The ‘Antisemitism’ Scare in US Higher Education

Alan Wald presents an overview of the state of emergency in higher education in the United States that recalls earlier eras of extreme political repression, such as McCarthyism in the 1950s. Students, faculty, and staff at US colleges and universities who stand up for Palestinian human rights and stopping the genocide in Gaza are being punished by the administrations, and in some cases – such as Mahmoud Khalil – threatened with deportation. They are charged with being “antisemitic,” even though the movement is antiracist and a sizable fraction of the protesters are themselves Jewish. This campaign is being used as a smokescreen to dismantle programs in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and set Jews against other minorities. Students, faculty, and staff are facing deportation, arrest, suspension, termination, and other draconian measures that undermine both civil liberties and academic freedom.

Alan Wald is active in this controversy as it plays out at the University of Michigan (U-M), through his membership in the U-M Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, and nationally, as a member of the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace. He is the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus of English Literature and American Culture at U-M, and formerly director of the U-M Department of American Culture. His academic specialty is the US Literary Left, about which he has authored nine books, and he is an editor of the journals Against the Current and Science & Society.