OPINION
In 1790, U.S. President George Washington traveled to the New England states to understand more about the country.
Following his visit, Washington wrote a letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, in which he reinforced the ideal of religious liberty in America.
In the letter, Washington proclaimed how each American: "shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid. . . . For happily the Government of the United States gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance."
Today, there are segments of the country that have thoroughly repudiated the values and moral clarity that Washington envisioned.
On Oct. 7, the Hamas terror organization burned, executed, raped, and mutilated Jews, and committed other horrific atrocities; it was the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.
Rational human beings would think that Hamas, whose charter explicitly calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and whose leader has trumpeted that October 7 was just a rehearsal, should be reviled and condemned by most of the planet.
However, the gloomy days that have followed that ghastly day have unleashed unbridled acts of violence and rhetorical attacks directed toward Jews throughout America and elsewhere around the globe.
Jew hatred has reached epic proportions in the United States, roiling American cities and infesting our institutions of higher learning.
Organizations which claim to stand for justice, human rights and the protection of innocents have refused to stand with the Jewish victims.
It’s reached a crescendo, causing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to lash out at women’s rights groups for failing to forcefully condemn the sexual abuse and depravity demonstrated against Jewish women by Hamas.
"Were you quiet because we were talking about Jewish women?", Netanyahu asked rhetorically. "Where the h**l are you?", echoing the biblical rebuke by G-d toward Cain for standing idly by the blood of his brother Abel.
Nowhere has the hate been more manifested than on America’s university campuses.
Long places of robust and often controversial debate, Oct. 7 has opened the floodgates on a torrent of Jew hatred, harassment, bullying and intimidation, with Jewish students often forced to find shelter in university buildings and dormitories.
The hate-filled protesters have declared open season on Jews, Israel and anyone who appears to support Jews, Israel, or the victims of Oct. 7.
The United States Department of Education has opened an unprecedented number of investigations against numerous university campuses for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits any person in the United States from facing discrimination on the grounds of race, color or national origin from any program or activity that receives federal financial assistance.
President Trump signed Executive Order 13899, requiring the enforcement of Title VI against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-semitism.
That Executive Order remains in effect. Civil Rights lawsuits have been initiated against numerous university campuses on behalf of Jewish students.
This week the House of Representatives convened hearings to confront the scourge of Jew hatred on college campuses.
Calling this moment an "inflection point" for the nation, House committee Chair Virginia Foxx admonished the university presidents for the "specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled antisemitism" on university campuses.
The presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), all once-illustrious institutions of higher learning in America, were condemned and excoriated for the torrent of Jew hatred that has plagued each of their campuses.
The most revolting aspect of the hearings was the moral cowardice of the university presidents at the hearing.
They squirmed, they shuffled papers, and they repeated evasive answers no doubt carefully crafted by their law firms, a breed of law firms different than those helping Jewish students fight against the Jew hatred.
The refusal of these university presidents to candidly answer clear questions reached its climax when Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., asked Harvard University president Claudine Gay whether calling for the genocide of Jews and Israel on her campus, which has occurred frequently and with regularity, was protected speech.
Gay couldn’t say definitively, sheepishly hiding behind free expression arguments and painfully avoiding any accountability for allowing the toxic incitement to fester at her campus. MIT and Penn fared no better, with Penn’s president, Liz Magill, smugly smiling as she sidestepped answering Congresswoman Stefanik’s questions with a mouthful of gibberish floating from her lips.
This is no time for moral equivocation or moral accommodation.
Campus administrations must enforce a code of conduct that is worthy of their institution’s responsibility to educate.
No campus can be a welcoming place for those lauding the monstrosities of Oct. 7 or for threatening or harassing Jews.
Those who support these universities, whether as donors, parents, students, faculty, vendors, or otherwise, must join together and collectively rise to the challenge of eradicating this vile hatred in our midst.
Don’t let the university presidents and activist faculty and students drag our institutions of higher learning further into the sewers of hate.
If we don’t heed Washington’s clarion call to give to bigotry no sanction, our cherished nation will quickly find itself sliding down a treacherous and perhaps irreversible path.
The time for weak-kneed, cowardly acceptance of Jew hatred must end, on campus, on our city streets, in our work places and everywhere it has seeped and oozed in.
Jason Greenblatt was the White House Middle East envoy in the Trump administration. He is the author of the widely acclaimed book “In the Path of Abraham” and director of Arab-Israel diplomacy for the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Follow him on X @GreenblattJD and Instagram: @Jason.Greenblatt
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