The Rise and Fall of Jews on Campus | SAPIR Journal
The open, virulent, and sometimes violent eruption of antisemitism at elite universities may be the most daunting social challenge faced by American Jews since the Ku Klux Klan’s antisemitic campaign in the 1960s. In the 1960s, elite universities were pressured to do away with long-standing discrimination in admissions and hiring. To diversify their student bodies and faculties, they opened their gates widely to those from different backgrounds. This transformation, which stressed merit and equal standards, without invidious discrimination, helped make American universities the best in the world and our nation a more perfect union. But on its coattails came pockets of far-Left radicalism. The strength of this movement of campus radicals grew over decades as it infiltrated and overhauled university administrations and power centers, emerging as the dominant social force on elite campuses. Today, many universities have morphed into hotbeds of illiberalism and antisemitism.