It’s well past time for a shower and anyway, summer internships start soon. But just as the protests are fizzling out, with students packing up their “tentifadas” for the summer, some colleges have decided to negotiate with the Hamas-curious campus cohort.
The latest to strike a very one-sided bargain with students is Harvard. In exchange for the protesters going home, the college has announced it will consider adopting boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) measures against Israel, setting up a Palestinian Studies Center, and not taking any action against 80 protesters. Harvard student Shabbos Kestenbaum, who is suing the college for failing to tackle antisemitism, told The Free Press that the deal was “an absolute betrayal” that will only incentivize further protests.
“I’ve been asking for a meeting with the president Alan Garber and college administrators for months,” Kestenbaum said. “Apparently to get a seat at the table I should have been calling for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
“It’s a major victory for the protesters. The message is that if you shout loud enough and make enough noise, you’ll get away with some truly terrible behavior. They have bullied and harassed Jews. Letting them off without punishment will just mean it all starts again in the fall.”
Harvard is only the latest elite school to promise to consider BDS measures. Colleges to have made that concession include:
Princeton, which will also consider new academic affiliations with Palestinian scholars, students, and institutions, and a new Palestinian studies course.
Northwestern, which has also committed to build a house for Muslim student activities and to fundraise for scholarships for Palestinian undergraduates.
Brown University, which agreed to vote on implementing BDS.
Rutgers, which agreed to accept at least 10 displaced Gazan students and hire additional professors who specialize in Palestinian and Middle Eastern studies.
Johns Hopkins, which will grant amnesty to all student protesters.
University of California, Berkeley, which agreed to ensure that their academic partnerships don’t exhibit anti-Palestinian discrimination, which protesters say is a “pathway to boycott of Israeli university programs.”
University of California, Riverside, which has committed to discontinue business school study programs in Israel. It also promised a “review of Sabra Hummus.”
Ben Clerkin is an editor at The Free Press. Follow him on X @benclerkin.
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As someone who studied at Hebrew University of Jerusalem for my undergrad and then went to the US to study at Brandeis, a private liberal arts school in the northeast, for a masters - from the bottom of my heart, I recommend that every Jewish student (and other students, of course) consider choosing to study in Israel.
1. You won't be in debt. College in Israel costs about USD 3K per year, and degrees are three years, so about 10K total in tuition.
2. You'll learn more. The schools don't believe in giving you info on a silver spoon and you will work hard for every A you earn. They will make you sit down and read full textbooks, not 5-min videos and short passages, because they assume you're intelligent.
3. You'll be around better, smarter people. Your fellow students will be in their mid-20s, after having gone through an army service/national service and oftentimes exploratory trips abroad. They have more life experience, and tough life experiences at that, and therefore the discussions are more rigorous, thought-provoking and nuanced.
4. There's no PC attitude. This doesn't mean people are necessarily conservative or liberal - it just means the discussions are better. In Israel, I sat in a genetics course where we discussed at what point a fetus should be unviable for use in stem cell research; a feminism course where we considered whether the feminist movement and the trans movement are opposed to each other (my professor believed they were); a psychology class where we had an open conversation about how Israelis and Palestinians are affected by social psychology.
5. You'll grow up. Truly, not in the way you grow up in American colleges. We don't have dining halls or RAs, or counselors to help you every second. You'll learn to cook for yourself, manage your money, take care of yourself. Many Israelis (about a third of all students in higher education) also do Perach at college, a program that pairs you with at risk kid in your area and you become a mentor. So you'll learn social responsibility too.
6. Obviously, no antisemitism. I remember once a (non-Jewish) girl drew a swastika on our dorm room at Hebrew U. We literally just laughed because we were so unafraid - what's she going to do to all of us at once? There's safety in numbers.
Seriously, if I ever decide I'd like a PhD, I'm going to Israel to study. I commend the people who want to stay and fight for American academia, but I'd much prefer to go to Israel and have a good time.
Their Palestinian studies will be nothing more than radical Islamic hate indoctrination centers.