The Gaza crisis has sent out shock waves that extend to America. In this podcast, we explore how different communities and institutions in the US are responding. Rabbi Michael Holzman and David French join Curtis to examine what is happening for Jewish American communities,  college campuses, the progressive movement, American evangelicals, and wider public support for Israel.

This excerpt has been edited for length and clarity. 

MICHAEL HOLZMAN: I’m a congregational rabbit, not a national leader, and the biggest, most disturbing thing I hear every day at work is the report parents grandparents have from their children on college campuses. They’re really dismayed by what they’re hearing from all over the country. 

CURTIS CHANG: David, you’re a keen observer and a thought leader on the happenings of college campuses. What’s going on there?

DAVID FRENCH: Yeah, a couple of distinct things are happening, and we need to keep them distinct. 

First, you’re seeing a lot of pro-Palestinian students, student groups engaging in something like normal college activism. But the twist is that they’re supporting Hamas after a brutal murder. They’re really pushing the envelope of what free speech protects, but it does protect this. The principles of free speech even protect  advocacy for violence, but not imminent violence. In other words, you can’t incite immediate or imminent lawless action, but you can support violent actions with your speech. This has been permissible under American law for a very long time. 

So on the one hand, this appears to be normal tabling, normal leafleting, et cetera, but the content of the message is abnormal. Nevertheless, it’s still protected speech. That’s one category. 

But harassment and vandalism is also happening – for instance, tearing down posters of kidnapped women and children. Tearing down someone else’s speech is not free speech. That’s vandalism. And in fact, if a public university allows students to tear down other students’ speech, there’s circumstances in which the university can even be liable for that. When a university selectively lets its guard down and allows some students to censor or shout down others, then it’s violating its own obligations. 

Then there’s a third category that is rarer, but is still happening: actual harassment under the law. Some Jewish students were locked in a library at the Cooper Union in New York while a furious crowd pounded outside. Another Jewish student who had been photographing protestors was physically attacked as he tried to leave the protest. 

And by the way, if you’re at a public protest, you don’t have a right not to be photographed. okay? That’s not a thing. 

When you’re talking about physical intimidation, you’re moving into harassment under the law. And every federally-funded college in America has a responsibility to protect its students against harassment on the basis of race. And the Biden administration has been very clear that federal law prohibiting harassment on the basis of race, national origin, et cetera, applies to antisemitism. 

So we are seeing this interesting – and scary in some circumstances – range of campus reactions. And if you’re a Jewish student and somebody is celebrating the terror attacks, that’s horrifying, but it’s protected speech. In that case, we need to respond to bad speech with better speech. Nobody should underestimate how horrifying that is and how damaging it is for people to see classmates celebrating something like that. But it’s horrifying, protected speech. The other categories – harassment, tearing down posters, things like that, that’s not protected speech. That’s where students can and should be disciplined. 

It will be interesting to see over the next few days and weeks if anyone faces sanction because I know there are several investigations happening right now. But you know one thing, Curtis, I could tell you, if these were all chapters of the KKK doing this, we would be in the middle of the biggest national conversation you’ve ever seen on college campuses. But when far, far, far left protestors are doing this, the response is somewhat muted. 

And what about these college official statements? Now, colleges don’t have to issue official statements on things. There’s a statement coming out of the University of Chicago that urges institutional neutrality. That’s fine. That’s fine. But we’re seeing universities who’ve tripped all over themselves to issue statements after all kinds of events swallow their tongue on this one and veer towards neutrality. 

Well, wait a minute. Neutrality is a perfectly respectable institutional position – in other words, to say, “We don’t put out statements on things that don’t bear directly on this university.” Totally fine. But to suddenly discover neutrality now speaks volumes all by itself. 

And this is one reason why I think so many students have felt abandoned. You have this horrible speech that is protected, you also have the university silence or timidity, then you have actual harassment. So you can only imagine how somebody would feel under siege in that environment.

MICHAEL HOLZMAN: So I just want to jump in and just add a couple things. First of all, two students have been arrested, one near UMass Amherst for a physical assault of a Jewish student and another on the Cornell campus for threatening to murder and rape Jewish students. And it was directed at a Shabbat gathering. So it wasn’t an Israel rally he was threatening to attack. It was Shabbat dinner. So just Judaism stuff, not Israeli political stuff. Okay? That’s the first thing. 

Second thing is that these students have to live together in their dorms and walk around campus together. Imagine you’re in those first couple days of shock, thinking, “My best friend’s mother just got kidnapped,” or something like that, and you’re on campus and that day, the people supporting the other side are outside chanting, “Israel got what it deserved.” I mean, it’s not just a lack of safety. It’s complete abandonment, a loneliness. It is a gut punch that this is a campus where my feelings, my family, the death I’m confronting doesn’t matter. And for a lot of Jewish students, that’s what they’re talking to their grandma and grandpa and parents about. They’re telling their family that they don’t want to walk outside with their Jewish stars on, don’t want to have a mezuzah in their dorm room, and don’t want to go to Shabbat services. They want to hide.

And then there’s one more piece of this that for me, in addition to everything else, has been the hardest. These colleges actually have a direct responsibility to teach. Where are the presidents of the universities talking about their educational and academic responsibility on an issue that is so filled with interesting, complicated, hard, moral, philosophical, political, theological questions? There’s a department on campus for almost every aspect of this conflict. And professors have an opportunity to enlighten their students, to foster healthy debate with their students on the issues. That’s what our colleges are supposed to be doing, and our colleges have completely abandoned that. A few schools, like Dartmouth, have had an admirable academic response from their Jewish studies and Islamic studies departments. But for the most part, it has been an abdication of educational leadership. And that, I’m afraid, starts in the colleges and it extends across the whole educational establishment. My high school kids at the synagogue have no education from the schools. And when I talk to my imam colleagues, their high school kids, no education on the issues in the schools. It’s a major world issue. No education. So that to me is so troubling because it makes America stupid and then bad things happen.

MICHAEL HOLZMAN: I’m a congregational rabbit, not a national leader, and the biggest, most disturbing thing I hear every day at work is the report parents grandparents have from their children on college campuses. They’re really dismayed by what they’re hearing from all over the country. 

CURTIS CHANG: David, you’re a keen observer and a thought leader on the happenings of college campuses. What’s going on there?

DAVID FRENCH: Yeah, a couple of distinct things are happening, and we need to keep them distinct. 

FIrst, you’re seeing a lot of pro-Palestinian students, student groups engaging in something like normal college activism. But the twist is that they’re supporting Hamas after a brutal murder. They’re really pushing the envelope of what free speech protects, but it does protect this. The principles of free speech even protect  advocacy for violence, but not imminent violence. In other words, you can’t incite immediate or imminent lawless action, but you can support violent actions with your speech. This has been permissible under American law for a very long time. 

So on the one hand, this appears to be normal tabling, normal leafleting, et cetera, but the content of the message is abnormal. Nevertheless, it’s still protected speech. That’s one category. 

But harassment and vandalism is also happening – for instance, tearing down posters of kidnapped women and children. Tearing down someone else’s speech is not free speech. That’s vandalism. And in fact, if a public university allows students to tear down other students’ speech, there’s circumstances in which the university can even be liable for that. When a university selectively lets its guard down and allows some students to censor or shout down others, then it’s violating its own obligations. 

Then there’s a third category that is rarer, but is still happening: actual harassment under the law. Some Jewish students were locked in a library at the Cooper Union in New York while a furious crowd pounded outside. Another Jewish student who had been photographing protestors was physically attacked as he tried to leave the protest. 

And by the way, if you’re at a public protest, you don’t have a right not to be photographed. okay? That’s not a thing. 

When you’re talking about physical intimidation, you’re moving into harassment under the law. And every federally-funded college in America has a responsibility to protect its students against harassment on the basis of race. And the Biden administration has been very clear that federal law prohibiting harassment on the basis of race, national origin, et cetera, applies to antisemitism. 

So we are seeing this interesting – and scary in some circumstances – range of campus reactions. And if you’re a Jewish student and somebody is celebrating the terror attacks, that’s horrifying, but it’s protected speech. In that case, we need to respond to bad speech with better speech. Nobody should underestimate how horrifying that is and how damaging it is for people to see classmates celebrating something like that. But it’s horrifying, protected speech. The other categories – harassment, tearing down posters, things like that, that’s not protected speech. That’s where students can and should be disciplined. 

It will be interesting to see over the next few days and weeks if anyone faces sanction because I know there are several investigations happening right now. But you know one thing, Curtis, I could tell you, if these were all chapters of the KKK doing this, we would be in the middle of the biggest national conversation you’ve ever seen on college campuses. But when far, far, far left protestors are doing this, the response is somewhat muted. 

And what about these college official statements? Now, colleges don’t have to issue official statements on things. There’s a statement coming out of the University of Chicago that urges institutional neutrality. That’s fine. That’s fine. But we’re seeing universities who’ve tripped all over themselves to issue statements after all kinds of events swallow their tongue on this one and veer towards neutrality. 

Well, wait a minute. Neutrality is a perfectly respectable institutional position – in other words, to say, “We don’t put out statements on things that don’t bear directly on this university.” Totally fine. But to suddenly discover neutrality now speaks volumes all by itself. 

And this is one reason why I think so many students have felt abandoned. You have this horrible speech that is protected, you also have the university silence or timidity, then you have actual harassment. So you can only imagine how somebody would feel under siege in that environment.

MICHAEL HOLZMAN: So I just want to jump in and just add a couple things. First of all, two students have been arrested, one near UMass Amherst for a physical assault of a Jewish student and another on the Cornell campus for threatening to murder and rape Jewish students. And it was directed at a Shabbat gathering. So it wasn’t an Israel rally he was threatening to attack. It was Shabbat dinner. So just Judaism stuff, not Israeli political stuff. Okay? That’s the first thing. 

Second thing is that these students have to live together in their dorms and walk around campus together. Imagine you’re in those first couple days of shock, thinking, “My best friend’s mother just got kidnapped,” or something like that, and you’re on campus and that day, the people supporting the other side are outside chanting, “Israel got what it deserved.” I mean, it’s not just a lack of safety. It is complete abandonment, loneliness. It is a gut punch that this is a campus where my feelings, my family, the death I’m confronting doesn’t matter. And for a lot of Jewish students, that’s what they’re talking to their grandma and grandpa and parents about. They’re telling their family that they don’t want to walk outside with their Jewish stars on, don’t want to have a mezuzah in their dorm room, and don’t want to go to Shabbat services. They want to hide.

And then there’s one more piece of this that for me, in addition to everything else, has been the hardest. These colleges actually have a direct responsibility to teach. Where are the presidents of the universities talking about their educational and academic responsibility on an issue that is so filled with interesting, complicated, hard, moral, philosophical, political, theological questions? There’s a department on campus for almost every aspect of this conflict. And professors have an opportunity to enlighten their students, to foster healthy debate with their students on the issues. That’s what our colleges are supposed to be doing, and our colleges have completely abandoned that. A few schools, like Dartmouth, have had an admirable academic response from their Jewish studies and Islamic studies departments. But for the most part, it has been an abdication of educational leadership. And that, I’m afraid, starts in the colleges and it extends across the whole educational establishment. My high school kids at the synagogue have no education from the schools. And when I talk to my imam colleagues, their high school kids, no education on the issues in the schools. It’s a major world issue. No education. So that to me is so troubling because it makes America stupid and then bad things happen.

Photo by Noah Holm on Unsplash