Glen Cove, NY - Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center (HMTC) Condemns Ivy League Presidents' Congressional Testimony and their Bias Campus Policies

It has been a little over a week since the most elite universities in the world told the United States Congress that calling for the Genocide of Jews on campus did not necessarily constitute harassment of Jewish students. The context upon which those calls were made and if the students were subject to physical acts of genocide would determine if there was harassment of Jewish students. This is a much different response from the same schools about every other ethnic, religious, racial, and sexual-oriented group on campus. University Presidents had a pivotal moment, one that shouted out for moral leadership.

Days later, we saw the hypocrisy on display. The public outcry was real. One university president, from the University of Pennsylvania, resigned. However, the chair of the board of trustees joined her resignation in protest. He believed his school president was under undue duress by Congress and had a momentary lapse exploited. By the end of this week, every other university’s board of trustees had given their school presidents a vote of confidence.

The Great Universities can do better. The leadership must be upstanders. It is they who should call out evil. Conduct designed specifically to harass, intimidate, and terrorize Jews and disruptive speech should be regulated by school codes of conduct and rules. The schools’ Code of Conduct instituted by their institutions does not violate core constitutional principles.

The real tragedy here is not simply the public display of Jewish students not getting the same protection every other student expects, it’s that the world is no longer embarrassed to clearly and publicly state that they will not treat Jews as equals. Jews are now dehumanized as a matter of policy in the most public way possible. There is no shame. Jews will be subjected to a hostile environment in each of these schools and many others. This form of public Jewish hate has not been seen since the Holocaust.

It is imperative that all people of good conscience and all organizations that are genuinely trying to make the world a more tolerant and equitable place stand up and speak out against this public form of Jewish hate.

So far, what we have instead realized is that silence is deafening. Most organizations that Jews have proudly supported for decades are now completely silent in the support of their Jewish brothers and sisters when they need it most. So many women’s groups, the cause for which is deeply ingrained in Jewish values, have been silent. Most civil rights groups, whose mantle back in the days of Martin Luther King Jr. was carried proudly hand-in-hand with Jews, have been silent. Organizations for gay rights, an area so many Jews were at the forefront of promoting, are now persona non grata for Jews. While Jews will always be proud of their service to all these causes because it was right, the level of betrayal that the community feels is equally strong.

As a Holocaust center, we will always stand up for any group being persecuted. It is our mission. We will teach about the Holocaust and its lessons of tolerance and being an upstander for what is right. However, we will also stand up for ourselves. We will not accept the hostile environment these universities have created. We will not go quietly. We stand up for ourselves and our rights. Of this, I have no doubt.