WHY OUR BEST INSTITUTIONS OF HIGHER LEARNING ARE AT THE CORE OF THE CURRENT MALAISE—How Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism Once Again Are the Canary in the Coal Mine
BRIEFING: Our editors in this opinion piece attempt to analyze the current social and political malaise that has overtaken not only this country but large parts of the world at a time when technological progress in the world, at least theoretically, promises what only a few years ago were almost unimaginable goals and achievements. Two key points emerge: Like so many times before in history, the reemergence of antisemitism as a social as well as economic phenomenon again serves as canary in the coal mine, and—like in the Fin De Siècle days of the 19th century in Vienna, Austria, and in the 1920s to 1930s in Germany -much of the responsibility for the rise of Nazism fell to the intellectual class, the current malaise is caused by the intellectual capital our leading academic institutions attempt to impose on the general population. Only a radical reorganization of the current education system from kindergarten to graduate school in this and other Western countries will prevent society from self-anhelation.
Lay as well as medical literature, especially since October 7, 2023, are overflowing with articles about Zionism (and, of course, anti-Zionism) as well as antisemitism. The reason, Hamas terrorists slaughtered over 1200 Israeli human beings of all ages (among them citizens of different religions and countries), and not only murdered and raped and burned babies, children, women, and men, most of them civilians, but also abducted over 400 babies, children, and adults. At the time of this writing, over 50 hostages are still held in Gaza, a majority as corpses. How many are still alive is unknown, but it seems fewer than 20.
Because we do not believe we can, as of this point, really influence opinions regarding this conflict with a few words in an essay, whether anti-Zionism, a term that suddenly especially in colleges and universities has become very popular, equates to antisemitism has become a central point of discourse. The world’s response to October 7 is, however, the best evidence that both sentiments are just two sides of the same coin. There can be little doubt left that—since October 7—the scourge of worldwide antisemitism has been resurrected to levels not seen since WWII.
And this fact alone is extremely troubling, not only because of the tragic historical consequences of antisemitism, but, mostly, because of what the rise of antisemitism historically always reflected—economic problems, political instability, and, often, wars. A rise in antisemitism has, over centuries, historically always been the canary in the coal mine, a warning for the whole world.
That antisemitism on university and college campuses literally exploded becomes obvious from just watching television. While the worst is hopefully over, the stats are still not even close to being back to where they used to be before October 7 (and even then, they were already higher than in preceding years).
In other words, it has become increasingly apparent that the trends for what happened on campuses nationwide after October 7 were set into motion years earlier. The depicted Campus Climate Survey by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL, and what an appropriate name for what is being attributed on campuses, in street protests, and in many media outlets to Israel and often Jews in general, presents an excellent summary of the political climate at colleges and universities. A full 73% of Jewish students experienced some form of antisemitism on college campuses just since the start of the 2023-2024 school year.1 It needs no further explanation!
As previously discussed on this platform, medical schools were not left out in alleged antisemitic activities, and especially the medical schools at UCLA and UC San Francisco in California appear to have excelled at such activities. Both schools now face demands from Congress to turn over internal documents going back to 2021.2
Columbia University in NYC and Brown University have already settled with the government, reaching consent agreements on how to address campus antisemitism and/or anti-Zionism. Rumors regarding a $500 million settlement with Harvard come and go at the time of this publication.
Following several other university presidents, the president of Northwestern University in Chicago recently resigned, and it would not surprise me if more resignations at that level were to happen at other universities as well. And the Trump administration allegedly demands a $ 1 billion (!) settlement from UCLA over general campus antisemitism claims, which includes an alleged $172 million claims fund for victims of Title VII violations (illegal discriminatory actions in the workplace based on an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin).
This kind of antisemitism, however, does not start at the college level. It, indeed, starts much earlier in high schools—both public and private—and, often even before high school, with teachers (and their unions) often fostering the process. Kids are told to “go back to Israel” and called, in school, “genocide supporters.”
And since we are already addressing antisemitism in medicine, education, and academia in general, it is telling that psychiatry—the field supposedly more than any other medical specialty serving the betterment of humanity—appears in this country to drown in antisemitism.5
And the U.S. is, of course, not alone in the Western world: In Italy, for example, 2 health care providers, Dr. Rita Segantini and nurse Giulia Checcacci, posted a video of themselves discarding Teva (an Israeli pharma company) products while wearing their uniforms (see photos below) as if Israeli medicines would kill!
The question, indeed, is not so much where else but where else does antisemitism not raise its ugly head! Everybody, of course, still remembers the Australian story that made headlines all around the world when two health care providers in an interview with an Israeli journalist claimed, “to have killed” Israeli patients in retribution for Israel’s war activities against Palestine.6 Both lost their jobs, and the police charged at least one.7 In the Netherlands, a Muslim nurse recently made headlines for threatening to kill Zionist patients with injections (see below).
And evidence for broadly based antisemitism in the British health care system is simply overwhelming, starting with official statements from the British Medical Association (BMA), distinctively distinguishing between anti-Zionism (allowed and supported) and antisemitism (allegedly refuted)—a distinction by many (including the CHR) in itself considered antisemitic.9
As repeatedly pointed out in these pages before, this institutional antisemitism in the UK is also evident in the selective writings in leading British medical journals, like The Lancet and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), which—actually quite demonstratively and unembarrassed—support the Palestinian cause and disproportionally attack Israel. Even the BBC—in itself often almost a propaganda arm of Hamas – had to acknowledge that a recent report found widespread failures to address anti-Jewish discrimination, including in the British National Health System (NHS) and in education (and in the arts, and even policing).”10
Unsurprisingly, Jewish doctors, therefore, have faced rising antisemitism from their NHS colleagues11 and, actually, really almost difficult to believe—a Jewish patient may have been refused treatment in a hospital, in East London, simply because of being Jewish.12
As already noted above, university and college campuses have become safer for Jewish students, as—often violent—demonstrations on campuses have mostly stopped. There are several reasons for that, not the least the pressure the Trump administration has exerted on institutions of higher learning by making some of the most prominent schools in the country, like Columbia, Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, etc., examples of the government’s wrath. And as a recent Op-ed in The Wall Street Journal noted, in Florida, the so-called Stop WOKE Act “made Florida campuses (again) safe for Jews,”13 suggesting that states cannot leave all the dirty work to the federal government.
Columbia University’s Acting President, Claire Shipman, pledged her commitment to Trump-era antisemitism reforms after Columbia was found in violation of Title VI,14 as have recently several other universities and colleges and/or their respective presidents. Yet not everybody is happy about the agreement Columbia University reached with the government: Science magazine described it as a “costly deal to regain NIH money”15 and its very liberal known editor-in-chief, H. Holden Thorp, described the deal as “a tragic wake-up call” with “the insatiable desire of institutions to have more resources underlying these challenges.”16
So far, Columbia University appears to adhere to the agreement it reached despite all of the external as well as internal (student and faculty) criticism. It, for example, punished over 70 students for past rioting with antisemitic overtones with either suspensions or even expulsions.17
At the same time, it appears that a growing number of universities and colleges may not really be serious in “giving in” to the demands of the federal government, apparently just trying to survive the Trump administration by rebranding rather than really changing their ways.
Based on the 2023 Supreme Court decision that found Harvard University in breach of the law in how it had selected students for admission (Chinese students had sued accusing the university of discrimination against them in the admission process), Trump, claiming that the Supreme Court’s decision bared any future consideration of race whatsoever, in a series of executive orders barred the federal government and everybody it was doing business with from any efforts to promote DEI.
Unsurprisingly, proponents of DEI consider this interpretation as overly expansive and have found some progressive medical journals to be more than willing to allow them to, as usually unopposed, express their opinions, among those in JAMA, lawyers18 and in the New England Journal of Medicine, a public health “expert,”19
A good example of what select institutions have been doing with their DEI programs was noted in a recent report on 262 institutions of higher learning. Among those, 245 still had institution-wide DEI offices and/or programs, of which 29 renamed or rebranded their DEI offices, while only 18 shut theirs down.20
In summary, institutions of higher learning, and among those especially the most prominent ones, have, as a result of how the Middle East conflict has impacted the political landscaped in this and many other countries around the world since October 7, 2023, for the first time come out of the shadow of academic invisibility into the bright spotlights of political activism. And, as so many times before in history, the blight of antisemitism - once again – has become the symbol of depravity, with our most learned institutions being the springboard of all bad ideas. All evil in the world can only be combated at its roots, and that, under current conditions and in present times, means that, unless our leading institutions of higher learning are radically reorganized, the country and the world will only continue to get worse.
References
Anti-Defamation League. Campus Climate Survey. https://www.adl.org/resources/report/campus-antisemitism-study-campus-climate-and-after-hamas-terrorist-attacks#:~:text=Of%20the%20nearly%20700%20college,%2Dto%2Dapples%22%20comparison.
Hagstrom A. FOX News. August 26, 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-republicans-give-california-medical-schools-two-week-deadline-antisemitism-probe
Nelson JQ. FOX News. August 12, 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/media/harvard-trump-administration-close-500-million-settlement-report
Rabbu Greenlan M. FOX News. August 6, 2025; https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/from-homeroom-hate-how-jewish-students-facing-new-kind-pressure-public-schools
Peter O. FOX News. August 24, 2025. https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/psychiatry-has-antisemitism-problem
McGuirk, R. Los Angeles Times. February 13, 2025. https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-02-13/australian-hospital-examines-patient-records-after-nurse-claims-to-have-killed-israelis
Turnbull T. BBC. February 25, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0l1z6rgrnyo
Heller M. The Jerusalem Post. August 3, 2025. https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-863115
BMA Statement. June 25, 2025. https://www.bma.org.uk/bma-media-centre/arm-2025-bma-passes-resolutions-on-international-relations
BBC. July 15, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crl0p2xk4w3o
Yorke H. The Times. December 8, 2024. https://www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcare/article/jewish-doctors-face-rising-antisemitism-from-nhs-colleagues-ldt2qvr68
Campaign Against Antisemitism. 6/11/24. https://antisemitism.org/jewish-patient-allegedly-refused-treatment-in-hospital/
Sarnof M. The Wall Street Journal. August 23-24, 2025. https://www.politicalcortadito.com/2025/08/26/marc-sarnoff-against-academic-freedom/
Pickering E, Benerjee I. Columbia Spectator. May 24, 2025. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/05/24/shipman-affirms-commitment-to-combating-antisemitism-after-ocr-finds-columbia-in-violation-of-title-vi/
Kaiser J. Science 2025; https://www.science.org/content/article/columbia-s-221-million-deal-trump-officials-draws-mixed-reactions-researchers
Holden Thorp. Science 2025;p551. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb0424
Pickering E, Davis S. Columbia Spectator. July 22, 2025. https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/07/22/ujb-issues-expulsions-suspensions-and-degree-revocations-to-over-70-students-for-butler-demonstration/
Brennan T, Cole D. JAMA 2025;334(1):21-23
Cené CW. N Engl J Med 2025; 392(24):2394-22399
Defending Education. April 16, 2025. https://defendinged.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/DEI-Rebrands-UNIVERSITY-Status-Quo-and-Rebrands_Final.pdf