Higher education is in crisis, and little has made that more clear than the conversation about campus antisemitism since Oct. 7, 2023 — a discourse that shines a necessary light on real examples of exclusion, and which has also been weaponized to attack universities. As a Jewish professor, the last 2.5 years have clearly revealed that many of the problems that allow antisemitism to fester can be addressed in ways that will create more intellectually rigorous and inclusive educational environments for everyone, not just Jews. Below, I share 10 insights that I hope will help us move forward from this difficult time:

Rules only work when uniformly applied 

Getty Images

Illustrative.

It has become common in campus disciplinary procedures to assess the “impact” of an alleged offense as more important than the “intent” of the offender. The classic example is that if someone trips over your foot and hurts themselves, you should apologize and check on them even if you did not mean to injure them. Whether this should actually be the standard is its own question, but if it is, the feelings of the injured party should always take precedence, regardless of their identity category. Similarly, if occupying campus spaces is against the rules, those regulations must be enforced, no matter how noble some may understand the animating cause to be. 

So much frustration after Oct. 7 came from Jews and Israelis who felt these conduct codes were selectively applied; pro-Palestinian advocates also speak of such an exception. Such unfairness — or even the perception of it — can tear a campus apart.

Interpersonal efforts matter

Often, the most powerful experiences of campus connection occur outside of the formal structure of the syllabus or seminar room. Especially in fraught moments, it’s important that those who feel comfortable signal their openness to engage with students and colleagues who may feel vulnerable or isolated. 

After Oct. 7, I began wearing a chai necklace, a symbol that served to invite both Jewish and gentile students to engage with me in a different way than solely as an academic expert. Of course, it is important to consider appropriate boundaries in sharing in this way. To me, this cultural symbol is appropriate in a way a political button would not be.

Stay in your lane of expertise and be honest about its limits 

When we play fast and loose with the limits of our expertise to opine on issues outside its realm, we undermine the entire idea on which most of us build our professional identities: that our deep, sustained study on a topic gives us uniquely valuable perspective and knowledge. It is absolutely appropriate for professors to address the contemporary questions on students’ minds, but we must do so with both an eye to their relevance to course themes and our expertise — and with a commitment to modeling intellectual humility. I’m not a scholar of the Middle East or Jewish studies, so when these topics arise, I say as much; and I try to model how I learn by asking questions and seeking new sources, rather than offering conclusions.

Objectivity is impossible, but we should still hold it as an ideal

We historians spend a lot of time in graduate school learning about the illusory nature of objectivity, and I still believe it is impossible to rid ourselves entirely of our biases. But it is still our job to strive valiantly to acknowledge and transcend our deeply held identities and ideas in the questions we ask, the sources we examine, and the viewpoints we present. However imperfectly, we must introduce our students to a range of perspectives on the issues we examine, including those with which we disagree. The fact that students have shared that they appreciate not being able to figure out “whose side I am on” is, to me, the highest pedagogical praise.

Speak up where you can, but with a keen eye to context

That said, I have not been shy about writing opinion pieces about the failures of American feminists to call out Hamas’ sexual violence, or the inappropriateness of my professional association adopting anti-Israel resolutions. This is not a contradiction. The classroom is not an opinion page or a scholarly organization or an open letter, and each calls for different sorts of engagement. It is up to “the adults in the room” to know the difference and model it to students.

Reconsider your own work

A profound ignorance of Jewish identity and experience among students quickly became clear in my classroom conversations after Oct. 7. It took me a beat longer, however, to realize that my own education had suffered from some of the same gaps, limiting the range of my research and teaching. 

I began integrating Jewish stories into my U.S. history courses, and reevaluating some of my past scholarship in light of new questions about how Jewish identity and experience, on which I had barely focused, fit in. In courses about youth activism, for example, I taught about how disability advocate Judy Heumann’s experience of antisemitism and the Holocaust inspired her work. Having the humility to realize, and remedy, this lack of knowledge is a lesson applicable beyond more thoughtful inclusion of just one group.

Know that none of these problems start in college

University campuses have been such a hotspot as of late that we academics and college administrators are easy to blame for their problems. Yet the seeds of these issues are planted far earlier. I am confident that the antisemitism that coursed through the campus protests, and that too easily festers in certain corners of academia, would not insert itself so readily if students arrived on campus with a deeper understanding of Jewish experiences and educators committed to advancing it. My own intervention has been to lead a new curricular project about Jews in U.S. history, and there are many other ways to prepare students in K-12 to handle the intellectual and social independence of college. 

Seek immersive new experiences

Education should deliberately encompass experience both outside the classroom and beyond our own identities. It is common to hear people introduce themselves with a statement of their position (“As a Jewish woman, I…”), but this framing too often presents identity as an implicit justification for only being able to see things one certain way. What if we valorized the learning experience of seeing beyond one’s own perspective, rather than stopping there? 

For me, the greatest enlightenment of these past couple of years came not from the many books, articles and lectures I’ve consumed, but from a week I spent in Israel, appreciating this context in a way impossible from the distant American cities where I have mostly lived. Within hours of arrival, we were running to the “safe rooms”( a euphemism for bomb shelters), a routine experience for Israelis. We spoke with a Palestinian citizen of Israel who described his frequent sense of placelessness, at home and in the Arab world. 

Given the diversity of the United States and the silos in which many of us work and live, there’s no need to travel thousands of miles to embrace this kind of learning at home. 

Seek out ideas and opinions different from your own 

I was especially struck on this trip to Israel by a program constructed to be more politically varied than any I had ever encountered on this topic, whether at the unapologetically pro-Palestinian campus “teach-ins” or the ardently pro-Israel panels sponsored by many mainstream Jewish organizations, both of which are common in New York City. This agenda included learning from an official of the West Bank settler organization, Regavim, founded by hardliner Bezalel Smotrich, about its legal strategy to push the Israeli government to enforce its own laws, quite transparently, with the goal of expropriating Palestinians. Not an hour later, in the same conference room, a former Shin Bet official dismissed these sober characterizations as whitewashing effrontery — what he described as “Jewish terror.” 

It was incomparably valuable to encounter these clashing opinions firsthand and face-to-face, rather than through a screen or as simplified by their opponents. This should be the standard for campus programming on controversial issues.

Find your people

I have colleagues who won’t speak to me because I questioned the apparent collective academic orthodoxy on Israel. This can be lonely, but I write “apparent” because the loudest, most strident voices are rarely the most representative ones. From the moment I spoke out on this issue and others, colleagues and students have quietly — and sometimes not so quietly — confided that they feel similarly. Speaking out publicly empowers others to do the same, and at a minimum, makes one visible to potential sources of solidarity and connection. On campus and off, such connections can result in concrete intellectual collaborations — or, equally important if less tangible, the assurance that we are not going it alone.

This piece was adapted by the author from an article in the latest edition of Sources.

Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is a professor of history at The New School and the author of two books. She is the lead scholar on the New York City Department of Education’s Jewish American Hidden Voices curriculum and a recent Carnegie Fellow and National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar.