An insider’s account of the Harvard Antisemitism Committee — with Rabbi David Wolpe
Understanding where and how antisemitism has come to exist at an institution like Harvard is the focus of today’s conversation. We will hear the perspective of Rabbi David Wolpe — visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School — who tried to advise Harvard’s leadership on how to address it; after October 7, he joined Harvard’s Antisemitism Advisory Group.
Rabbi Wolpe is also the inaugural rabbinic fellow at the Anti-Defamation League, and he was the long-time rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. He is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller “Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times”. His book “David: The Divided Heart” was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] There's a terrible paradox here. I mean, how do you wrap your head around the idea? that Jews are the subject of 60 to 70 percent of the hate crimes. They're two percent or less of the population. And yet, at the same time, they also have positions of power in almost every industry that matters. In this country, even though there are so few, and they're subject to so much prejudice.
So it doesn't fit, and therefore all the prejudice has to be discounted. There's too much cognitive dissonance. And Jews are just oppressors, and that's it. It's like operations on social realities with a meat cleaver. And anything that doesn't fit, you just lop it off, and the Jews don't fit. They just don't.
[00:01:00] Earlier this month, an oversight board at Harvard University said it had become aware of allegations regarding three articles by Harvard University President Claudine Gay earlier in her career, in which she failed to provide proper citations of other people's work or quotations. According to Harvard, an independent review found, and I quote here, no violation of Harvard's standards for research misconduct.
Close quote. But it did report that it had found, quote, a few instances of inadequate citation. Close quote. Now, earlier this week, a congressional committee announced an inquiry into how Harvard has handled allegations of plagiarism. Around the same time, in fact the same day, Harvard said that a different review had found even more instances of failure to cite the work of others in President Claudine Gay's writings, including [00:02:00] in her 1997 doctoral dissertation, which was written at Harvard University in the government department.
Now there are a number of issues here. There's the issue of the university's current policy on plagiarism. which appears to apply one standard for its students and its faculty, and another standard for its president. Then there's the debate about what should actually constitute plagiarism, stealing someone else's ideas, or simply sloppy citations, copying other people's work without proper attribution.
And of course, Harvard's president, Claudine Gay, first came under fire following Harvard University's disastrous response. To the wave of anti semitism at Harvard following the October 7th Hamas massacre waged against Israel and the administration's response to it and its response to the wave of anti semitism that swept the [00:03:00] college campus, and then the president's responses to questions on Harvard's handling of these issues and their policies on these issues during a congressional hearing on December 5th of this year.
Now, we're not going to sort through all of these issues on today's podcast. There's a lot that has been written about it, and there's a lot of commentary on it, but understanding where and how anti Semitism Anti Semitism has come to exist at an institution like Harvard University should not get lost in the swirl of these other issues that are being reported on in real time.
Indeed, as we were reminded in a recent conversation on this podcast we had with Yuval Levin, anti Semitism is rarely some outlier phenomenon. Rather, it is typically a feature. Rather than a bug in terms of other sources of institutional or cultural rot that can exist at elite institutions. That's why [00:04:00] we wanted to better understand what happened at Harvard and its crisis of anti Semitism.
And we couldn't think of anyone to help us better understand what's going on than Rabbi David Wolpe. David is a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School. He's also the inaugural rabbinic fellow at the Anti Defamation League, and he was for a long time the chief rabbi of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.
Rabbi Wolpe is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter. creating meaning in difficult times, and his book David, The Divided Heart, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Awards and has been optioned for a movie by Warner Brothers. He's also widely regarded as one of the most influential rabbis in the United States in American Jewish life.
Now that's not just by reputation or by anecdote, there are actually rankings of these things, and David Wolpe is always ranked high on those lists. And the other thing to know about David is he's not an inflammatory. [00:05:00] Speaker, he's very measured, very balanced, which I think make his insights here all the more important because he was also following the anti Semitic mess at Harvard after October 7th, invited by President Gay to join the newly created Harvard University's anti semitism advisory group, and it's about that experience that we talked with him today.
Harvard's anti semitism committee, an insider's account. This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast my long time friend, first time guest, Rabbi David Wolpe, who joins us from the Belly of the Beast from the lion's den from Cambridge, Massachusetts, uh, where he is, uh, working and teaching at Harvard University right now. David, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me.
It's a pleasure. So I want to start with just setting the table in terms of how you found [00:06:00] yourself. In the middle of both, uh, as a, as a participant, but also as an explainer of the issues the Jewish community is dealing with during this horrendous period post October 7th. So, I, I saw you, I was with you in the summer, and you told me you were getting ready to start a stint at Harvard University.
You had just stepped down. Um, from your synagogue in Los Angeles, and you're moving to Cambridge to start a stint at Harvard University. Then we'll get to October 7th. I was the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles for 26 years and I handed it on to wonderful successors and thought that I would have a year as a visiting scholar at the Divinity School and calm and ease.
I was going to teach one class. And do research, and maybe write a book, I had several different ideas in mind. And all of that was more or less on track. I had set up, [00:07:00] uh, an apartment, and was learning my way around. Because I hadn't been here since I was a child. Both my parents grew up in Boston, so I used to come here as a kid.
But now I was learning the city as an adult, and when October 7th hit, as for so many, everything changed. So what changed as it relates to the work you were doing? at Harvard and your, and your life on and off campus at Harvard. Immediately upon the catastrophe of October 7th, first of all, like everybody in our world, I was watching and listening to the news practically 24 hours a day, checking with friends in Israel, calling people here.
I'm just trying to figure out what had happened. And then it on campus, some 30, 30 some groups issued a statement saying that it was all Israel's fault and Harvard exploded and it [00:08:00] exploded in several ways and for several reasons. One was that the administration then put out what can only be called the weakest of T's, an anodyne statement.
Uh, about, you know, condemning Hamas, but then going on to talk about, you know, the violence on all sides and peace on all sides and, and not at all acknowledging. The horrific catastrophe that had just happened. So, a number of And to be I just want I just want to set the timeline here. So, how soon after October 7th did that That was October 8th or 9th.
It was right after October 8th or 9th. But it was still after the 30 groups had issued their terrible statement. Right, so the terrible statement comes out, and the official Harvard statement comes, the student statement comes out, and then the Harvard administration statement come out. They both come out within a couple of days of October 7th.
Israel, the IDF had not really [00:09:00] commenced a response yet to October 7th, so they were responding They were expressing outrage at Jews objecting to being slaughtered. They weren't even objecting to the, to the actual act of Jews being slaughtered. It was Jews objecting to being slaughtered. Well, the first, the first statement, yes, the first statement said explicitly anything that happens is Israel's fault.
The administration statement. Was, you know, we condemned the act of Hamas and you know, we want everybody to be fine And we want there to be, you know, goodness and decency and kindness in the world and and I I'm paraphrasing but not I'm not I'm not being too much of a Too much of an ironist or a satirist when I say that that's basically the tone of the statement And it was in response to the outrage of the statement from the student groups.
It was not completely independent because already people were saying, how could Harvard allow this to happen and say nothing? And [00:10:00] when they came out with that statement, It just made everyone explode. Um, the Jewish community, I think, all across America thought, it's bad enough that, that these groups came out with a statement to start with, but this is the response?
There, there's, there was no condemnation of the original statement. There was no outrage, nothing. And so immediately it became clear. that Harvard had a serious problem. And since it has such a powerful symbolic position in American life, and indeed in the world, um, already people from all walks of life were pointing at Harvard.
And I got a call. from the president's office, um, that she wanted to speak to me. And this was just a few days after that. And we had a very good conversation, I felt. And she was obviously deeply shaken. There's no question about that. [00:11:00] Deeply shaken by everything that had happened. I think this was two months into her presidency and she was not ready for the greatest crisis that the university had faced in a very, very long time.
And so she told me she wanted to set up an advisory committee to help her. And would I consider being on it? And I said, of course I would be on it. And shortly after that, we named a number of other people, some of whom you know, like the novelist Dara Morne, and, uh, the former dean of the law school, Martha Minow, professor of government named Eric Nelson, and, and some others, uh, including a dean of the undergraduates.
And we started to meet and talk about what we had to do to restore something of Harvard's both integrity and reputation. Then what happened? Then what happened was, there was another statement that was also not, I mean, it was better. Um, the president came to Hillel [00:12:00] because by now it was a five alarm fire and spoke to a Friday night group at Hillel and spoke very well and made some of the students feel better.
It was on parents Roughly when was this? This was like, uh, it was like three weeks after October 7th or something? About that. About maybe two weeks after, I don't, I'd have to look at the dates. Um, but it was parents weekend and so the parents were there and the children were there and she came and she spoke very well.
She did not issue this statement to the entire university. It went out through media channels. It was in the Boston Globe. And so some people accused the administration of what they called narrowcasting. That is, it was only intended for the Jewish community. But people debated that back and forth. We persisted with our work, trying to hammer out recommendations and ideas and so on.
And, and the committee, um, Very often, the president would attend our meetings, um, the provost, Alan [00:13:00] Garber, was the chair of the committee. And yet, as we were doing this work, the truth is things were getting worse, not better. And, and the crisis at the university was expanding, and we were not alone. Uh, we were part now of a, I don't know what to call them, a cabal is a little bit too strong a word, but we had.
Columbia and Cornell and, and MIT and Berkeley and, and Penn and all these universities that were showing the same pathologies that Harvard was. Okay. Can you describe just a couple of images or scenes that you were seeing light up? I mean, I, I say on this podcast a lot, it's like they were pogroms. It was almost like pogroms were happening on some campuses.
Can you just, you know, that's. A little, maybe a little too visual, but, um, can you just describe what you, what you were seeing? On Harvard's campus, there were a couple of physical incidents, [00:14:00] but they were relatively minor. Um, there was pushing and shoving, things like that. On other campuses Pushing and shoving of Jews?
Of Jews, yes. So there was that scene, for instance, on the Harvard Business School campus where there was that one Jewish kid who was surrounded and pushed and other kids were being yelled at and, you know, buildings were being taken over by protests, those sorts of things that we have seen in campuses before, but not for a very long time.
Uh, and in other campuses, the physical intimidation was even, even worse, you know, where in one place some Jewish kids felt they had to hide in the library. There were, there was a sense, an increasing sense of. Okay, nothing, no deep physical harm has happened to a Jewish student, but we are inches away. And one of the things that I and many other people kept telling the administration is, you're gonna [00:15:00] have a serious problem.
And there's gonna be an incident that you will not be able then to walk back unless we take action really quickly, um, because the tensions were escalating so much. And I want to be clear. Yes, the Jewish students had a protest or two. None of them was aggressive. None of them were violent. None of them were intended to be provocations.
I mean, the Jewish protests were really careful and really civil. That was not always true of, uh, the anti Israel protests. And wasn't there also a situation where large numbers of protesters were allowed on the campus, anti Israel, anti Semitic protests, and it wasn't clear who these people were, how they were getting on campus, was campus security?
You know checking IDs like somehow with [00:16:00] with other protests They tend to be quite strict about who can come on and off the campus, but with these anti israel protests It was a free for all. Well, one of the problems was that as you say it was really hard to know who was a student and who wasn't and While they can close harvard yard and have done so in the past.
They did not do so in these instances um, and I can only speculate as to why that is, but I think at least part of it is that there was a lot of sympathy, especially among the faculty, for these protests. And I will give you one incident that, uh, actually I don't want to name the person, but it actually involves a child of a person that we both know.
And that was that, uh, Harvard Divinity School, where I teach, which is I think it is fair to say, as unsympathetic to the pro Israel community as any school at Harvard, or maybe in [00:17:00] America, but certainly at Harvard, there was a pro Palestinian protest, and there was a Jewish student decided that what they would do was stand there and just read Psalms in Hebrew for the hostages.
That's all they did. And they were yelled at and told to go away. So there was A climate of intimidation across campus. It wasn't just, you know, we disagree with you politically. It was a sense of Jewish students feeling unsafe. I'll give you one more, um, example. Uh, one student in a class. told me, I, I'll, again, I'll, a little bit obfuscate the details to protect the student.
This class was talking about, um, it was about health outcomes. And the professor spent almost the entire class talking about what was happening to people in Gaza. And this student came up to the professor afterwards and [00:18:00] said, Why did you never mention Israel? And the professor said, Oh, you're right, I should have.
And when I said to the student, Why did you not say it during class? Her answer was, because I didn't want to put a target on my back. And so that was how the Jewish students were feeling. And, and by the way, I, I wish, I wish I could keep it in the past tense. That's how many of the Jewish students continued to feel.
Okay, so I want to get to your decision to step down from, from this committee in a moment, but before we do, uh, I want to just also put this in the context, the word context now has become a loaded word, I want to put this, I want to put this in the frame of what has been going on, on these campuses. Like Harvard, but not, not, not limited to Harvard, uh, over the last number of years where there has been a, a minimalist approach to tolerance of free speech on campuses.
And, and Harvard is first among them in [00:19:00] that, that, that have had this minimalist approach. And, and just, um, the foundation, there's a organization called FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which, does a lot of work on campuses, but it ranks and tracks which campuses have the most, the most maximalist down to the most minimalist, uh, tolerance for free speech.
And Harvard ranked last on their list in terms of tolerance for free speech. That is to say that Harvard really tries to seek out And extinguish out any language that could be offensive to anybody. Uh, what, what is called microaggression. Yes. You know, that like you could just say something and the language is quite extraordinary.
There have been, there have been, um, investigations at Harvard going back a few years where, you know, speech was called violence. You know, that if you say, if you say the wrong thing it is, you should, it should be interpreted. and responded to as though it was a form of violence, whether it was, and I [00:20:00] quote here, Harvard's policy, intentional or unintentional.
So even if you say something unintentionally, that could be viewed as a form of violence. So, or an expression of violence. So Can you explain what, let's leave now the Jewish world out of it and the Jewish community out of it. Can you speak to what I'm describing that's been happening on campuses like Harvard with regard to this very, very tight policy on trying to make sure no, no group, no demographic is offended?
So there is It's a long history now that has been building for many years, not only at Harvard, but across the country. But Harvard is an exemplary example of it, as you said, where there are certain groups generally considered groups that are oppressed in one way or another, or fit the intersectional oppression grid in one way or another.
to speak in any way that offends [00:21:00] members of that group is considered particularly boorish, unacceptable, and, uh, and can be sanctioned. So, I have seen numerous syllabi, for example, from classes, where the beginning of the syllabus is all about The way in which everybody must speak in the class, and everybody must identify one another, and every pronoun must be pronounced before and understood, and cannot be somebody being misgendered or mispronouned, um, is considered deeply offensive and a microaggression.
It is sometimes the subject for parody, but it's actually the way that people speak about the normal discourse. Uh, on Harbridge campus and in Harbridge classes. And so if you, for example, express conservative views, I think it is fair to say that you're going to be made to feel extremely [00:22:00] unwelcome. There have been instances of, uh, professors who, at least according to popular Accounts, although I'm not in the administration, I don't know the details, um, have been let go because they have, uh, espoused conservative views.
Uh, Ron Fryer is a, is a, an example of this, um, who did a, I'm sorry, Roland Fryer, who did a very controversial study about, uh, black, uh, about shootings of, uh, of black African American men by the police. But the, the long and short of it is that in this oppression oppressed grid, Jews don't fit very well.
And that's part of the problem that we've had with intersectionality and hard progressive values. And we don't fit well for a number of reasons that we can talk about if you want, but that makes this special. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. So I'll give you at least two reasons why Jews don't fit into this [00:23:00] grid.
One reason is. If you divide all the world into oppressed people who can do no wrong and oppressors who can do no right, which sounds again like a parody, but it's very close to the actual ideological position here. It's one of the reasons why people said Hamas, whatever Hamas did, the Israelis brought it on because they're the oppressor and.
if you suffer as the oppressor, it's your own doing. One of the problems with that in terms of Jewish history is you cannot look at history and not realize that Jews are as oppressed as any that has ever lived. It's not a question of more oppression or less oppression, but Jews have been historically continually oppressed throughout history.
And yet they are successful today, and that doesn't fit along the grid of the oppressed people are suffering and the oppressors are thriving. And so So this is a version of Dara Dara Horne's Everybody Loves Dead Jews. Right. In other words, if Jews are always being oppressed, [00:24:00] and are always dying, to use her formulation, then it makes it easier for This intersectional framework to put the Jews in a frame.
Yes. But the, the, it's, it's almost paradoxical that on the one hand, Jews are the, are the target of more hate crimes than any other community in the United States. The Jews, it is the oldest hatred. The Jews have been subjected to discrimination, sometimes violent discrimination. on mass as a people more than any other community in the history of the world.
You can go back century after century after century. And yet many segments of the Jewish community have achieved tremendous success in America in, in modern times. And so there's like this dichotomy, like they don't know. There's a terrible paradox here. I mean, how do you wrap your head around the idea?
that Jews are the subject of 60 to 70 percent of the hate crimes. They're two percent or less of the population. And yet, at the same [00:25:00] time, they also have positions of power in almost every industry that matters. In this country, even though there are so few, and they're subject to so much prejudice. So it doesn't fit, and therefore all the prejudice has to be discounted.
There's too much cognitive dissonance. And Jews are just oppressors, and that's it. And they're colonialist settlers, and that's it. Despite the fact, again, that settler state, I don't need to tell you, is, it's almost a surreal Alice in Wonderland sort of statement. It's so disconnected. From the reality of the presence of, I mean, it's, it's ironic if it weren't, if it weren't so sad.
That all these people who are about to sing about the birth of the baby Jesus in Bethlehem as they celebrate Christmas, are going to say that Jews have no history in the land of Israel. And I want to say to them, [00:26:00] listen, guys, Jesus, remember that Jesus guy? That you're celebrating his birth 2, 000 years ago in the land of Israel?
Guess what? Um, but, but that's what makes it, I mean, you can laugh at it, but it is, as my grandmother would say, a bit of a galactic. It is a, it's a bitter laugh because unfortunately that reality does not penetrate through the iron wall of ideology, um, that a lot of these kids believe in. And just staying on Israel as colonialist settler, which again, we, we, we got into this.
We've, we've, we've discussed this at length in some of my previous episodes with Haviv Rettigore and with Douglas Murray. Let me interrupt you long enough to say. The Khabib Retegor and the episodes that you do each week with him have meant an enormous amount to me and to lots of other people. They're fantastic.
Really, they are fantastic. Thank you. They, they have been cathartic for me too. And I think for him, so I, [00:27:00] uh, I, uh, I appreciate that and I'll, I'll pass that on. Although he may, he may actually be listening to this conversation. So. So he's, I think, addressed it, um, quite well, the absurdity of it, but there's a, there's another element back to your oppressor versus oppressed, which is a point that Monty Friedman, the journalist from, and writer from Israel, has made, which is historically, pre October 7th, if you viewed Israel, the, the, the conflict that Israel, the security conflict that Israel has been involved in, purely as the Israeli Palestinian conflict, that makes it easier for journalists, most journalists can only kind of get their heads around a one dimensional story.
And a one dimensional story is Israel the oppressor, the Palestinians the oppressed. But if you actually raise the lens a little bit and say, okay, so it's Israel with Hamas on its southern border, Hezbollah on its northern border, Both proxies of Iran, Iran in the region [00:28:00] that is as, you know, is a, is a, um, a, a, a government that is, has historically been awash in oil revenues, a government that has close ties with Moscow and Beijing, a government that's on the cusp of building a nuclear weapons program, a government that basically has a pro, another proxy country.
in Syria, not to mention its proxy armies with Hamas and Hezbollah, not to mention the Houthis in, uh, Yemen. It has its reach all over the region. Suddenly Israel is, is the David in the region, not the Goliath. So again, oppressed versus oppressor, not so clear. And also, I don't think most Americans, because we're so blessed geographically, appreciate the distances, or better, the lack of distances that When you have an enemy on your border, you're talking about the next street over.
You're not talking about somewhere across the world as when we were in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Became [00:29:00] sovietized america went nuts because they were so close But they were not close in middle eastern terms in middle eastern terms close is you know a five minute bike ride and so you have israel surrounded by countries that are either mildly hostile or homicidally violently hateful towards you, and those are your choices.
You get the homicidal regime, and you get the hostile regime. There is no Canada on Israel's border, and so when you talk about it as a regional superpower, it's superpowers can usually exert their influence in their neighborhoods. If you look at the Soviet states around it, you know, it exerts its influence in its neighborhood, and when it doesn't, it goes into Ukraine.
Look at America, it exerts influence on the neighborhood around it because it's a superpower. Israel doesn't have that blessing. Instead, Israel is [00:30:00] surrounded by ideological enemies and, and those ideological enemies have allies in far flung places. I mean, there are 50 Muslim countries and one Jewish country.
That's a, if, if those countries, All felt like, you know, the Israel's immediate enemies. That's pretty frightening arithmetic and the The term white privilege has been a part of this whole frame on campuses, uh, not just on campuses. And again, as it relates to Israel, and actually the broader Jewish community, the diaspora also is preposterous.
I mean, you spend time in Israel, as I know you do, over 50 percent of Israeli Jews. are not white, they are not Caucasian, they are from everywhere from, you know, their families originate from, from, they're Persian, they're from Iran, Iraq, [00:31:00] Yemen, uh, Morocco, uh, Ethiopia, uh, I mean, so, the idea that, that you could just, The Jews, because some segments of the Jewish community in Israel and around the world are from Eastern Europe.
Yes. Doesn't mean all Jews are, so again, they just get, I mean, what's that about? Well, 70 percent of my congregation, 60 70 percent in Los Angeles, was from Iran. And when they came here, They suffered discrimination both because they were dark and also because people hated Iranians because of Khomeini. And they, you know, they tried to say, no, no, no, we're the ones who ran away.
We're not the ones, we're not the ones who are supporting him. Um, and what, but what it's about, again, is You cannot accommodate the contradictions that violate the ideological orthodoxy of this intersectional colonialist settler oppressor oppress dichotomy. You just can't. And anything, it's [00:32:00] like operations on social realities with a meat cleaver.
And anything that doesn't fit, you just lop it off. And the Jews don't fit. They just don't. They don't fit the normal axes. First of all, the normal axes are bad for America in general. I don't want to suggest this is only a Jewish problem. This is a much deeper problem than solely a Jewish problem, but it's certainly a Jewish problem.
And, and that is not to say, by the way, and I know that you, you wouldn't say either that there aren't real. questions of oppression, and there aren't real social problems, and that there isn't real discrimination. All those things can be true, but they're so much more complicated and nuanced and, and variable, um, than this group is always good, and this group is always bad.
It's, it's It's astonishing to me that at a place like Harvard, where presumably complexity and nuance and thoughtfulness are [00:33:00] taught to people who are presumably smart and agile thinkers, that you get this absurd lumping together of people as though they were all the same. I want to explore a few terms that were being thrown around since October 7th, although they existed before October 7th.
So when students on the Harvard campus and other campuses are chanting from the river to the sea, what does that mean? Okay, so I have a slightly different view from what you, from what many of your listeners may have. I think when they're chanting from the river to the sea, most of them have no idea what they're chanting.
Um, I think, I think they, I mean, there was that Wall Street Journal article that asked them what river, what sea. Oh my god, that was unbelievable. And it was hilarious. I mean, it was sad, but it was hilarious. They have, like, the Nile, I don't know, you know, um, so most of them think what they're chanting is, oh, Israel shouldn't be an aggressor and there should be peace.
But, there's a large number [00:34:00] of them that know exactly what they're saying. And what they're really saying is, make Israel a Judenrein, that is, make Israel a place where there are no Jews. Because And just to be clear, just, just to find it, from the river, from the Jordan River From the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, which means all of Israel.
Right. Everything that includes it. So just to be clear. Yes. On one side of Israel, just for our listeners. One side of Israel is the Jordan River. The other, the other side is the, is the Mediterranean. It is no different than saying the Atlantic to the Pacific. Right. It would be like, it would be like. Like, liberate America, i.
e. wipe out America from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which means there's no America left for the people living there. And under the formulation from the river to the sea, in its popular use in the, in the more, in the extreme factions, in the, in the Palestinian Islamist communities, it means wipe out Jewish presence, colonial presence.
Slash Jewish, as they would call it, Jewish presence in [00:35:00] what is Israel, which means it's not just we're having a border dispute on the Israel Gaza border. It's not that we're, we, we, we want a Palestinian state in the West Bank. It doesn't even mean we want East Jerusalem. It means no Ashkelon, no Be'er Sheva, no Netanya, no Tel Aviv, no nothing.
Yup. And, and if you doubt that, as I said to one of the students and they didn't have an answer for me, I said, well, tell me which state. represents the way you want Jews and, and, and Arabs to live together. Is it Yemen? Is it Syria? Is it Iran? Is it Iraq? Because there are no Jews in any of those places. So when you talk about this kind of state that you want, why, why is it, I mean, how, what kind of precedent is there?
for you to imagine for a minute that these people are going to allow Jews to live in the state if they had the choice to drive them out. And of course that, I, I mean, it's, they know what they're saying. The people who know what they're saying, know what they're saying. Um, the [00:36:00] others are, uh, unfortunately either unwitting or foolish accomplices or a kind of fellow traveler ish ness that, uh, That we're familiar with from other totalitarian ideologies.
What about globalize the intifada? The same, I mean, when you say globalize the intifada, the intifada was A violent insurrection where cafes were blown up, buses were blown up. I mean, I, like probably you and, and some of your listeners visited Israel after the Intifada, during, both during and after the Intifada, and you saw the wreckage in major cities of buses, of Buildings of cafes.
I mean over 140 suicide bombing attacks during the second Intifada. Uh, just innocent Israeli civilians in huge numbers. So you want that in American cities? Globalize that? Is that what you're [00:37:00] saying? On buses, buses being blown up, pizza shops being blown up, discotheques being blown up where teenagers were targeted.
I mean, so, so this is what the Intifada was. Basically, it's globalized. Let me rephrase it. Globalize the slaughter of civilians. That's what they're calling for. Globalize the slaughter of civilians. And if you actually say what you're saying, imagine you're a student on a college campus and your fellow student who lives in your dorm, who goes to your classes, is saying globalize the slaughter of Jewish civilians.
How is that tolerable? There's also been attacks against Jews who have said nothing. Not, not, not that this is, not, not that I'm saying there should be a distinction between those who attack those who have made supportive statements of Israel and those who haven't. But I just want to, I just, I think it's important for listeners to understand.
There have been attacks against Jews. Jews and Jewish communities, regardless of their [00:38:00] involvement with the debate about Israel and the debate of October 7th. So examples include, I'm not going to take this out of Harvard for a second, there have been attacks in New York City and in Toronto and in Los Angeles against Jewish owned businesses.
That's right. So these are businesses owned by Philadelphia. Exactly. These are businesses owned by Jews who have made no statement. about Israel are not involved in the debate and their businesses are being disrupted, vandalized, attacked, there have been violent attacks. Why? Like, what, because they happen to be Jews.
In Williamsburg, Virginia, the, the government there decided to do an annual menorah lighting along the Christmas street. Christmas tree lighting every year this year they have announced they will not do the menorah lighting the menorah lighting which has nothing to do Hanukkah has nothing to do with this current debate about October 7th, and they canceled it because they didn't want to offend those Sympathetic with the plight of the Palestinians by lighting menorah.
So can you just explain why this feels like [00:39:00] whole other level? Yes When people say that anti zionism isn't anti semitism All I can say is that the facts on the ground, as they put it in Israel, the facts on the ground contradict that. Because when people protest about Israel, they attack Jews, they attack Jews.
I know a lot of people who criticize Israel all the time, they don't attack Jews. But actually, these attacks in major cities across America, and not just America, also in the UK, in France, through Europe, these attacks are indicators that we're talking about a deep seated anti Semitism. That, by the way, I think it's important to say, goes way back at places like Harvard.
This is not new. I spoke to someone the other day who's, who wrote a book about the history of Harvard, has a chapter about antisemitism at Harvard going back to the 20s and the 30s and the 40s. And even the president, when she spoke to Hillel, she said, we have a long history [00:40:00] of antisemitism at Harvard.
This is the president of Harvard who said this and she said just as we investigated the history of racism We have to investigate the history of anti semitism. So If this were about Israel in some ways, it would be a much much less complicated and certainly less threatening Question, but it's not It's about Jews, and, and you can, and, and if you doubt that, by the way, you should look at my Twitter feed, because people aren't writing me with thoughtful critiques of Israeli policy.
They're writing me with, uh, ugly invective about Jews. I want to go now to the hearing. Last week on Capitol Hill and then your decision to step off this committee that you agreed to join Following your decision to step down following the hearing so by your lights at a high level Because that there's been a lot of analysis about the hearing and the different personalities involved [00:41:00] in the hearing and how different Institutions are responding to different people and we don't need to Rehash all that right now, but just generally, what was your reaction to the hearing?
Um, look, I started, I watched all five hours of the hearing because obviously I was deeply um, concerned and implicated in all of this. Um, and from the very beginning of the hearing, my, my reaction didn't change. It wasn't about this question or that question. There were three things that were absent from the answers of all of the presidents that I found profoundly dispiriting.
There was no indignation, nobody pounded the table and said at my institution this terrible thing is happening and I won't allow it to happen any, I mean nothing. There was no empathy, I didn't feel the heart of any of them speaking like, I, I, it grieves me and I'm so sad to hear, [00:42:00] um, all of that. And there was no vision.
There was no, this is the kind of place that I want to create. And this is what we need to do to get there. And without the, you know, there's a verse in Proverbs, without vision, the people perish. And it was so, it was so hard to listen to. And I literally was sitting there like, you know, when you, when you want someone to say something and you're like rooting inside yourself, please just like get angry for a second.
Get indignant. Say like, I love. my institution, and I want it to be better. Like, be a person who speaks bluntly and directly and, and with heart and force and love about what it is that you love. And unfortunately, what we got were equivocations and evasions and legalisms and And fine points. And some of them, it's true, some of them were correct from the point of view of actual parsing [00:43:00] policy, but it was irrelevant 'cause it wasn't really about the point.
It was about this is the spirit that is prevailing at these universities and so nobody is taking this seriously and this is an urgent issue. This is not a slow burn question. Generally speaking, David, the people, and again, I, I know we're not going to start talking about specific personalities, but generally speaking, the people leading these universities and they're not, not, and they're not limited to the ones who were testifying before Congress, because the problem you're speaking to right now, I think is pervasive.
And I think Congress could be doing hearing after hearing, after hearing, and you get the same for the next few months. And get the same, right? Maybe they would be a little better prepped, a little more polished in their answers having watched that, that, that train wreck, uh, of, of a congressional hearing last week, the testimonies, but, um, but generally speaking, you get versions of the same thing, generally speaking, not all of them, but [00:44:00] generally speaking, these are not dumb people leading these institutions and they're not, I don't believe all of them are not like insensitive people.
No. So, yeah. What kind of cross pressures are they experiencing that they find themselves in this ridiculous pretzel that would lead them to say the things that they said? I think there are three pressures that operate on them, and it's a great question, and I'm glad you asked it. Because most people just dismiss them as, oh, they're this or they're that.
But there are pressures that are forcing them into this position, at least in their own minds. One is, the faculty is ideologically very hard left. And I think that they're afraid of saying something that will upset, and it's primarily the faculty, um, and the faculty has enormous power in institutions, in colleges, and universities.
Second is, this is an ideology that most of them were raised in. [00:45:00] And so, I think they're used to this ideology themselves, and a lot of them buy a lot of this ideology themselves. And then the third pressure is the legal pressure. All of them, I'm sure you saw in the New York Times, were prepped by the same law firm.
And it was so clear to anyone who's listening that they were told, you may say this, you may not say that. Navigate this question this way and you must tiptoe that way and it sometimes it just robs human beings of their humanity It's like when people stand up and plead the fifth over and over again and you think you know Just say something direct and blunt But all these universities are being sued.
They all face the prospects of suits And so I think all those things combined made it much harder But even so you got it You know, sometimes, as, as, as, uh, people used to quote Harry Truman as saying, sometimes you have to put your [00:46:00] principles aside and do the right thing. And that's basically what we're talking about here.
Yeah. And by the way, just parenthetically, I do think you have a situation, a lot of these institutions where the leaders of these institutions Are going to work every day, because it seems so obvious, it's like you're in charge, you're the boss, you're the president of the university, deal with it, like, deal, you've got professors and other, others who work at the university who have views that you may find abhorrent, rein them in, it's your job, you're effectively the CEO, which I And that is my view, by the way, but the reality is a lot of these professors are tenured professors, and they're, these are the people that the heads, the presidents of these schools have to go to work with every day.
I'm not, I'm not excusing this, I'm just saying, I just think it's the dynamic. And they're the ones, they're spending 10 or 12 hours a day with these people who they don't want to be fighting with all day, so they kind of fold. Yeah, and, and, and university professors are not famous for their moderation and [00:47:00] understanding in interpersonal relations.
I'll just put it that way. Okay, your decision to step down from the committee. I decided to step down because it became clear, there were, there were two reasons, and they're, they're sort of, I, I can't entirely untangle them, but they're both. One was, it became clear to me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do on the committee.
Things were getting worse, not better. I mean, just yesterday or two days ago, there was a, a protest in Widener library while students were trying to study for their finals that unrolled a list of people killed in Gaza and had Palestinian flags and people wearing keffiyehs. And I'm, it wasn't, it wasn't like things were changing for the better.
Um, so I felt as though I had, as somebody, uh, as somebody said to me, a position of accountability with no authority. I couldn't make a change, but I was supposed to be the person who was helping to make a change. And the second reason is that I felt [00:48:00] like, unlike many of the other representatives of the committee, and it's a really good committee, and they're very smart and devoted people, but I was actually the person who was the outsider representative of the Jewish community.
And a lot of people in the Jewish community were saying to me, you realize that you're giving credibility to this committee. As things are getting worse and worse. And I really did feel that. I thought at a certain point, I can't give legitimacy to an enterprise that isn't doing what it is we're supposed to be doing.
And when it became clear at the hearing that things were not changing or seemingly going to change, uh, anytime soon, I thought, I, I can't. I can't keep giving my name, never mind my time and my efforts when they seemed fruitless, but my name when it seemed counterproductive to this effort. And so I [00:49:00] continue to meet with students, with faculty.
I continue to talk to them and encourage them and help any way I can. But, but I couldn't be part of the committee anymore. And what was the reaction from various quarters to your stepping down? Um, I think most people, including, by the way, I have to say the other members of the committee understood it and were very kind and supportive.
The, and then there was this, to me, totally unanticipated, hugely viral response to the message I wrote on Twitter. It got, I think, seven, now it's up to like seven and a half million views, um, and I've been, I mean, on, on all these various, uh, channels and speaking about this in various ways. And I think it's partly because, um, Harvard always draws outsized attention.
Uh, and partly because people, like, were waiting for [00:50:00] someone to say, someone from the inside of the community to say, this is, this is just not, this is not happening. And they were sort of thirsty for a protest that had some Actual possible effect on the campus. I did not know really that I was going to step into such a whirlwind, but I'm glad in the end, even though it's been a little overwhelming, I'm glad that people are taking it so seriously.
Okay. Before we, before we wrap, I guess one, one observation I'd make is the irony is the combination of October 7th, the October 7th massacre, and then the global. Rise in anti semitism this wave of anti semitism that we're seeing after October 7th. That was I guess Present before October 7th in some cases beneath the surface.
Whatever was beneath the surface is coming way above the surface and being normalized It's actually strengthening the case for the [00:51:00] need for and the existence of the state of Israel I mean, that's the irony. Without question. I mean, how can you look at what's going on in the world and say well They don't they don't really need a place.
I mean, it's right. It's ridiculous. Yeah. What is your message? As a Jewish leader, what is your message to the Jewish community, young Jews who are just watching and experiencing this wave of anti Semitism, these pogroms, the vandalism, the violence, the, the bullying, just as a, just as a Jewish leader, what are you, what are you countenancing?
Here's the most important thing I really think for young Jews to keep in mind, which is we're really good at identifying enemies and not very good at embracing friends. You are not alone. Not only are you not alone in the Jewish community, but you're not alone in the world. There are many, many, many people of all faiths of goodwill and no faiths of goodwill who really care for and support the Jewish [00:52:00] community and I don't want you to think that the world is against you because that's not so.
And to remember that we know what it is to face a worldwide crisis. And we have been, we've faced worse before. And if you had told my great, great, great, great grandparents that we were facing this, they would have said I'd give anything to face that level of anti Semitism compared to what I faced in my own lifetime.
So we have resources, we have a voice, we have a state, and we have a tradition of unbelievable resilience, and I don't want you to give up for a second because we will make our way through this. Yes, you might not want to fight, but sometimes you don't choose the fight, the fight chooses you. And so, I hope that you will stand with the Jewish people and with Jewish history, um, just for what's right.
Not because you want to win, but [00:53:00] because you want to be right and you want to validate and vindicate the thousands of years of Jews who prayed that one day they would have a Jewish people that could stand up and could show the world the beauty and richness and goodness of our tradition and our people.
Should Jews, young Jews, think about where they want to go to colleges? Ah, you're getting much more practical. I was getting all homiletical and you're getting practical. It was beautiful. It was beautiful. No, but should they, no, but it's, but it's, should they, should they give up on these places? I don't think you should give up yet on these places.
They're places of enormous resource and ability and so on, but I do think that it is time for Jews to also look into building up other colleges that can in time become the Harvards and so on with Jewish brains and kids and resources and all of that. So what I would say is, unless there is a [00:54:00] specific Reason why you want to go to college X or Y and something you want to study or a professor you want to study with or so on.
Look around. There are a lot of wonderful places in this country. And we need to not just denigrate the institutions that we are upset with. We also need to build the institutions that we want to see carry us into the future. There are a number of colleges that I can think of that are working really hard right now.
to try to support Jewish students and to recruit Jewish students because they want Jews to be there and So look into those places as well because you could do very well You could do very well in a lot of places in this country So I would just put a exclamation point on one on one part of what you alluded to or said Like you, I'm sure, I'm involved with many WhatsApp chat groups and friend groups who have emerged since October 7th.
People, Jews who are well meaning and passionate and [00:55:00] energetic and are ready to join the fight, which is great because we need them. But it's not all a fight. It's not all oppositional. It's not you can't wake up every day saying my Judaism is about who I'm against or who's against me You there's also this there's this whole tradition.
There's there's joy. There's community. There's a ritual There's literacy. There's I Identity there's all these other aspects of Judaism. That is actually how we survived century after century after century after being the targets of such violent, uh, in some cases, genocidal, uh, anti Semitism in multiple centuries.
That's, that is the actual reason we survived, is because Jews decided they wanted to keep being Jews. Not just who they, they want to keep fighting people who hated Jews, but they actually wanted to live Jewish lives, no matter where we were around the world. Really, any continent almost. Jews. chose to live Jewishly, and that is as [00:56:00] important in this moment than pushing back against the anti Semites.
Absolutely. I mean, I was at the Hanukkah lighting, uh, with my daughter, who's visiting me, uh, in Boston. We were at the Hanukkah lighting yesterday, uh, in front of Widener Library at Harvard, and I thought, this is actually, this is what it's about. Right? It's about this. It's not about being against them.
It's about being for this and for us. Alright, uh, David, I will leave it there. Thank you as, uh, for your wisdom and for your insight and for your experience and for your courage during this, uh, crazy ride. We are all experiencing, but you've really been on the front lines of it. Thank you, Dan. You as well, and it's great to talk to you.
Happy Hanukkah to you and to all your listeners. Happy Hanukkah.
That's our show for today. To keep up with David Wolpe's work, you can find him at X, that's at [00:57:00] Rabbi Wolpe, W O L P E. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.