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Does Campus Rage Have Middle Eastern Roots? Bari Weiss

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(Illustration by The Free Press, photos via Getty)

Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, it has been hard to miss the explosion of antisemitic hate that has gripped college campuses across the country. At Cornell, a student posted a call “to follow [Jews] home and slit their throats,” and a professor said the terror attack “energized” and “exhilarated” him. At Harvard, a mob of students besieged an Israeli student, surrounding him as they bellowed “shame, shame, shame.” At dozens of other campuses, students gathered to celebrate Hamas. 

The response from school administrations has been alarming. With few exceptions, in the immediate aftermath of October 7, university presidents issued equivocal statements about the initial attack. Some professors even celebrated it. And the focus on the part of administration bureaucrats has been on protecting the students tearing down posters and being shamed for doing so.

Where did all of this hatred come from is a question worth pondering. As Rachel Fish and others have documented, for several decades a toxic worldview—morally relativist, anti-Israel, and anti-American—has been incubating in “area studies” departments and social theory programs at elite universities. Whole narratives have been constructed to dehumanize Israelis and brand Israel as a “white, colonial project” to be “resisted.” The students you see in the videos circulating online have been marinating in this ideology, which can be defined best by what it’s against: everything Western.

Many are rightly questioning how it got this bad. How did university leaders come to eulogize, rather than put a stop to, campus hate rallies and antisemitic intimidation? Why are campus leaders now papering over antisemitism? How could institutions supposedly committed to liberal values be such hotbeds of antisemitism and anti-Israel activism?

In large part, it is a story of the power of ideas—in this case, terrible ones—and how rapidly they can spread. But it is also a story of an influence campaign by actors far outside of the university campus aimed at pouring fuel on a fire already raging inside.

We’ve known for some time about the links between anti-Israel campus agitators, like Students for Justice in Palestine, and shady off-campus anti-Israel activist networks. 

But thanks to the work of the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a nonprofit research center, we now have a clearer picture of the financial forces at play at a higher, institutional level.

Today, after months of research, the NCRI released a report (comprising four separate studies) following the money. The report finds that at least 200 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undisclosed contributions from foreign regimes, many of which are authoritarian.

Moreover, while correlation is not causation, they found that the number of reported antisemitic incidents on a given campus has a meaningful relationship to whether that university has received funding (disclosed and undisclosed) from regimes, or entities tied to regimes, in the Middle East. 

Overall, authors of the report write, “a massive influx of foreign, concealed donations to American institutions of higher learning, much of it from authoritarian regimes with notable support from Middle Eastern sources, reflects or supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry and free expression.”

The NCRI report found that:

From 2015–2020, institutions that accepted money from Middle Eastern donors had, on average, 300 percent more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not. 

From 2015–2020, institutions that accepted undisclosed funds from authoritarian donors had, on average, 250 percent more antisemitic incidents than those institutions that did not.

At least 200 American colleges and universities illegally withheld information on approximately $13 billion in undocumented contributions from foreign regimes, many of which are authoritarian. 

Campuses that accept undisclosed money are on average ~85 percent more likely to see campaigns “targeting academic scholars for sanction, including campaigns to investigate, censor, demote, suspend, or terminate.”

This chart from NCRI captures the relationship between concealed foreign donations and antisemitism on campus:

So who’s doing this concealed funding? Qatar, the country where Hamas’s leadership currently resides, is far and away the largest foreign donor to American universities, as Eli Lake recently documented in these pages:

Of course, correlation is not causation. Still, the NCRI report found that a reliable predictor of the intensity of campus antisemitism was the amount of undisclosed money a given university received from Middle Eastern regimes.

Former Harvard University president Larry Summers told me that he believes “donors and certainly authoritarian leaders who donate to universities may be looking to bolster their image or perception of legitimacy.” But he also said he doubts that “they are looking to or could succeed in changing attitudes or specific policies on campuses.”

“I’m cynical. I usually think things are about money. But I don’t think this is about money. Or at least not primarily,” a former president of a prominent liberal arts college told me. “If you look at the college professors signing on to these various statements, I don’t think it’s because those people got money in any significant way from a country like Qatar. It’s people who are ideologically part of a movement—whether you call it postcolonial or anticolonial—that is deeply opposed to Israel.”

There are other possibilities that may explain the NCRI’s findings. A fairly obvious one could be that Middle Eastern regimes are sponsoring professorships held by, or programs run by, professors or administrators who hold anti-Israel views and use their platform to spread them. This fact, itself, wouldn’t be news.

Another possibility is that universities, eager to attract and retain Middle Eastern funding, promote positions that they think will please the sensibilities of Middle Eastern regimes. Or maybe it is that universities that are indifferent to the atrocities committed or condoned by some of their largest funders are also indifferent to rising antisemitism on campus, allowing it to thrive. The same would hold true for freedom of expression and academic freedom. 

At the very least, the NCRI’s findings may explain why university presidents, whose main job is fundraising, may have been so slow to respond in the wake of the October 7 massacre, and when they did, they for the most part released weak statements. 

One thing I have a hard time believing is that these countries give nine- and ten-figure gifts to universities expecting nothing in return.

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Seven Objects—And What They Say About the Election The Editors

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The Trump Bible, Kamala’s coconut tree, and J.D. Vance’s couch. The Free Press nominates symbols that sum up this insane race.

(All images via Getty, illustration by The Free Press)

The most physically imposing picture of Donald Trump is the one he almost didn’t survive. You’ve seen it: The former president stands silhouetted against the sky, fist pumped, jaw jutted, bright red blood streaked across his face like war paint. The blood is from a bullet that missed its mark; the blood means that Trump should be dead, but isn’t. He’s still standing, all six-plus feet and 200 pounds of him, in the flesh, as corporeal as it gets.

In the wake of the assassination attempt, many commentators declared the election over. That raised fist, that frayed ear, the way Trump’s top teeth bore down on his lower lip as he shouted his defiance: It was powerful. It was undeniable. You’d never see Joe Biden standing up like that after taking a bullet in front of a crowd of thousands.

(Evan Vucci via AP)

The image of Trump was symbolic, iconic, and instantly viral. Within 24 hours, it had appeared on the front page of virtually every newspaper in the world—by which time millions of people had made it their social media avatars and memed it into oblivion. It adorned miniskirts, coffee cups, and balaclavas; supporters displayed it in their homes and tattooed it onto their bodies. Most importantly, the assassination attempt caused a bump for Trump in swing states; if he wins the presidency, it will be at least in part because of that photograph.

But while that image of Trump may be the most powerful symbol of this insane race, it’s not the only one. Like the coconut emoji that became synonymous with Kamala Harris’s campaign. Or the cats beloved by liberal women (or, allegedly, eaten by immigrant hordes). These and more have been nominated by our staff as symbols of the 2024 election. Read on for the list of (mostly) inanimate objects that we’ll never see the same way again. —Kat Rosenfield


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Legos, Cocoa, and Coloring Books for Georgetown Students Francesca Block

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Legos, Cocoa, and Coloring Books for Georgetown Students

(Jonathan Nackstrand via Getty Images)

On Wednesday, the day after the election, most of us are going to roll out of bed, have our breakfast, and get on with our day—no matter which presidential candidate wins. But students at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy—where diplomats and policymakers are molded—have another option: They can play with Legos. Seriously.

In an email to McCourt students, Jaclyn Clevenger, the school’s director of student engagement, introduced the school’s post-election “Self-Care Suite.” 

“In recognition of these stressful times,” she wrote, “all McCourt community members are welcome to gather. . . in the 3rd floor Commons to take a much needed break, joining us for mindfulness activities and snacks throughout the day.” 

Here’s the agenda (and no, you can’t make this up): 


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Chris Hedges Post-Election Livestream Q&A, Nov. 6 @ 6pm ET Chris Hedges

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Join me on Nov. 6 on my YouTube channel for a live Q&A at 3pm PT / 6pm ET. I will pull questions from the comments of this post, my X, and live on YouTube. We will discuss the results of the election, and what’s to come. To post your questions here, you must be a paid subscriber to my Substack. Please attempt to keep your questions direct and relatively brief, as I cannot read entire paragraphs during the show.

See you all soon, and thank you for your support.


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