The College Fix

A young student journalist at Stanford University just published an important article on what’s going on on his campus in The Atlantic.

In a nutshell, the piece spells out that what is going on is intense antisemitism toward Jewish students and about Israel. There is plenty of anti-Americanism, and there is significant support for Hamas and violence in general. Plus there is an administration – not even an especially left of center one – that simply won’t do much about any of it.

The young reporter, Theo Baker, is no devoted religious Jew or activist Zionist. He tells us that he comes from a home with just a tiny bit of cultural Judaism. His father – and this he does not tell us – is Peter Baker, who is the New York Times White House correspondent. So he isn’t conservative, either. He’s just a smart young man who can’t help seeing what is apparent, and who has the talent to put it into words.

Here is his opening paragraph. I read it and was hooked:

“One of the section leaders for my computer-science class, Hamza El Boudali, believes that President Joe Biden should be killed. “I’m not calling for a civilian to do it, but I think a military should,” the 23-year old Stanford University student told a small group of protesters last month. “I’d be happy if Biden was dead.” He thinks that Stanford is complicit in what he calls the genocide of Palestinians, and that Biden is not only complicit but responsible for it. “I’m not calling for a vigilante to do it,” he later clarified, “but I’m saying he is guilty of mass murder and should be treated the same way that a terrorist with darker skin would be (and we all know terrorists with dark skin are typically bombed and drone striked by American planes).”

El Boudali has also said that he believes that Hamas’s October 7 attack was a justifiable act of resistance, and that he would actually prefer Hamas rule America in place of its current government (though he clarified later that he “doesn’t mean Hamas is perfect”). When you ask him what his cause is, he answers: “Peace.”

“I switched to a different computer-science section.”

Baker notes that many of his fellow students who think they support peace, actually support violence. That couldn’t be truer of the hard, pro-Hamas left.

It’s worth noting that tuition, room and board at Stanford this year is $82,406. That’s a serious investment.

The writer tells us candidly that he wanted to go to Stanford above all other elite universities. He cried tears of joy when he got in. He spent lots of time reading the course catalog, and wanted to learn “everything.”

That is what you would expect from a hard working, high achieving student at a first rate university.

And you expect the university to be worthy of the adulation. That has not been the case this year for Jewish students matriculating at Harvard, or Cornell, or MIT, or, as this article makes clear, Stanford. The antisemitism on all of these campuses has been overwhelming since Oct. 7.

It remains ironic that the massacre and rapes committed by Hamas opened the floodgates of antisemitism against Jews and Israelis – even before Israel responded militarily. This suggests that there was plenty of pent up antisemitism waiting to be released.

Baker interviewed the new interim president, Richard Saller, a 71 year old scholar of Roman history, who seems to be lost at sea. Saller mentioned prior student protests, over Vietnam, the environment, and apartheid. “But they didn’t pit ‘students against each other’ the way that this conflict has,” he said.

Saller is not particularly tolerant of antisemitism. He’s no DEI guy, like the deposed president of Harvard. But he barely knows what to do about it. That is, he won’t insist on punishment, which is the only way to stop problematic behavior. At some point he had the tents of pro-Palestinian students, which had stayed up on the quad in contravention of rules for months, taken down.

A professor Baker interviewed shared that “When Zionists say they don’t feel ‘safe’ on campus, I’ve come to see that as they no longer feel immune to criticism of Israel.” He continued: “Well as the saying goes, get used to it.” Very sensitive.

No wonder Jewish freshmen complained of feeling scared – which isn’t what Stanford was supposed to be. “They’ve been followed, harassed, and called derogatory racial epithets.” Some Arab women in hijabs also claim to have been followed.

“In a remarkably short period of time, aggression and abuse have become commonplace, an accepted part of campus activism,” Baker wrote.

In January, Jewish students organized an anti-antisemitism event. Needless to say their speakers were drowned out by protesters. As they were leaving the event, a young woman shouted at Jews, “Go back to Brooklyn!” The woman leading the protest told attendees to get “off our f**king campus.” As a rabbi tried to leave the event protesters pursued him, chanting.

Baker noted that both the rabbi and the imam on the scene had tears in their eyes.

Now that the reporting has caught up with events, we learn that there is no respite from vicious on campus antisemitism, even at the golden Stanford.

MORE: Stanford students rally in support of suspended lecturer who allegedly segregated Jewish students

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