In 2015, Mosaic took stock of the problem of anti-Semitism on college campuses, much of it tied to the anti-Israel agenda of the academic left. In the last five years, not much has improved, then-inchoate challenges have surfaced,and new dilemmas have emerged. The Tikvah Fund is convening a series of discussions to help Jewish parents, Jewish students, and Jewish educators think through Jewish life and learning on campus:

Is the American Jewish love affair with elite colleges coming to an end? Why have so many of American universities tolerated anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, and how should embattled college students respond? Does university culture strengthen or undermine Jewish identity and Jewish faith? Now, with the COVID-19 crisis in full-force, the American model of higher education may be facing its greatest disruption in a generation: the dorms have closed, the classrooms have moved to computer screens, and many students and families are wondering: what does this all mean? And could this be a moment when Jews—and all Americans—rethink and renew the higher learning in America?

Tikvah is pleased to announce a multi-part “townhall series” on the future of college assessed, analyzed, and debated from a Jewish perspective. We will be joined by some of America’s leading educators and experts—such as Jonathan Haidt, Alyza Lewin, and Ruth Wisse.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.