Why antisemitism is such a problem on so many campuses

The Trump administration recently announced that it is pulling $400 million from Columbia University, canceling grants and contracts because of what it describes as the Ivy League school’s failure to stop antisemitism on campus. In response, hundreds of research grants at the university are now being canceled.

Interim President Katrina Armstrong responded to the announcement: “We are committed to working with the federal government to address their legitimate concerns. To that end, Columbia can, and will, continue to take serious action toward combatting antisemitism on our campus.”

She stated that Columbia “needed to acknowledge and repair the damage to our Jewish students, who were targeted, harassed, and made to feel unsafe or unwelcome on our campus last spring.” She has therefore taken practical steps “to combat antisemitism and all forms of harassment and discrimination on campus.”

Columbia is by no means the only school in this story. The Education Department has sent letters to sixty schools warning of potential enforcement actions if they don’t fulfill their obligations to protect their Jewish students. On the list were Ivy League, state, and small liberal arts colleges.

This ongoing issue raises the question: Why is antisemitism even an issue on our college and university campuses?

How can something so antithetical to learning and free expression be such a threat to students and to the future of higher education?

One answer may surprise you.

“The people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us”

The historical roots of antisemitism go back to ancient Egypt and its enslavement of the Jewish nation. The reason then remains the same today: fear.

The king of Egypt said of them, “The people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us” (Exodus 1:9). His solution was the first pogrom in Hebrew history, the genocidal attempt to destroy their race by massacring their male babies (v. 16). This in addition to the horrific enslavement and persecution to which they subjected the Jews before they were liberated by the Lord through Moses and Aaron.

Hitler seized on the same strategy, seeking to eradicate the Jewish population through his “final solution.” Hamas did the same with its murderous October 7 invasion. Iran sponsors Hamas and other jihadist proxies in their ongoing attempts to destroy Israel.

All of this is because the Jews constitute a threat to their preferred future. For Hitler, it was global domination. For Hamas and other proxies, it is seizing all of Palestine for themselves. For Iran, it is reconstructing the Persian Empire.

But what does this have to do with antisemitism on college campuses?

The devastation of “riot ideology”

Generations of professors and students at elite schools have been indoctrinated in Critical Theory, a Marxist construct that divides society into oppressors and the oppressed. In this view, Israel is the oppressor of the Palestinians.

Critical Theory is typically taught as well to claim that the oppressed are justified in doing whatever is necessary to overthrow the oppressor and level the playing field. In this view, October 7 was a justified reaction by Hamas to Israel’s “occupation” of their land. They argue that schools and administrators that support Israel in any way are complicit in this ongoing oppression of the persecuted Palestinians.

Students therefore feel justified in taking whatever steps are needed to change the position of their schools in ways that support Hamas and the Palestinian cause. For them, this is the civil rights issue of our time, a moral crusade akin to the civil rights movement of the 1960s. They are convinced that they are on the “right side of history” and that they will be seen in its light as courageous catalysts for systemic change.

To this end, these protestors are adopting what the writer Fred Siegel terms “riot ideology.” This was the way some politicians in the US responded to riots and urban disorder of the 1960s to 1980s. When a city was burned down in the name of racial justice, legislators responded not by punishing the rioters but by blaming themselves (or local authorities) for creating the conditions that led the people to riot.

In this view, university administrators are to blame for causing the conditions that led students to demonstrate on their campuses. Thus, they are doubly complicit in the issues these students are protesting and doubly bound to make amends on behalf of the Palestinian cause.

“If the world is against the truth”

Perhaps recent events will turn this tide to some degree, but the larger issue remains. Critical Theory as a worldview is still endemic in higher education. Its argument that the oppressed (and those acting on their behalf) must do whatever is needed to end their oppression remains powerful and empowering.

So long as the biblical worldview continues to be ignored and even rejected, we can expect other worldviews to take its place. Humans simply cannot live without ideas to live by. We cannot respond to the fallen world without organizing principles and motivating purposes.

Here we see again the urgency of declaring and defending biblical truth, not because we are imposing our subjective values on others (as Critical Theory does) but because we are sharing the only truth that can transform lives and society.

I have seen inscribed over university arches across the country the proclamation, “The truth will set you free.” This is taken directly from Jesus’ words in John 8:32. However, these arches leave out the necessary precondition: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (vv. 31–32).

Athanasius of Alexandria (died AD 373) testified: “If the world is against the truth, I am against the world.” Will you make the same statement today?

Jonathan Edwards advised:

“Truth is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God.”

Will you live and share the truth today?