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Jewish high-school seniors in Brookline changing college plans because of anti-Semitism
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problems everywhere
Sadly, these problems will be found somewhere on every college campus. You can't weed out ignorance.
Perception vs. Reality
Look, these kids are obviously privileged and have a number of options where they can go to school. But if they think Harvard or NYU are going to be more anti-semitic then your average upper-tier school, they've been watching too much Fox news.
Yeah
I grew up thinking Princeton was more antisemitic than Harvard if we're comparing the places 99.9% of students don't have a shot of attending.
I really wish there was less focus on ~5 universities in the US. They really aren't important. They aren't representative of anything except their own tightly sealed bubbles.
they are victims of a fear campaign
the propaganda campaign to suppress protest against the war on Gaza by characterizing it as anti-Semitic hate speech.
They are "collateral damage."
The idiotic university presidents like Harvard president Claudine Gay couldn't cope with Rep. Stefanik's bad-faith questioning, and now that's been amplified to pressure the universities (see the "Harvard hates Jews" aerial banner over Boston last week) to shut down protest and punish the protesters.
To characterize Harvard, MIT, and NYU as some kind of especially dangerous environment for Jews is absurd.
There have been some real anti-Semitic incidents involving violence, property damage, and threats, but the ratio of real incidents vs bad-faith characterization of slogans like "From the river to the sea" and "settler colonialism" is tremendous.
I'm a 1967 Zionist, in that I support the state of Israel approximately in its 1967 boundaries, but what's going on over there - mass killing in Gaza and displacement of families on the West Bank - and here regarding suppression of dissent over a foreign country's policies is BS.
From the River to the Sea
Is anti-Semitic hate speech because there's a second line to that slogan: "Palestine will be free." Free from what? Israel since the reference is to "Palestine" and not Israel. As Israel is the Jewish state, the implication is thus that Palestine will be free of the Jews. And that is one of the founding tenets of Hamas which has coopted "From the River to the Sea" as part of its holy war to establish an Islamic waqf (holy possession) over the entirety of Palestine.
It is an absolute no-brainer to condemn genocide in no uncertain terms. If Claudine Gay had been asked, "Does calling for the genocide of Blacks/Muslims/LGBTQ violate Harvard's code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?" and waffled on her answer like she did regarding Jews, she would have been out on her ass before she could get back on a plane to Boston.
It is not collateral damage when student groups are using an image of a paraglider in posters/flyers to promote a "Day of Resistance" given the use of paragliders in an attack which directly targeted civilians -- a war crime. There is no excuse for not condemning a reference to a war crime or for the lukewarm initial rejections of the Harvard student groups which led their response to 10/7 with blaming the victims.
It is absolutely reasonable to criticize the mounting death toll in Gaza, but let's not forget that much of the responsibility for civilians killed lies with an armed militant group which chooses to place its bases and weaponry amid the civilian population -- including locations like hospitals and schools.
Why do the calls for a ceasefire not also include a demand for the immediate release of all hostages as a precondition?
If you get to say what other people mean by their words...
...do they get to do the same to you?
There are plenty of people who have stated what they mean by "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", and they have stated that it does not mean "free of Jews". You are saying that this is not good enough for you. OK then...are you willing to have your own statements treated in the same manner? I don't think that's a good thing.
It is not good enough
Because those words have been coopted by Hamas which does seek to destroy Israel. Trump is saying things that echo things said by Hitler. Do you just take his word for it that he isn't taking his cues from Der Führer?
It is a slogan that is poisoned by some of those who have chosen to use it.
Further, how is "From the River to the Sea" even compatible with the idea of a two-state solution? Even if the eventual resolution is a return to the pre-1967 borders, that's not Palestine "From the River to the Sea."
It means exactly what I said it meant. If it doesn't mean "free of Israel/Jews" then what exactly does it mean?
sad self-delusion or just BS
Another interpretation of "from the river to the sea" is one state, with voting rights for all.
What do you say when Israeli politicians use terms like "Judea and Samaria," or "Eretz Israel?"
Because that means "from the river to the sea" too and at least is a cultural and political erasure of the Palestinians.
Indeed, right-wing Israelis have used "from the river from the sea" in their own campaigns. They have no intention to give voting rights to the indigenous people when they annex the West Bank.
Netanyahu and his coalition partners are on video many times saying they've prevented and will prevent a two-state solution. From the river to the sea.
Now you can some back with some variation of "it's OK when Israelis say 'from the river to the sea'"
I'd be concerned
If there were a pattern of pro-Israel demonstrators parroting what extremist Israeli politicians say. But that's not a real thing. If you want to protest Islamophobia in Israel be my guest. You're more likely to survive that than if you were to protest anti-Semitism in Gaza.
But the issue at hand is not political discourse in Israel, it is anti-Semitism on college campuses. It is very real and it is utterly reprehensible. When protesters here parrot the talking points of terrorists like Hamas it's pretty obvious what they stand for. When they celebrate war crimes it is even more obvious.
Not that cut and dried
Poisoned in your view, and I won't disagree with that. But I don't think that's where it stands in the larger discourse. How could it be, when most people in this country had never even heard the phrase three months ago? The swastika is poisoned in the way you describe, and it would be disingenuous to state that it can be used without those connotations (except in a few narrow cases; I'm not about to tell a Hindu what it means to them in the context of their worship). But I don't think the same can be said of "From the river to the sea" at present. Maybe that will change one day, but I don't think we're there yet, and may never be.
I'm focused on the propaganda operation
which attempts to portray Harvard and MIT as Berlin during Kristallnacht in order to force those private schools to punish protesters (using your interpretations, of course) in order to shut down protests.
Note that public schools subject to the 1st amd are not the targets of this campaign, only private ones which can have more restrictive speech codes.
I don't care to get into the minutiae of the conflict itself - just leads to a bunch of whataboutism. Let's just say there are atrocities all around, some immediate, some old, some new, some fast, others in slow-motion. People can protest as they see the facts.
I agree with lbb above that your interpretations of slogans like "from the river to the sea" do not control the meaning for others, indeed that such "interpretations" are disfavored in US free-speech discourse.
We had a literal "false flag" event last week, as unknown supporters of Israel literally appropriated the Palestinian flag to create fear among American Jews with the BS claim that "Harvard hates Jews." And so the kids in this story are among the victims of this campaign.