Recent ‘victories’ against anti-Semitism on campus are short-sighted and short-lived.

[dropcap]What[/dropcap] some see as a victory, we see as a defeat. We begin with two recent incidents on college campuses, one in Iowa, one in Illinois (both reported in last week’s IJN).

In Iowa, a Jewish student was denied a place on the Student Senate because, being Jewish, it could be assumed that she represented the Jewish religion, and was therefore pro-Israel. The Student Senate was not the place for political advocacy; ergo, the Jewish candidate should be, and was, voted down.

Jewish students and faculty objected: Judaism in its broadest sense is an ethnicity. It should not be subjected to anti-Semitic comments and attitudes on campus. A Jewish student on the Student Senate would not promote Israel, but would defend against anti-Semitism.

The Jewish students and faculty won the day. Not only this particular Jewish candidate was elected to the Student Senate, but a permanent “Jewish constituency senator” was established. There is now a “black constituency” chair and a host of other constituency chairs on the Student Senate.

We are pleased that there is now a vehicle to counter anti-Semitism on the Iowa campus, but in a larger sense this is a defeat — for Judaism, Israel and America. On which more below, but first: the scene in Illinois.

A federal civil rights complaint alleged “an unrelenting campaign of anti-Semitic harassment” at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The suit was enabled by the Trump administration’s 2019 decision to include Jewish students in anti-discrimination protection. This is a victory.

The remedy is another story: a separate, Jewish-only dorm. Now swing the camera to Fieldston, a private school in New York City. There, “children as young as eight years old are segregated into racial ‘affinity groups,’” writes the Wall Street Journal. This one word — segregation — captures the essence of the Jewish outcome in Illinois literally and in Iowa figuratively. Separate Jewish Student Senate chair. Separate Jewish dorm. One nation is dividing and subdividing, group by sub-group, ad infinitum.

In private spaces, any American may affiliate with whomever one chooses, on whatever criteria one chooses: religion, wealth, race, hobby, gender, whatever. This is a strength of America. There is another strength of America. It is great because it is not only a guarantor of freedom of association but a public place of unrestricted citizen interaction, not governed by discrimination or balkanization, formal or informal.

In this spirit of a diverse and non-discriminatory America, if there is anti-Semitism on a campus, the problem must be addressed campus-wide, by the campus itself in its totality and in all of its constituent parts, not consigned to the voice of its Jewish constituency, If there is anti-Semitism on campus, the solution is not Jewish withdrawal into a separate dorm, but total campus reform.

A university-sponsored “Jewish space” makes no more sense than a university-sponsored “black space” or any other space defined by a racial, religious, ethnic or gender identity marker. Start with the emblematic “affinity spaces” for kids at age eight, and what do you end with? Segregated dorms, segregated meals, segregated sororities and fraternities — segregated mentality and segregated society.Once set in place, the segregation gesture divides and subdivides, ad infinitum. It is a very short hop from segregated dorms to segregated public housing once again.

Segregation was the enemy of the Civil Rights movement. It is not the strength of a diverse society. It should not be the goal of the fight against anti-Semitism. Jim Crow was fought by arguing against black-only bathrooms and black-only everything else. The offense of black-only is the failure of the whole society in which it is set. The solution was the elimination of black-only in public spaces throughout society. The offense of anti-Semitism touches the entire conext in which it is set. The solution is its elimination throughout the context, not self-imposed Jewish segregation.

Incidentally, Judaism is neither a religion nor a people. It is both.

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