We Are Not Asking the Wrong Question About Antisemitism on Campus

We Are Not Asking the Wrong Question About Antisemitism on Campus

A recent essay in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by a Hillel director at Columbia University argues that we are asking the wrong question about antisemitism on campus. The real issue, he suggests, is not whether antisemitism exists—because it always does—but how institutions respond when it occurs. This reframing is appealing. It pushes back on the growing impulse to sort campuses into simple categories of “safe” and “unsafe,” and it emphasizes r…