It was encouraging to read how Penn State dealt with a dark chapter in their history. But in that situation, when the darkness was finally exposed it’s safe to assume that almost everyone agreed, yes this is terrible, we all must pull together to rectify this situation that it may never happen again.
This current situation is deeper and broader and more complex and honestly, do you really believe the students, faculty and administrators are going to somehow become un-antisemitic? Ever? The abuse and hatred expressed toward Jewish students was unconscionable. It wasn’t an intellectual perspective, it was gut hatred. Why wasn’t it dealt with very early on?
The objective is not to eliminate the root of the problem, it is to prevent action based on that root. Pedophilia, racism, terfism, etc., are not going to disappear, but violence based on those beliefs can be minimized.
I believe Jane has correctly distilled the problem. One that most of us understand. I’m just hoping for a real world solution that actually eradicates the rot. Sharon R lays out a good plan but like others it requires a huge number of people on many levels to make it happen in a coordinated way. Seems unlikely. Like many American Jews I have hope and optimism, but in the real world, more and more I believe the only way out is to leave everything I have and love here, and move to Israel. Convincing my large immediate family (for whom I have almost total responsibility for) to join me, isn’t going very well.
It’s a lot easier to clean up the Sandusky scandal than clean out the rot of antisemitism at elite universities. The liberal arts faculties drink Jew hatred daily.
Thank you for this brilliant assessment. I worked at UC Berkeley for 30 years. It is also my alma mater. It would benefit greatly from acting on your suggestions.
The very smart people at Harvard don’t seem to remember that the Supreme Court has already told them that discriminating on the basis of race is unconstitutional and yet they have promised to continue to do so. I hope the Feds drop the hammer on them.
This has a lot of good advice for universities, but I think it understates the problem(s).
First, as to anti-Semitism: I don't doubt that there is significant anti-Semitism on all the campuses named, and on most others across the country. I think it is just one manifestation of significant anti-white atmosphere rooted in the woke politics of the past decade or two. It became more visible after October 7 2023, but it's been noted for longer than that. Glenn Loury highlighted the case of a Black woman DEI director, Tabia Lee, who was fired for, among other things, advocating on behalf of Jewish students who felt unwelcome at a California community college.
The broader problems stem from the broader woke agenda. It started 50 years ago with Affirmative Action policies that were plainly violations of the Civil Rights Act, but were winked at and encouraged by the Federal government. These metastasized into a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bureaucracy that even found its way into formal accreditation requirements. It demands more and more acts of performative virtue and more and more ridiculous training and indoctrination in the new ideology. College and university administrators and leaders allowed this institutional takeover partly because it was the path of least resistance to determined concentrated interests, and partly because their isolation within their ivory tower cocoons kept them from understanding how ridiculous the ideology is. I doubt you could find 5% of students or faculty who genuinely believe in the ideology as presented and enforced, but it is nevertheless official orthodoxy at most if not all public and private colleges in the US. If it has penetrated to community colleges, the entire system is rotten through and through. Forcing students, employees, faculty, and administrators to profess allegiance to ludicrous ideas as a price of membership is profoundly destructive of the intellectual integrity vital to any functioning educational institution.
Ms. Simon draws a distinction between corporations, that can rightly be allowed to collapse in ruin due to mismanagement and misconduct, and universities, which "no one wants to see ... crumble and fail." I think this is fundamentally incorrect. If Siemens were to collapse due to its misdeeds and inability to address them, it would be justified and salutary, but would involve very great costs to the individuals involved as well as the broader society. In the same sense, if a prominent university were to collapse due to its own misdeeds and the inability of its leaders to chart a better path, it would be justified and salutary, but involve very real costs to the individuals involved as well as the broader society.
Collapses are justified for institutions that are incapable of effective functioning. They are salutary examples for other institutions that may need some external motivation to address their own problems.
Big picture I agree with what you are saying. I disagree with a lot of the examples. I am very familiar with all things Penn State and very familiar with fighting antisemitism, btw decades with both.
Nothing gained arguing details. If I understand what you are saying is that these universities lost the right to police themselves. Yes, money is both at the root of the cause and is the carrot on the stick in incentivizing change.
There has to be a cost, real pain, for the universities. That "association" is usually the most effective method.
You’ve got to be joking posting this. Penn State has been abysmal handling the antisemitic rhetoric and actions at Main, and to toot your own horn at how the Sandusky scandal was handled compared to the Ivies handling of their baby terrorist wannabes from even before 10/7 is disingenuous and a comparison of apples and oranges.
Penn State has avoided the mass demonstrations seen at the Ivies perhaps not only by the grace of G-d, but also due to its geographical location. Protestors are not being bussed in the same way as in other schools. It’s not so easy to get to State College. The overall consensus of the student body is also one of political apathy. They aren’t at Penn State for political identity among their peers. They’re not there for social justice issues. They’re there to get a good education at a large well-known public university with extensive networking and a huge alumni base, enjoy football, party, and in general just enjoy their 4 years at a good school.
The PSU president and her staff however have done an absolutely terrible job at addressing the concerns of parents, especially Jewish parents, since October 7. They have ignored us time and time again. No response to emails and phone calls, or no follow through.
Most importantly, they allowed Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to reform and quietly pushed their recognition through in December 2023 over the winter break, less than 3 months after the massacre in Israel committed by Hamas and Palestinians. They have permitted takeovers of the lawn outside Old Main with false claims of genocide and apartheid. They have allowed signs with swastikas to be displayed, as recently as last week. A Jewish parent visiting the school with her prospective student saw that and was appalled, and the word about it quickly spread to many Jewish organizations, including MACA, Mothers Against College Antisemitism, an organization with over 60,000 active members. Do you think parents want to send their Jewish kids to PSU after seeing this? There were posters announcing a “Week of Rage” placed on the inside of every bathroom stall at the HUB along with the usual activities happening last week at Penn State, as if a “Week of Rage” is simply another benign activity that PSU students should know about.
So perhaps before you share with us how Penn State can advise other universities, you should make sure to clear all the stones out of your own glass house.
You missed the point--the point of the article is not to idealize PSU, but rather to chart a course that the Ivies and others should and must follow given their disgraceful responses to the antisemitism on their campuses. The PSU actions re: the football related scandals can serve as a model. The current PSU issues are real, and also need a similar set of responses. But that does not devalue the path that Ellen charts.
PSU is not giving advice, Ellen is. Her advice is as relevant to the PSU of today as it was back when she was the monitor for the PSU of years past. Put another way, she is telling you what worked in their previous crisis, and which can be applied to the schools of today as well as, indeed, to the PSU of today.
FJSN - you are not wrong. Ellen, sorry. You may be brilliant, accomplished,etc. but you are sorely naive. I’m guessing you were surprised by the level of hate against Jews, October 7 forward. I’m a dummy but I wasn’t surprised in the least. I immediately warned my then-naive children what to expect (three of whom graduated from Brown).
How is it naive to advise colleges to take this moment seriously and not struggle against the inevitability of implementing the required demands?
No, I have been writing about antisemitism in schools for years. I was lucky enough to be in school in England when this same stuff happened during the intifada and nothing was happening on American campuses yet.
I’m thinking you missed the point of this piece like the first guy. Im suggesting that schools should take this very seriously and would be better served by throwing themselves into meeting the demands rather than fighting them because they won’t win.
Sorry I didn’t finish my thought. I was not clear. You have every right to advise, you are immensely naive to believe the university will heed it in any way that will actually eradicate the antisemitism I see in so many students, faculty, and administrators there(and in so many of our - formally- elite universities ) Again - no disrespect- but were you surprised by the hate, and/or dismissal,following Oct 7?
I agree with FJ. Ellen's comments, respectfully, aspirational but naive. Child sexual abuse resonates with everyone where as Jew hatred doesn't even resonate with most Jews.
Frankly as a Jew-Billy from Appalachia, not far from State College, I know the drill.
There is also a lot more to understanding why Sandusky happened than most folks are willing to spend the time to understand.
At first I missed that answer. Apologies. So now you’ve met one of the other few who have been able to see all this brewing ( in my case many decades before). You’ve written the books. I’ve read them. Considered obsessed by everyone who knows me. Unless I come to know you better I’m afraid I still have to keep u in the naive column. I believe your writing and efforts won’t move the antisemitism needle any further than my lonesome and solitary handwringing here in rural RI. Someday maybe I’ll learn more about you and be changed. On a completely different note, have you ever read the book Human Smoke?
Undergrads are coming from a different demographic than the most problematic schools.
PSU, a public university in a rural and conservative state, students overwhelmingly come from public schools in school districts that may Democratic but not Left. Self selective.
The Ivy's and other "good" east coast schools draw more kids from private schools who all were bound by the NAIS accreditation requirements of having branded DEI platforms.
Huge difference.
Not that DEI and woke professors didn't exist in State College, the influence was far less.
It didn't hurt that over the last twenty plus years the Jewish student population at Penn State went from eh and not involved to huge and very connected similar to College Park.
I don't disagree that our student population generally comes from a different demographic, but the antisemitic student organizers are OOS grad students. The Jewish population at Maryland is actually almost double that of Penn State - 19.1% at UMD to 10% at PSU
Despite this, PSU should not be giving a blue print to anyone on this particular issue. If they want to provide an example on how to bounce back from a sports scandal, great.
This administration has repeatedly ignored our concerns. No student - minority or otherwise - should feel unsafe on campus because of the actions of student groups.
This piece is not arguing that Penn state should be giving a blueprint on how to deal with this issue. This piece is saying people should learn from oenn state’s monitorship and how it proceeded and that these schools also need similar long term oversight.
Thank you. Two more semesters after this one and we will be done. Thankfully our older two are finished with their formal education.
What’s extremely frustrating is I was very aware of antisemitism at universities way before 10/7. One of the reasons we went with PSU a second time around was that there was no active SJP. And now here we are.
Send this piece directly to every lawyer representing each university whose egregious behavior has brought shame to the schools and and such pain and terror to our nation! Much of your advice seems like common sense, especially given how we’ve all watched which movie stars recovered from atrocious conduct and which didn’t. You’re right tho, none of these Ivies is willing to openly concede what really happened, at least not yet, and I’ll bet, none too soon. It will take much more pain inflicted and much more turmoil in the press and in our homes around our dinner tables. Send this to them anyway!
I’m not associated with PSU. Our family members are alumni of several elite US universities including, but not limited to Harvard/Harvard Business School, NYU, NYU Law, and U Penn, many of which have taught, encouraged, and tolerated virulent and violent hate, antisemitism, antiZionism, and anti Americanism. Therefore, I relate to and I’d like to acknowledge your rage at how poorly PSU has handled the aftermath of October 7th.
I’d also like to thank and acknowledge two of our family’s alma maters, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and Emory University, for staying out of the fray.
Instead of fighting and disciplining our country’s Centers of Islamic Extremist Hate & Indoctrination, like Harvard, Columbia, U Penn, NYU, MIT, Brown, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, it is my proposal that we allow American capitalism to work. We should 1) only consider, apply to, and educate ourselves and our children at true centers of accurate knowledge, scholarship, research, and education. 2) Expand our children’s educational, vocational, and professional options to include trade/skill based schools, the US military, the arts, and community colleges. 3) Require that any educational or vocational center that we and our children/students choose are led by highly competent, experienced, morally guided, educated, visionary LEADERS, with exceptional parenting skills. 4) Promote, acknowledge, reward, and fund schools and career choices emulating these qualities.
Examples of such universities include University of Florida, Vanderbilt, and Dartmouth.
This is not supposed ot be a referendum on wthe value of a liberal arts education, colored with xenophobic and frankly racist rants. Hiding behind your freedom fight handle doesn’t give you the moral high ground to launch baseless conspiracy theories and pro maga pandering . I’m a Jewish alumni of brown and I no many others so perhaps do some research before replying to her thoughtful article
It was encouraging to read how Penn State dealt with a dark chapter in their history. But in that situation, when the darkness was finally exposed it’s safe to assume that almost everyone agreed, yes this is terrible, we all must pull together to rectify this situation that it may never happen again.
This current situation is deeper and broader and more complex and honestly, do you really believe the students, faculty and administrators are going to somehow become un-antisemitic? Ever? The abuse and hatred expressed toward Jewish students was unconscionable. It wasn’t an intellectual perspective, it was gut hatred. Why wasn’t it dealt with very early on?
The objective is not to eliminate the root of the problem, it is to prevent action based on that root. Pedophilia, racism, terfism, etc., are not going to disappear, but violence based on those beliefs can be minimized.
I believe Jane has correctly distilled the problem. One that most of us understand. I’m just hoping for a real world solution that actually eradicates the rot. Sharon R lays out a good plan but like others it requires a huge number of people on many levels to make it happen in a coordinated way. Seems unlikely. Like many American Jews I have hope and optimism, but in the real world, more and more I believe the only way out is to leave everything I have and love here, and move to Israel. Convincing my large immediate family (for whom I have almost total responsibility for) to join me, isn’t going very well.
May you come to have clarity and peace about your decision.
It’s a lot easier to clean up the Sandusky scandal than clean out the rot of antisemitism at elite universities. The liberal arts faculties drink Jew hatred daily.
Thank you for this brilliant assessment. I worked at UC Berkeley for 30 years. It is also my alma mater. It would benefit greatly from acting on your suggestions.
The very smart people at Harvard don’t seem to remember that the Supreme Court has already told them that discriminating on the basis of race is unconstitutional and yet they have promised to continue to do so. I hope the Feds drop the hammer on them.
This has a lot of good advice for universities, but I think it understates the problem(s).
First, as to anti-Semitism: I don't doubt that there is significant anti-Semitism on all the campuses named, and on most others across the country. I think it is just one manifestation of significant anti-white atmosphere rooted in the woke politics of the past decade or two. It became more visible after October 7 2023, but it's been noted for longer than that. Glenn Loury highlighted the case of a Black woman DEI director, Tabia Lee, who was fired for, among other things, advocating on behalf of Jewish students who felt unwelcome at a California community college.
The broader problems stem from the broader woke agenda. It started 50 years ago with Affirmative Action policies that were plainly violations of the Civil Rights Act, but were winked at and encouraged by the Federal government. These metastasized into a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion bureaucracy that even found its way into formal accreditation requirements. It demands more and more acts of performative virtue and more and more ridiculous training and indoctrination in the new ideology. College and university administrators and leaders allowed this institutional takeover partly because it was the path of least resistance to determined concentrated interests, and partly because their isolation within their ivory tower cocoons kept them from understanding how ridiculous the ideology is. I doubt you could find 5% of students or faculty who genuinely believe in the ideology as presented and enforced, but it is nevertheless official orthodoxy at most if not all public and private colleges in the US. If it has penetrated to community colleges, the entire system is rotten through and through. Forcing students, employees, faculty, and administrators to profess allegiance to ludicrous ideas as a price of membership is profoundly destructive of the intellectual integrity vital to any functioning educational institution.
Ms. Simon draws a distinction between corporations, that can rightly be allowed to collapse in ruin due to mismanagement and misconduct, and universities, which "no one wants to see ... crumble and fail." I think this is fundamentally incorrect. If Siemens were to collapse due to its misdeeds and inability to address them, it would be justified and salutary, but would involve very great costs to the individuals involved as well as the broader society. In the same sense, if a prominent university were to collapse due to its own misdeeds and the inability of its leaders to chart a better path, it would be justified and salutary, but involve very real costs to the individuals involved as well as the broader society.
Collapses are justified for institutions that are incapable of effective functioning. They are salutary examples for other institutions that may need some external motivation to address their own problems.
Big picture I agree with what you are saying. I disagree with a lot of the examples. I am very familiar with all things Penn State and very familiar with fighting antisemitism, btw decades with both.
Nothing gained arguing details. If I understand what you are saying is that these universities lost the right to police themselves. Yes, money is both at the root of the cause and is the carrot on the stick in incentivizing change.
There has to be a cost, real pain, for the universities. That "association" is usually the most effective method.
You’ve got to be joking posting this. Penn State has been abysmal handling the antisemitic rhetoric and actions at Main, and to toot your own horn at how the Sandusky scandal was handled compared to the Ivies handling of their baby terrorist wannabes from even before 10/7 is disingenuous and a comparison of apples and oranges.
Penn State has avoided the mass demonstrations seen at the Ivies perhaps not only by the grace of G-d, but also due to its geographical location. Protestors are not being bussed in the same way as in other schools. It’s not so easy to get to State College. The overall consensus of the student body is also one of political apathy. They aren’t at Penn State for political identity among their peers. They’re not there for social justice issues. They’re there to get a good education at a large well-known public university with extensive networking and a huge alumni base, enjoy football, party, and in general just enjoy their 4 years at a good school.
The PSU president and her staff however have done an absolutely terrible job at addressing the concerns of parents, especially Jewish parents, since October 7. They have ignored us time and time again. No response to emails and phone calls, or no follow through.
Most importantly, they allowed Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) to reform and quietly pushed their recognition through in December 2023 over the winter break, less than 3 months after the massacre in Israel committed by Hamas and Palestinians. They have permitted takeovers of the lawn outside Old Main with false claims of genocide and apartheid. They have allowed signs with swastikas to be displayed, as recently as last week. A Jewish parent visiting the school with her prospective student saw that and was appalled, and the word about it quickly spread to many Jewish organizations, including MACA, Mothers Against College Antisemitism, an organization with over 60,000 active members. Do you think parents want to send their Jewish kids to PSU after seeing this? There were posters announcing a “Week of Rage” placed on the inside of every bathroom stall at the HUB along with the usual activities happening last week at Penn State, as if a “Week of Rage” is simply another benign activity that PSU students should know about.
So perhaps before you share with us how Penn State can advise other universities, you should make sure to clear all the stones out of your own glass house.
You missed the point--the point of the article is not to idealize PSU, but rather to chart a course that the Ivies and others should and must follow given their disgraceful responses to the antisemitism on their campuses. The PSU actions re: the football related scandals can serve as a model. The current PSU issues are real, and also need a similar set of responses. But that does not devalue the path that Ellen charts.
My point was that if PSU cannot practice what it preaches, who are they to give advice to anyone or any other school particularly on this matter.
PSU is not giving advice, Ellen is. Her advice is as relevant to the PSU of today as it was back when she was the monitor for the PSU of years past. Put another way, she is telling you what worked in their previous crisis, and which can be applied to the schools of today as well as, indeed, to the PSU of today.
Correct.
I’m sure you meant well and I appreciate that.
However, seeing what is going on and how the administration has handled it makes me read it a little differently.
FJSN - you are not wrong. Ellen, sorry. You may be brilliant, accomplished,etc. but you are sorely naive. I’m guessing you were surprised by the level of hate against Jews, October 7 forward. I’m a dummy but I wasn’t surprised in the least. I immediately warned my then-naive children what to expect (three of whom graduated from Brown).
How is it naive to advise colleges to take this moment seriously and not struggle against the inevitability of implementing the required demands?
No, I have been writing about antisemitism in schools for years. I was lucky enough to be in school in England when this same stuff happened during the intifada and nothing was happening on American campuses yet.
I’m thinking you missed the point of this piece like the first guy. Im suggesting that schools should take this very seriously and would be better served by throwing themselves into meeting the demands rather than fighting them because they won’t win.
No disrespect intended but I did not miss your point. I understood it exactly as you reiterated it.
Sorry I didn’t finish my thought. I was not clear. You have every right to advise, you are immensely naive to believe the university will heed it in any way that will actually eradicate the antisemitism I see in so many students, faculty, and administrators there(and in so many of our - formally- elite universities ) Again - no disrespect- but were you surprised by the hate, and/or dismissal,following Oct 7?
I agree with FJ. Ellen's comments, respectfully, aspirational but naive. Child sexual abuse resonates with everyone where as Jew hatred doesn't even resonate with most Jews.
Frankly as a Jew-Billy from Appalachia, not far from State College, I know the drill.
There is also a lot more to understanding why Sandusky happened than most folks are willing to spend the time to understand.
At first I missed that answer. Apologies. So now you’ve met one of the other few who have been able to see all this brewing ( in my case many decades before). You’ve written the books. I’ve read them. Considered obsessed by everyone who knows me. Unless I come to know you better I’m afraid I still have to keep u in the naive column. I believe your writing and efforts won’t move the antisemitism needle any further than my lonesome and solitary handwringing here in rural RI. Someday maybe I’ll learn more about you and be changed. On a completely different note, have you ever read the book Human Smoke?
No but just googled and looks interesting. Adding to my queue.
Are you a PSU grad?
Undergrads are coming from a different demographic than the most problematic schools.
PSU, a public university in a rural and conservative state, students overwhelmingly come from public schools in school districts that may Democratic but not Left. Self selective.
The Ivy's and other "good" east coast schools draw more kids from private schools who all were bound by the NAIS accreditation requirements of having branded DEI platforms.
Huge difference.
Not that DEI and woke professors didn't exist in State College, the influence was far less.
It didn't hurt that over the last twenty plus years the Jewish student population at Penn State went from eh and not involved to huge and very connected similar to College Park.
Parent of an alum (2019) and current student.
I don't disagree that our student population generally comes from a different demographic, but the antisemitic student organizers are OOS grad students. The Jewish population at Maryland is actually almost double that of Penn State - 19.1% at UMD to 10% at PSU
Despite this, PSU should not be giving a blue print to anyone on this particular issue. If they want to provide an example on how to bounce back from a sports scandal, great.
This administration has repeatedly ignored our concerns. No student - minority or otherwise - should feel unsafe on campus because of the actions of student groups.
This piece is not arguing that Penn state should be giving a blueprint on how to deal with this issue. This piece is saying people should learn from oenn state’s monitorship and how it proceeded and that these schools also need similar long term oversight.
I am so glad my kids are out of school. I am truly sorry you and your children have to go thru this.
Thank you. Two more semesters after this one and we will be done. Thankfully our older two are finished with their formal education.
What’s extremely frustrating is I was very aware of antisemitism at universities way before 10/7. One of the reasons we went with PSU a second time around was that there was no active SJP. And now here we are.
Send this piece directly to every lawyer representing each university whose egregious behavior has brought shame to the schools and and such pain and terror to our nation! Much of your advice seems like common sense, especially given how we’ve all watched which movie stars recovered from atrocious conduct and which didn’t. You’re right tho, none of these Ivies is willing to openly concede what really happened, at least not yet, and I’ll bet, none too soon. It will take much more pain inflicted and much more turmoil in the press and in our homes around our dinner tables. Send this to them anyway!
FJSN and Ellen,
I’m not associated with PSU. Our family members are alumni of several elite US universities including, but not limited to Harvard/Harvard Business School, NYU, NYU Law, and U Penn, many of which have taught, encouraged, and tolerated virulent and violent hate, antisemitism, antiZionism, and anti Americanism. Therefore, I relate to and I’d like to acknowledge your rage at how poorly PSU has handled the aftermath of October 7th.
I’d also like to thank and acknowledge two of our family’s alma maters, Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science and Emory University, for staying out of the fray.
Instead of fighting and disciplining our country’s Centers of Islamic Extremist Hate & Indoctrination, like Harvard, Columbia, U Penn, NYU, MIT, Brown, Princeton, Cornell, Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, it is my proposal that we allow American capitalism to work. We should 1) only consider, apply to, and educate ourselves and our children at true centers of accurate knowledge, scholarship, research, and education. 2) Expand our children’s educational, vocational, and professional options to include trade/skill based schools, the US military, the arts, and community colleges. 3) Require that any educational or vocational center that we and our children/students choose are led by highly competent, experienced, morally guided, educated, visionary LEADERS, with exceptional parenting skills. 4) Promote, acknowledge, reward, and fund schools and career choices emulating these qualities.
Examples of such universities include University of Florida, Vanderbilt, and Dartmouth.
This is not supposed ot be a referendum on wthe value of a liberal arts education, colored with xenophobic and frankly racist rants. Hiding behind your freedom fight handle doesn’t give you the moral high ground to launch baseless conspiracy theories and pro maga pandering . I’m a Jewish alumni of brown and I no many others so perhaps do some research before replying to her thoughtful article