Written Testimony of Pamela S. Nadell Before the United States House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary November 7, 2017: Examining Anti-Semitism on College Campuses

INTRODUCTION

Thank you, Chairman Goodlatte, Ranking Member Conyers, and distinguished members of this committee for inviting me to this important hearing on antisemitism on our nation's college campuses.¹

I am Pamela Nadell, a professor of history and director of the Jewish Studies Program at American University. I am also president of the Association for Jewish Studies, a learned society of nearly two thousand members in the U.S. and far beyond who research, write, and teach in all fields of Jewish Studies from the Bible to contemporary Jewish life.²

I have spent most of my life on a college campus. As a scholar of American Jewish history, I know that antisemitism has coursed through our nation's past since twenty-three Jews landed in New Amsterdam in 1654 and the colony's governor, Peter Stuyvesant, wanted to expel what he called a "deceitful race [of] … hateful enemies and blasphemers." Had his "request that the new territories should no more be allowed to be infected by people of the Jewish nation" been granted, perhaps we would not have this morning's hearing.³

But, more than 350 years ago, he failed, and, since then, Jews have immigrated to America from around the world, and they and their descendants have proudly called this nation their home. As citizens, American Jews enjoy the rights guaranteed in our First Amendment—the freedoms of worship, speech, the press, and peaceable assembly.

Those same rights allow others to voice their contempt for the Jewish people and the Jewish religion. We call that antisemitism, a form of bigotry and hatred based on many stereotypes and myths. Antisemites charge that Jews conspire to control governments, the media, the entire world; they deny the historicity of the Holocaust; they call Jews Christ-killers. At its heart antisemitism is a malevolent ideology. It targets Jews as individuals and as a people. As an historian, I know that antisemitism has waxed and waned across the landscape of American history.⁴ The political moment, economic dislocations, social forces, the movies in their heyday, and social media today set its volume control.

ANTISEMITISM TODAY

We are, by all, accounts, sadly, at one of those moments where the volume on antisemitism in American life is turned way up. Scholars and watchdog Jewish communal agencies produce alarming surveys. The press and, as this hearing demonstrates, the U.S. Congress, rightly pay attention.⁵ When a violent protest erupts as white supremacists in Charlottesville, a college town, chant "Jews will not replace us," American Jews are rightly fearful.⁶ Antisemitism takes many forms: harassment and threats against individuals and Jewish organizations, vandalism and bomb threats against Jewish institutions. Swastikas spray-painted anywhere signal a renewed call to exterminate the Jews. The number of physical assaults remains low, but each is a shocking reminder of the vulnerability of all Jews. On social media, antisemitic threats have exploded. Attacks there, especially targeting Jewish journalists, run horrifically into the millions.⁷

The hard evidence about the rising numbers of antisemitic incidents is indisputable, and everyone—politicians, government officials, leaders of business and industry, and especially our nation's educators—must do all they can to model respectful behavior and condemn this bigotry, and all expressions of racial hatred.

But, the question that has brought us to this hearing today is the climate of antisemitism on our campuses. Some charting its rise have specifically called out our colleges and universities as "hotspots of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment."⁸ Social scientists find that, when Jewish students are handed a list of antisemitic statements, nearly three-quarters will confess that they were exposed to at least one of them in the past year. As one 2015 study concluded from this data: "Hostility towards Jews and Israel appears to be a problem for a significant number of Jewish students."⁹

But how does such unfortunate stereotyping impact Jewish student life on campus? Are campuses really hot-beds of antisemitism? Or...