What’s Behind Antisemitic Protests on College Campuses

Pro-Palestine protests on the campuses of some of America’s most elite colleges have resulted in hundreds of arrests and led Columbia University in New York to move classes online for the remainder of the semester. 

The anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, Yale, and New York University aren’t just representative of an “antisemitic movement,” but a “fundamentally an anti-Western and anti-American movement,” Bill Jacobson says. 

Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and the founder of Legal Insurrection and the Equal Protection Project, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain who or what is driving the antisemitism on America’s college campuses. 

Jacobson points to the activist organization National Students for Justice in Palestine as the organizing force behind the current protests. 

“They are an organization I have followed and written about for well over a decade,” Jacobson says of the pro-Palestine group. “They support terrorists. They honor people like Rasmea Odeh, who killed two Jewish students in Jerusalem.”

Jacobson points to the ideology of critical race theory, which has spread across college campuses, for this rise in antisemitism. The related push for “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” or DEI, is fundamentally anti-colonialism, Jacobson says, explaining that Israel is viewed by antisemites as “colonial occupiers.” 

The anti-Israel and anti-American sentiment likely will continue on college campuses, he says, because “unless you are going to change the faculty at these schools, unless you are going to change the fundamental ideologies which drive them, removing students from the courtyard isn’t going to change a thing.” 

Listen to the full conversation with Jacobson on the podcast below: