In HL 191, “The Jewish People Would Have A Lot To Do With A Loss If I’m At 40%” (9/23/2024).  I nominated and elected Trump the “Anti-Jew” saying “[w]hen I think about virtually everything my parents taught me about being a good person and a good Jew, Trump shapes up as the quintessential and possibly singular polar opposite.”  That earlier HL post not only designated Trump as the embodied opposite of Jewish teaching but predicted that he would get less of the Jewish vote than the 40% he said would make American Jews blameworthy were he defeated.

Well, Trump got only 34%, but Harris’ Jewish landslide and an even greater one (72%) among the religiously unaffiliated, was overwhelmed by Trump’s 62% among Protestants, 56% among Roman Catholics and even a small preference for him over Harris with Muslim voters.

A large majority of American Jews were not taken in by Trump’s lies nor attracted by the promises he made (and is trying to keep) about tariffs and especially about immigration, immigrants and DEI.  Indeed, most Jews were repelled by those pledges as they, like he, are antithetical to core Jewish teaching and practice.[1]

American DEI was established by African and Jewish Americans.  The first NAACP meeting was held on Manhattan’s lower east side and in the Henry Street Settlement (house) on May 30, 1909.  Soon after the NAACP stated its mission:

“To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens, to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before the law.”

Soon after that the NAACP elected Columbia Professor Joel Spingarn as its Chair and Jacob Schiff, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Jacob Billikopf to the board.[2]

So, what does Trump’s war on liberal education have to do with the real problem of anti-Semitism on elite American campuses.  Well not “absolutely nothing” as Eric Burdon might sing, but very little.  That little being the illiberal right’s hatred of the illiberal left, that is so prominent on those campuses and the primary culprits in growing Jew-hatred there.

Campus anti-Semitism is incubated and nurtured by the illiberal faculty that dominate many departments at many of the roughly thirty elite American colleges and universities and most typically Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, Middle Eastern Studies and in their schools of social work, where political indoctrination is prominent in curricula.  At Columbia’s Social Work School (America’s oldest grad program in social work) all new students are given a glossary that includes “Ashkenormativity – a system of oppression that favors white Jewish folx, based on the assumption that all Jewish folx are Ashkenazi, or from Western Europe.”[3]

A “teachin” on “the significance of the Palestinian counteroffensive on October 7 and the centrality of revolutionary violence to anti-imperialism” was held in the lobby of that school soon after October 7.  If I, friends or family need help, I hope we don’t get a social worker who thinks gang rape and burning live babies is an acceptable counteroffensive to claimed imperialism.[4]

Given the hatred that the illiberal right and illiberal left have for each other and their mutual accommodation of the many Jew-haters in their ranks, Trump’s pretense that his attack on liberal education is in defense of Jews is transparently false.[5]  It inevitably, and possibly intentionally, will increase anti-Semitism, not only on elite American campuses but more generally throughout American society.

What is the liberal and rational response to this?  First, recognize and say loudly, early and often what Trump is actually trying to do and the facilitating role played by the illiberal left in American academia.

Like Harvard and Princeton (and unlike Columbia) refuse Trump’s demands, many of which have nothing to do with protecting Jewish students and most of which will degrade their and all students’ education and obliterate the mission of American higher education.  It is good to see Harvard, one of the worst at coddling their anti-Semitic illiberal faculty and rated by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) as the worst American campus for free speech and open inquiry, not merely refuse Trump’s demands but take him to court.[6]  Led by Alan Garber, its new liberal Jewish President, Harvard finally is confronting its illiberal left while going on the offensive against Trump and the illiberal right.

Princeton and its liberal Jewish President, Christopher Eisgruber are also taking a lead role in opposing Trump’s attack on liberal higher education, while beginning to address the excesses of the illiberal left on that elite campus.  Even cowardly and capitulating Columbia may be showing signs of life.  Its Interim President, Claire Shipman, along with roughly 400 other college presidents signed an April 22, 2025, letter “against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”  The war is on, which side are you on?

[1]  Though we can’t report any Jewish teaching on tariffs, we can point out that several Jewish Nobel laureates in Economics including George Stiglitz and Paul Krugman have torched Trump’s tariff tantrum, with the former saying “[t]his is amateur hour” and the latter that they are “weak, erratic, destructive.”  Even Jewish Trump supporters like Bill Ackman have been prominent critics, with Ackman warning they are “economic nuclear war” and risk a “self-induced nuclear winter.”

[2]   One would not learn much of this from the NAACP website, as similar to the Trump censor’s recent expungement of Harriet Tubman from the National Park Service website history of the Underground Railroad, much though not all of the history of that historic Black/Jewish coalition has been disappeared from the NAACP website by its censors.

[3]   As one certified by 23 and Me (of blessed memory) as a rare 100% Ashkenazi, half which came from Western Europe and half from the East, with offshoots in Turkey, I could write a full book about the stupidity behind this term that the Columbia School of Social Work tells students will be a “common term you may see or hear used in class, during discussions and at your field placements” and a second book about the hate and bigotry displayed by the “folx” who coined and use it.

[4]   Credit to and kudos for Pamela Paul and her last New York Times opinion piece published on Pearl Harbor Day in 2023, for reporting and commenting on this.

[5]   While all the talk these days are of Trump’s dinner with Bill Maher and Larry David’s with Hitler, more revealing was Trump hosting Kanye West and Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago and later commenting “We got along great. . . & I appreciated all of the nice things he (Ye) said about me on ‘Tucker Carlson.’”

[6]   FIRE annually surveys students and ranks their schools on “Student free speech – open inquiry – self-censorship – tolerance for liberal and conservative speakers – openness – administrative support for free speech” all plus factors and “blocking other students and disrupting others free speech” as negative factors.  This year FIRE surveyed more than 58,000 students and employed numerous mechanisms to keep the vote fair and statistically significant.  Harvard was ranked last and “abysmal” among the 251 schools surveyed and the worst in the history of FIRE rankings.  Columbia and NYU were also rated “abysmal” and ranked second and third to worst on free speech, while U. Va., also among those roughly 30 elite, ranked best and was rated “good.”  The surveyed students most frequently cited “deplatforming,” “encampments” and “blocking other students” as related to the war in Gaza, as key factors in their evaluation of the free speech environment on their campuses.