As New York awaits Gov. Hochul’s long-promised plan to deal with the antisemitism festering in its public colleges and universities, it’s time to ask: What should the gov’s effort — spearheaded by former Chief Judge Jonathan Lippmann — actually do and say?
It’s important to note here that unlike many other Empire State Democrats, Hochul actually understands why Jew-hate is bad, dangerous and morally unacceptable.
She responded to a spike in hate crimes against Jews after the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 with a January push to expand the definition of hate crimes and made special mention of Jew-hatred in her Christmas speech to the state. (Although she, in true Dem fashion, coupled them with concerns about rising Islamophobia as well.)
She even suggested in late autumn that schools where calls for Jewish genocide go unpunished might be putting their state funding in jeopardy.
And the state has opened a probe into CUNY Law for its faculty-council adoption of a pro-BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) resolution.
All worthwhile moves, but nothing approaching a real solution to what zoomer leftists would call a “systemic” problem.
Without a deeply entrenched network of antisemitism-friendly profs and administrators in place, it would be utterly unthinkable for someone like Nerdeen Kiswani — a proud and open admirer of violence against Jews — to ever have given a graduation speech at CUNY Law.
Or for CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez to play hooky from City Council probes into Jew-hate at the college system he oversees even as an apparent purge of Jews from its senior leadership team takes place.
How to combat the Jew-haters, in other words, who have power and status within the institutional structure?
One way might be to adopt, as Jeffrey Lax has suggested in these pages, the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism as the school’s official definition for HR and legal purposes.
Another? To do as Florida has just done and ban state spending on “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” initiatives by public colleges — since DEI in practice is simply a race-obsessed system for imposing left-wing authoritarianism that enables academic antisemitism by, for example, labeling Jews as “oppressors.”
Another might be creating rules around protest that clearly delineate what is protected speech — which even harsh criticism of Israeli policies most certainly is — and what is a thuggish mini-pogrom (such as the riot at Berkeley last week) that will result in discipline, expulsion and criminal charges.
And just as no Dem worth their salt would ever advocate for a SUNY system whose professors and powerful admins were exclusively male, or Christian, or heterosexual, the state needs some effort to promote actual intellectual honesty by making sure hard-left Dems don’t dominate teaching and policy-setting.
Whatever Judge Lippman comes up with, remember: If it doesn’t address the deep roots of the problem, it does nothing.
When you cut off one head of the hydra, two more grow in its place.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
