The Federations of Vancouver, Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal hosted me from February 2 through February 12, having purchased over 2,500 copies of my book The Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream.
I spoke in Jewish day schools to sixth and twelfth graders, on campus and in Hillels, to fellow professors and teachers of Zionism and Israeli history, to interfaith groups and Jewish federations. The trip introduced me to a post-October 7 Canada – and academic world – I did not recognize.
The Jew-hatred amid an assault on decency, Canadian values, and liberal-democracy was depressing, but the courage, camaraderie, and sense of community was inspiring.
Just as Hamas’s horrors brought out the best of Israeli youth, the academic intifada has shaped a new generation of thoughtful, passionate, and proud Jewish students – with non-Jewish friends, too.
This may be today’s most under-reported Jewish story. Stop emphasizing neighbors who betrayed us, and the small, attention-grabbing, Israel-bashing “un-Jews” who betray their people and themselves. Let us instead recognize the many who are faithful to us, and the quieter, Israel-supporting Jews and their non-Jewish supporters.
“No Jewish professor is okay, no Jewish student is okay, we’re not okay,” one professor pronounced. “Being Jewish today means living behind security,” one Federation host observed – she and her colleague have admirably raised extra money, and awareness, working even harder than usual since October 7.
To respect privacy, campus dynamics and some legal procedures, I’m sharing anecdotes without identifying details.
One student described being “hate-crimed” – I never heard it in verb form – then regretting reporting it because he had to file many forms and reassure many bureaucrats, yet nothing happened.
Others told insane tales of math or physics professors sacrificing class time to bash Israel, of writing teachers imposing assignments in class about how “Israelis are savages,” of historians claiming that just as racist white women invented stories about blacks raping them in America’s South, Jewish women made up stories about Palestinians raping them on October 7.
Many students confront searing educational dilemmas. What do you do when you want a good grade, say, in medical school, but your professor re-titled your required course, “de-colonizing anatomy”? I counsel students that it’s OK to play along.
If they choose, they can document the outrages – trying to get others, especially non-Jews, to document them, too. Then, once grades are in, give the professor the courtesy you didn’t receive. Share your concerns at office hours. You can always go public later. The first step in restoring civility is by acting civilly ourselves.
Then there’s the keffiyeh conundrum. Elementary school teachers, professors, even debate-tournament judges, wear the keffiyeh to intimidate, making a political statement.
But, if confronted, they gaslight, claiming it’s a fashion statement or cultural expression. I advised a sense of proportion, preferring winning strategies. There’s enough rank Jew-hatred, blatant lies, and student browbeating. I avoid ambiguous situations or losing battles.
Most important, I kept emphasizing, is your pride. I couldn’t believe I felt compelled to quote the Soviet Jewish activist Natan Sharansky, who, when arrested, learned the lesson our holy hostages also learned. “They can’t humiliate me,” Sharansky realized. “Only I can humiliate me.” Lessons from the Gulag and Hamas hell should not be needed in Western schools.
I also heard of students in elementary schools enduring Nazi jokes and of fifth-grade teachers bullying Jewish kids while trashing Israel. The younger the student, the more damaging the hatred is.
These violations of academic standards, classroom etiquette, administrative and professorial responsibility, and basic decency constitute mass educational malpractice.
Garbage in, garbage out. Three generations of activist professors, imposing their oppressed-oppressor and settler-colonialist binaries often targeting Israel, have raised students and teachers who parrot these lies. They think teaching involves radicalizing the classroom, even if they harm some students.
Four factors ripped the mask off Canadian niceness. A rapidly growing, rabid, pro-Palestinian movement of Muslims has been raised to despise Jews, not “just” Israelis, and import thuggish mob politics into Western democracies. Second, the campus’s illiberal liberals obsess about Israel.
Convinced that Israel is committing genocide, they decided that, from “woke” kindergarten to “woke” math, all protests are legitimate. Third, the media firestorm delegitimizing Israel’s actions and demonizing Netanyahu’s government, while minimizing Palestinian crimes, makes Israel look hateful.
Finally, Canada’s weakening national identity and many Canadians’ polite passivity tolerates the intolerable, even as their Jewish neighbors suffer.
All, however, is not lost. At the University of Ottawa, when anti-Zionist goons tried banning me from campus, top administrators, including President Jacques Frémont – a human rights expert – appeared, so the masked cowards didn’t.
At McGill last year, an older non-Jewish colleague approached a Jewish colleague whose “Zio-courses” were protested, found four tall, strong professors nearby, and assured their buddy they had his back. I kept meeting non-Jewish students and professors resisting these outrages, while in Ottawa, many non-Jewish religious leaders attended my talk – on the holiest day of the North American year, Super Bowl Sunday, hours before kickoff.
Most importantly, I met wonderful students. They love Israel, Zionism, the Jewish people and Western values. They laugh off many of their fellow students’ excesses. They refuse to be cowed. They reassured me – and us – that they made new friends, discovered community as extended family, and clarified who they are, what’s important to them, and who they want to be.
They are this moment’s pearls – produced by the grit of Jew-hating oysters – reflecting the best of us and our civilization. Their world has been “turned upside down,” as one student told me. But many students landed on the right side of history and are making their stand.
The writer, a senior fellow in Zionist thought at the Jewish People Policy Institute, is an American presidential historian. His latest book, To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream, was just published.