Trusteeship Podcast: Antisemitism on Campus – What Boards Need to Know

Introduction:
Welcome to the Trusteeship Podcast From AGB, the Association of Governing Boards of universities and colleges. We cover everything higher education leaders need to know about the challenges facing our nation’s, colleges and universities. More important, we provide the facts and insight you need to solve those challenges and to be the storytellers and advocates higher education needs. Today, we’re talking about antisemitism on college campuses. AGB Executive Vice President Mary Papazian speaks with Rachel Fish who serves as a special advisor to the Brandeis University President’s Initiative on Antisemitism, and as an associate research professor at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. Their conversation focuses on best practices for university leaders and trustees, including implementing clear policies, providing proper training, and creating inclusive environments that protect all students while maintaining academic freedom and promoting constructive dialogue across differences.

Mary Papazian:
Welcome to AGB’s podcast series where we explore the most pressing issues facing higher education. I’m Mary Papazian, the Executive Vice President at AGB. And in this episode we’re focusing on a subject that is urgent, complex, and deeply consequential, the rise of antisemitism on campuses, and what university trustees need to know to lead effectively in this moment.

I’m fortunate to be joined by Dr. Rachel Fish, a nationally recognized scholar and educator on antisemitism. Rachel serves as special advisor to the Brandeis University President’s Initiative on Antisemitism, and as associate research professor in the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies. She’s advised academic institutions across the country helping them understand and respond to antisemitism while fostering campus climates that reflect safety, inclusion, and integrity.

Our conversation is part of AGB’s commitment to helping boards of trustees navigate the full scope of their fiduciary and strategic responsibilities. Addressing antisemitism alongside all forms of hatred and intolerance is not only a moral imperative, but is essential to the long-term health, mission and credibility of our institution. So let’s get started.

Rachel, I’m really delighted to have you join me today. Help us understand a little bit why it’s so important to teach the history of antisemitism, and in particular its contemporary expressions, especially in academic settings.

Rachel Fish:
Of course. And thank you, Mary, so much. And thank you to AGB for hosting me in this conversation. So as you know, Mary, that Jew hatred or antisemitism doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Very often when we start to see antisemitism emerge, it is the gateway drug for many other forms of hate. And through research, we also know this tends to be the case. So it’s important to be able to address antisemitism as its own particular phenomena, but also recognize that once you see antisemitism emerging in society, it is the beginning of the fraying of the tapestry of liberal democracy and other forms of hatred have then been given an opportunity to also flourish, which is highly problematic. So you want to be able to address Jew hatred as well as other forms of hatred in a very clear way.

We also know in the context of American history where you see antisemitism, you often see an intersection with forms of racism. And that is also unique to some of the history of American society, the rise of white supremacy, Christian nationalism, but again, where they intersect matters, and it’s rarely that you’re addressing only a singular form of hate. They dovetail, they glom onto one another.

The other piece of this is that as you asked the question, “Why are we talking about this?”

For far too many individuals, there is a working assumption that antisemitism died with the Holocaust and that is just patently false. First of all, antisemitism predates the horrors of the Holocaust. It’s what we would call Judeophobia. It was a fear of and a hatred towards Jewish and Jewish identity, religious practices and the adherence of Judaism. You then see a mutation which is around the racialization of the Jews, and that’s then what forms the basis for much of what you see occur in Europe during the Holocaust. So all of these forms have to be understood and have to be understood in terms of the way in which they present today.

Mary Papazian:
Yeah, it’s a really complex history. I’m a Renaissance scholar, and so I remember all the text from that time, and certainly these characteristics. There are many good qualities to human society and the way we connect, but there are also many examples historically of creating others and dehumanizing people. I’m Armenian, so as a granddaughter of survivors of a genocide, I understand what you’re saying. But there is this thread about antisemitism that has been there throughout recorded history, and it bubbles up in different times for different reasons. But we’ve seen a troubling rise in incidents on college campuses in recent years. We read a lot about it in the newspapers. Why is this happening now? What is the broader cultural or political dynamics that are contributing to this trend and how should we understand where we are in this moment?

Rachel Fish:
It’s a really big question as you know, and no one can give a singular simple answer to it. What I do think that is important to understand is that the way in which antisemitism has amplified over the last 18 months is not only because of October 7th, meaning the events and the horrors that Hamas perpetrated on October 7th, 2023 did not create the environment that you see on campus. It just gave license and credence to allow Jew hatred to emerge in a much more public way.

It’s important to understand that there had already been fertile grounds that had been cultivated within higher education for decades. And for the most part, a lot of individuals were not paying attention to it. I know this from my own personal experience when I was a graduate student at Harvard Divinity School. I have seen this as I have continued in my graduate studies, and of course as I have worked in the academy. And I would argue that there are a handful of factors that have contributed to allowing for this fertile ground to cultivate hostility towards Jews in institutions of higher education.

So some of these factors include a set of intellectual ideas. The intellectual ideas can be of value on their own, and are absolutely important for students to engage with, be curious about, examine with critical thinking. But when these sets of ideas are coming together and act as a specific lens through which all ideas have to be refracted, that’s when you start to see a lack of viewpoint diversity and an ideological litmus test that has formed, and that’s highly problematic.

A second issue is having faculty who pride themselves holding onto academic freedom, which I know you and I would agree with. It’s a core tenant of why institutions of higher ed can thrive. However, they don’t necessarily have the flip side of that coin, which is academic integrity and responsibility.

The last piece of this is the way in which university administrators have not been willing to stand up for the north star of the mission of their institution, which is that pursuit of truth. They have not enacted their own policies that they have in place through their code of ethics, through the school’s codes of behavior. And therefore, they are allowing certain individuals who may be a minority, whether it’s students, whether it’s staff or faculty, to have an outsized influence in the discourse on campus.

Mary Papazian:
Yeah, that’s a lot. When I think about the role of trustees here, it’s one of the reasons why we at AGB feel so strongly about the independence of boards, that boards have fiduciary duties. They have to really honor that independence and ensure that the environment that they create on campus is one that is truly inclusive and allows for that free exchange of ideas.

I want to stick with this idea of free expression or academic freedom for a moment. Certainly trustees and higher education leaders have been talking lately about the role of academic freedom and independence of institutions. Why is this so important to help leaders balance a commitment to free expression, and how do they balance it with the need to protect students, all students from targeted hatred? And that could be antisemitism, but as you said earlier, it could be racism, it could be Islamophobia, it could be LGBTQ, anti-LGBQ rights, it could be other forms of bigotry. Really, how does this approach to understanding the role of trustees in creating such an environment really protect all members of the community?

Rachel Fish:
It’s a great question, Mary. First of all, in terms of academic freedom, it’s not a new concept. As you know, this is a concept actually that emerges in the medieval period. And the idea of academic freedom says if you have expertise in a particular subject, then you should have the freedom to explore that in all of its complexity and in all of its contradictions, and allow for critical thinking.

Part of the challenge is we have a lot of academics who don’t have expertise in a particular subject and bring their own political opinions or ideas into a classroom, because they want to position themselves in that discourse even though they’re teaching about statistics and have no subject matter expertise on the subject of the Middle East, for example. So that’s a challenge. That’s something that university leadership has to navigate, and it’s important to remind faculty about their responsibility with academic integrity.

In terms of the trustees, and you are right to note the trustees have the fiduciary responsibility. They also have to understand what’s playing out, not because they should be involved in operations, which is never what I would suggest, but they need to be able to help the university leadership navigate those complex situations where the faculty or other individuals may be pressuring university leadership because of ideology rather than that pursuit of truth. And the north star of that pursuit of truth is what should be guiding the trustees. It should be what’s guiding the university leadership at the highest levels, and they need to be able to clearly identify any form of hate and to be able to feel that they can label it very clearly. Yes, in America we have freedom of speech. Of course, on a private institution you can have curtailing of freedom of speech, whereas a public institution that’s more complicated.

But even if you don’t want to curtail speech, which is not something I would suggest, I suggest better speech in order to challenge, because that’s what the marketplace of ideas ought to be. But you can then say, “Yes, you may have freedom of speech, but we can still say what you are saying and label it as a form of hate.” And that’s our responsibility as educators to clearly denounce it and to be able to call in order to educate so that people have better understanding, greater sensitivity and the ability to actually engage civilly with one another, which should be what we are trying to teach our students and model for them when they are on our campuses.

Mary Papazian:
Yeah, this is one of those very, in many cases, very emotional topics that draws all kinds of feelings. And they’re very complex. They come from different places, personal histories, senses of the way the moral universe is interpreted, and one can go on and on. But there really is an important role, as you say, for trustees in this, in ensuring that they are clear and they clearly understand what their leadership needs in terms of support to actually navigate some really difficult situations. And we always said, I know when I was president, we always said, “If you don’t like the speech more speech is always good.” It’s important to engage actively. It’s also important to listen and to learn and to be open to be challenged.

So let me ask you this. In your work with university leaders, what best practices have emerged for proactively addressing antisemitism in ways that also strengthen a culture of inclusion and respect for all marginalized communities? I’m really struck by your comment that when you see antisemitism, it’s really the nose under the tent, if you will, where other forms of hatred and marginalization can happen. So how can we… What has emerged as really best practices for university leaders and trustees?

Rachel Fish:
So we know that institutions who have received serious Title VI training, Title VI under the Office of Civil Rights, who really understand that particular clause, do better in navigating some of these challenging issues. And again, that’s not specific just to Jews, that is about gender, that is about national origin. So it’s broad and it’s understanding, but that is important for creating that inclusive environment. So Title VI training for faculty and for staff.

We also know that institutions who have a clear and transparent process for reporting incidents and issues of hate, whether it’s clearly identified through an ombudsman, a Title VI officer, a Title IX officer, whatever the process may be, but as long as it is clearly articulated, again to faculty, staff. And to students so that they actually know what that process looks like, who they then turn to, and then follow up on that process, because nobody wants it to go into a black hole and have no actual long-term success in addressing the challenges on campus.

Institutions that implement their policies. So, when you have university leaders who actually implement time, place, and manner restrictions, it actually creates an inclusive environment and allows institutions of higher ed to do what they are supposed to do, which is to be places that educate, not places purely for activist positions. When you have university leaders who say that you are not in accordance with the school’s code of conduct and therefore hold students accountable, particularly when there is vandalism, when there is trespassing, when they are blocking student centers, libraries, classroom facilities, also allowing and making it very clear what the position the university or college has around masking, in order to ensure that students who are masking aren’t there to intimidate and aren’t there to discriminate.

So these are important policies, and when universities actually have those policies in place and implement them, it goes quite far. The other piece we see is when there are faculty models for engaging across difference, not to build consensus, Mary, because you don’t always have to agree. That’s not the purpose. But to actually say, “I do have a position, it’s grounded in research. It is evidence that can be substantiated, and it has academic rigor, and we can talk about it and disagree about it in order to learn, to question, to challenge.”

But we do it from a place of a real intentionality of engaging in a meaningful and substantive way on the merits of the issues that we are not dehumanizing or engaging with hostility as individuals against one another and we actually want to listen and learn from each other. So when you have faculty who actually model for students how to do that, that goes very far in terms of the way in which students then learn how they should behave and engage with ideas and with individuals.

Mary Papazian:
Yeah. Both of those points I think are really important and helpful for trustees to understand. Not the trustees themselves will be reviewing the time, place and manner policies, but they should be asking those questions of their leadership, “Have you reviewed your time, place, and manner policies?”

And just for listeners out here, these are the agreed rules upon which any kind of speech on campus, protests, whatever it might be, can take place. I know when I was president, it was during Charlottesville, the events in Charlottesville, and that really prompted us to review the time, place and manner policies to update them. When a student is protesting, while other students for example, are trying to take finals, that can have a negative impact on those students trying to take finals.

And what I learned here, and what I just want to share is that this is content neutral. It doesn’t matter what the topic is. You get to speak during these hours in this place. You have to go through this approval process to put posters up, et cetera. It isn’t about what the content is and that’s the critical piece. All perspectives are welcome, but you have to follow the agreed upon guidelines of the institution.

So trustees could be asking that. And I know when we had our council of board leaders, we spoke about that with them to go ask those questions to make sure that the policies are in place, that they are transparent, that they’ve been developed in an inclusive way so that everybody understands them. So I think that’s really important conversation.

The other piece I did want to lift up as well from your comments is how important it’s for all of us from what happens in a boardroom throughout the university to model this kind of ability to speak across difference. We are different people with different histories, but we should value each other as members of our community. And even if we’re not going to agree, it doesn’t mean we can’t learn how to speak to each other and at least empathize and understand each other. And that’s from all sides of an argument. So I wanted to just really appreciate that comment.

But let me ask you this. So I’m a trustee, I’m in the boardroom, and I’ve spoken with my president who has spoken with the senior leadership team. I’ve asked those questions, “Have you done some education of your campus on how to recognize hate, what is antisemitism, these kinds of things? Have you reviewed your time, place and manner policies? Is it transparent? And have you educated your community on that?” So I’ve done all of that. How do I know if I’ve been successful? What kinds of metrics or indicators can help trustees and senior leaders evaluate whether their institutions are effectively addressing antisemitism alongside other forms of intolerance?

Rachel Fish:
It’s a great question. I think part of this is, one, noticing, do the students or faculty or staff who do report incidents, do they tell you there is a clear and transparent process? Do they tell you there is follow-up? I don’t expect all issues of Jew hatred to completely be assuaged. I don’t think it’s realistic. We live in a world in which hate will exist. However, if there are processes in place to be able to address it and we know that there is follow-up, then we can see how that is having an impact. Because students then say, “I went to the grownups and the grownups actually did something.”

Because what we’re hearing, Mary, is more and more students actually are saying, “We’re not going to bother reporting it, because we don’t think anything will actually change.” That’s not a good thing. So we want to be able to see if students and individuals who report actually say they feel better and that the issue was addressed.

The other piece around time, place and manner is exactly what you’ve already talked about. We want to see robust engagement in civil discourse. We want to see individuals engaging in a meaningful way and debating ideas. But that is very different than creating a hostile environment on campus that targets a particular people. And right now what we see, is a lot of targeting of Jews because of their identity as Jews. So if you can create that environment on campus, then it doesn’t mean you’re creating a parve-neutral environment that’s milk toast. You’re creating an environment that is robust that allows for the viewpoint diversity and a really rigorous, critically thinking group of students and faculty and staff who are eager to have those hard conversations and they lean into those brave spaces rather than create some sort of policing, self-censorship, or silencing. That’s another piece of the way in which I would measure impact.

I think also you measure impact by, can people clearly identify these forms of hatred, and are they then addressed in some form, whether it’s through an educational process, whether it’s through a consequential process, depending upon what occurred, whether it’s through a conversation and the way in which the school then builds upon the moment of trauma or the moment of hurt, in order then to repair the challenges that have emerged on that campus? Nobody expects perfection, truly. But I think that, for me at least, I’m looking to see that these institutions recognize that when these forms of hate go unchecked, you actually are creating a hostile environment for students across the board, irrespective of their identities. That is not what these institutions ought to be doing.

And trustees do have a really important role here, because when the leadership of the institution makes hard decisions and gets pushback, which they will get pushback, particularly from some faculty or faculty senate, the trustees need to be able to have the back of that leadership, and make it very clear that they support the leader for doing the hard thing and implementing the policies of the institution and being very clear in their articulation of denouncing hate when it emerges.

Mary Papazian:
Yeah. And certainly our campuses for many, many years, decades really, have been those spaces where sometimes this erupts. And it’s certainly erupting right now and is impacting Jewish students on our campuses. We remember after the killing of George Floyd, we had this eruption around racism as well, and we’ve seen different examples. Each one is powerful in its own right. Each one has its particular characteristics and histories, but when it’s seen together, we have to build those muscles. This is what I hear you saying, we have to build the muscles of good governance, of clarity, of purpose and values, understanding what a healthy debate environment looks like. Really encouraging all members of our communities both to express themselves openly and honestly, whatever their position might be, but also to listen and to hear. And we all know that this is something that writ large in our society we’re having a lot of trouble with as a society, that there’s a lot of division.

And what we’re seeing in antisemitism and how it’s really erupted in these last 18 months, as you’ve described, is a focal point where some of this is happening. It’s not the only one, but it is one of those places. And wherever we have these situations, when we can build these muscles and remind people of what it means to be an independent institution, to be a public square where debate and disagreement and often argument can take place, but can take place in a constructive way, with the idea hopefully that we’re moving to deeper and greater understanding even if it’s not agreement.

So yes, so let’s look ahead for a moment, Rachel, if we can. How do we foster then a campus culture that not only rejects antisemitism but rejects all forms of hate, and that actively promotes understanding dialogue and mutual respect across differences, whether it be in race, religion, ethnicity, political identity, or any other kind of difference that so often faces our communities?

Rachel Fish:
I do believe strongly that the university leadership and the college leadership has to be able to have those conversations at the highest level of their senior administrators, as well as the faculty because those are the individuals who are on the ground, who are the touch points for students and for staff on a regular basis. And they need to be able to understand the different forms of hate that exist. They do need to understand the specificities of each form of hate because they’re not all the same. So it’s important to understand, and this is why I said you have to look at, for example, when it comes to antisemitism, the way in which it has transformed over time and understand those various mutations. Because if you only think it’s a swastika, then you’re missing an understanding of what contemporary antisemitism is.

And so, this is why you need individuals to have that foundational knowledge. They need some shared language, and then they need to know, what are the tools and the resources that they are responsible to implement and to guide individuals to actually utilize in order to meaningfully change what is happening in that campus community in order to be able to have a positive outcome long-term. If they just ignore it, if they try to push it down without actually getting to the root of the problem, you and I know this, it doesn’t solve for anything. It only exacerbates those issues, because you’re not actually addressing the needs. I think it’s really important that faculty understand the power dynamics that exist between them and students.

So even if they may have an opinion, if their opinion is not one in which they have academic expertise, they can’t do it and share it in the confines of the classroom, Mary. They have to be able to share it outside in a personal space with those students if those students desire it. But it is not to be something that is on public display that creates this litmus test, that defines then how a student is supposed to respond on an exam or on a quiz. That’s highly problematic. And so, that’s where faculty responsibility has to be clearly understood, and that’s the responsibility of the leaders.

Also, you have to ensure that you have viewpoint diversity within departments and both departmental leaders and university leadership can actually ensure that. They’re part of that search committee process. They don’t have to remove themselves and be outside the boundaries of that process, because you don’t want any one particular position to become the only position or the dominant position. Again, this is part of what critical thinking is all about. We are inheriting a generation of students, Mary, who are not seeing their middle and high school educators practice these skills. We are inheriting a group of students who do not know how to read as well, who do not know how to have critical thinking and get their information on devices that have two seconds to grab their attention.

So we have to actually help students hit the pause button, read deeply. My bias is history. Think like historians, ask the hard questions, be critical in how they are thinking. Be able to hold complexity and live in that gray with multiple perspectives, and then be able to articulate ideas based upon that evidence. But again, from a position in which they can engage with civility. It’s not because they have the corner on the market of the idea, but it’s because they have done serious understanding of research that they can then engage in a substantive way.

And I don’t want to see students and we don’t want faculty modeling this for them, engaging and tearing each other down based upon opinion or ideology or identity. That’s a very bad position to be in. So if our institutions can figure out how to model this, that bodes very well for the democracy of America, because we are the laboratories for these students, and then they go out in the real world. And if they can’t do it in the confines of our campus, I do not expect them to be able to do it throughout America.

Mary Papazian:
So I’ll flip that. If they can do it in the confines of our campuses, then they become really powerful voices in their communities, voices of support for exploration, for understanding, for engagement across difference, really, which is at the core of, as you say, of our democracy. I will say that many faculty do this very well, many institutions do as well. It’s a constant battle. We’re never at a point where all of this is solved and we can go on and say, “It’s all behind us.”

I think it’s just part of being human. We’re going to have things that engage us and that animate us in different ways, and it’s natural in some cases to want to express that. But I think your point, what I’m hearing is, to do it responsibly, to do it thoughtfully, to think about the impact that your words are going to have on others and what role you need to play in really helping that community grow, and the role of trustees working with this and supporting their leadership to create an environment where that is possible. It’s why higher education is so critical to America and its democracy and its success, and it’s why these conversations matter so much.

So I want to end, if I might, a lot of serious things we’ve talked about, certainly a lot of examples behind what you’ve shared that are less than hopeful. But I’m an optimist at my core, and I believe that things, when we talk about them, when we share them, when we shed light on them, bright sunshine, as they say is the best disinfectant. So let me ask you this, what gives you hope in this work? And are there examples of institutions or leaders who are responding effectively to antisemitism and hate more broadly? And what can others learn from them?

Rachel Fish:
So I’m a realist. A realist who thinks very positively, Mary. And what I will say is that what gives me hope is that every time I engage with higher ed administrators, they want more. That’s a very positive thing, right, truly. The majority of senior leaders who are doing this work in institutions of higher education do this because they want to create opportunity for their students. They want to be able to build a better future. They want deeply to create those laboratories that offer opportunities to young people to be able to explore deeply with ideas and then to create that sense of civic responsibility.

Mary Papazian:
And it’s really building those muscles, isn’t it? Really understanding some of the issues. Because truly, there is pain in many communities today. And the commitment of leaders to understand this particular form of pain and hate really gives them tools to create an environment on their campus more broadly that responds to other environments that they may be seeing, other communities who may be suffering. And, my goodness, we are at that critical point in our society where any engagement like this is really something to be encouraged and to appreciate.

So thank you, Rachel, for this really robust conversation. One that really understands the vital role of university trustees and leading with clarity, courage, and principle. Trustees are not simply stewards of financial or reputational assets. They are also stewards of institutional values, and that includes that responsibility to ensure campuses are safe, inclusive, and equitable learning environments for all students. And so, we are very committed here at AGB to equipping boards with knowledge and tools and resources they need to lead effectively in complex times. And we hope this conversation on this particular issue is going to be helpful to our trustees and to all our listeners. So thank you so much for joining me today.

Rachel Fish:
Thank you, Mary. Thank you for all you are doing. Thank you.