety, it’s not because he thought they will be offended by some thoughtful anti-Israeli argument. It’s because he genuinely believed they were no longer safe on campus, in large part because of weak school administrators who were unwilling to stand up to the mobs and enforce the rules.

It doesn’t matter if you are for or against Zionism. That’s not what’s at issue here. Are you for or against freedom? Are you for or against all of us having to obey rules and laws? Are you for or against the tiny Jewish minority being singled out, targeted, and harassed by antisemitic mobs in the name of some greater cause?

These Jews are Americans, just like you. They are your neighbors, your colleagues, parents of your kids’ friends. They could be your doctor or your lawyer. You might not even know that they are Jewish – for all intents and purposes they likely seem to you to be just like you – American. Because we are.

Yet the ancient scourge of antisemitism is likely on the mind of every Jew. Generation after generation Jews have been massacred, beaten, discriminated against, and evicted from their homes.

Every time Jews thought that “it was different this time” – it wasn’t. There is no better example than Germany of the 1930s which had a large, well-assimilated Jewish community with strong roots. In many ways the Jews were indistinguishable from their German neighbors, just like you are likely not even aware of who among the people you encounter in your daily life is Jewish unless you know them well.

As the evil of antisemitism gained momentum in Hitler’s Germany many of those same German neighbors turned on the Jews or stood aside not wanting to speak up. When the brownshirt thugs harassed or beat Jews in the streets, the police did not intervene. So when Columbia University risks becoming a Jew-free campus by virtue of giving in to the mob, many of us recall the history of how Jews were expelled from society by a small hateful group, the Nazis, while much of the rest of the country went along or allowed it to happen.

Here is some good news. While surveys show that there is a small minority of Americans who hold antisemitic views, the vast majority does not. There might be more antisemites in America than Jews, who make up just slightly over 2% of the U.S. population. However, there are far more decent people than there are antisemites. That’s powerful, as long as that large majority doesn’t stay silent.

I have three elementary school-aged kids, and their public school teaches them to be upstanders rather than bystanders. They are taught that bullies gain power not just when other kids egg them on, but also when the rest stay silent. When others speak up on the side of the kid being bullied, the spell is usually broken and the bullying stops.

It’s not that everyone needs to speak up to stop the bully. Having just one person intervene is frequently all it takes. That person, the one who sees something wrong being done and says something is the upstander.

What other good news can I point to? In a masterpiece on the history of antisemitism, Why The Jews? the author states that a litmus test of the degree of antisemitism in a society is what happens to the social standing of a person once their antisemitism is publicly revealed. Do they become more respected, or are they shunned by society for revealing their prejudice and hate?

There is a reason that the rule-breaking mobs are usually masked, sometimes with the encouragement of extremist faculty members supporting the protests. The rally that I attended, the one in support of Jewish students, none of us were masked. How come? None of us were embarrassed about anything that we were doing or saying, nor fearful of possible repercussions from others in society.

We don’t have to passively watch from the sidelines as the values we hold dear – freedom, rule of law and mutual respect even amidst strong disagreement are being trampled by a tiny minority bent on pursuing their agenda by whatever means they deem to be necessary. Those “means,” if allowed to become the norm, are going to make America a worse place for you and me. For my children and for your children. They are also just plain wrong.

So what can you do? If you hear someone spewing antisemitism, whether thinly veiled or not, speak up. There are a lot more of you than there are antisemites, and they are simply counting on you being too uncomfortable to say something. Believe me, they are more worried about all of you than you should be about them.

If you are a faculty member at one of these colleges, don’t be silent. Don’t let the tiny minority of faculty supporting mob behavior go unchallenged. Tell them that what they are encouraging is wrong, and that there is a better way for all of us to engage on these issues. There are a lot more of you than there are of them.

If you are a college administrator, enforce the rules and make sure that everyone on campus is safe, is able to freely pursue their education and is treated with the respect that they deserve. If all you can muster is empty threats and waffling as some of the students that you are charged with protecting continue to be harassed and are driven off campus, do us all a favor and step aside to allow someone with a stiffer backbone to do the job.

If you are a public official, speak out loudly with moral clarity. Call out those breaking the rules, harassing others or spewing hateful rhetoric. Be a leader worthy of the respect of those who elected you.

At our family dinner the night after I came back from the rally, I showed a video clip of the young woman who was courageous enough to share her college experiences. My 10 year-old son didn’t seem impressed. “She is not going to change anything. Nothing will be different because of her speech.”

After dinner, I found him in the living room alone. “I think you are wrong,” I told him. “I think that young lady speaking up will change something.” My son looked unconvinced.

“Some things are binary, they are either on or they are off,” I said, and flipped the light switch back and forth. “Now, have you ever seen a lamp with a dimmer that has a dial that can make it brighter?” He nodded. “Well, this is like that. No, no one person can magically solve everything by anything they do or say. That young lady’s words aren’t going to make all the problems disappear, but by speaking out she made things just a little better, and the light just a little brighter. Does that make sense?” He nodded, and I could see in his eyes that he understood.

The next time you have a chance, would you be willing to turn that light dial just a little bit brighter?

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About the author

Gary Mishuris, CFA is the Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer of Silver Ring Value Partners, an investment firm that seeks to apply its intrinsic value approach to safely compound capital over the long-term. He also teaches the Value Investing Seminar at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.