(Fox News) Jewish students across the United States have expressed concern for their safety and suggested school faculty, as well as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, are promoting antisemitic viewpoints that ratchet up the political temperature on campus.
George Washington University student Sabrina Soffer, graduating early as a junior in December, told Fox News Digital that there is no balance of opinions among the faculty. While the school has emphasized diversity, Soffer claimed it is only diversity surrounding a singular idea.
“Students are not learning how to think, but they’re learning about what to think,” she said. “There’s no real academic rigor that surrounds learning how to think. So, they’re just getting pushed to get a grade.”
Soffer said that students spend a significant amount of time being fed “propaganda” on social media, which affirms the notions they are learning in class and keeps them isolated in their own “echo chamber.”
Jewish students from Cornell, USC, UT-Austin, Rutgers and George Washington told Fox News Digital that faculty have allowed anti-Israel protests to flourish. (Nikolas Lanum/Fox News Digital)
She added that this conduct by faculty and students, in addition to the widespread acceptance of DEI, has turned George Washington into a “concerning” and “dangerous” environment.
“There’s also no respect for American values in terms of, you know, there’s a lot of anti-Western seedlings in the DEI idea as a whole. Binary notions, very false notion of the oppressor and the oppressed, where all White people are oppressors,” Soffer said. “And, you know, Jews just don’t fit into that framework at all. So, they’re pinning, you know, false binary notions on entire societies when they don’t even make any sense.”
Amanda Silberstein, a second-year student at Cornell University, also criticized the actions of faculty and said the ongoing sentiments about Israel and Jews have left her “ostracized and “socially isolated” from classmates.
“I just encountered a lot of hostility when I do express my identity and my pride in it,” she said.
Silberstein claimed that professors are participating in “illegal rallies” on campus and spouting “antisemitic ideologies” to impressionable students in the classroom.
She alleged that one teacher’s assistant in charge of an Egyptian history course moved their discussion session to the encampment for a day. Students had the option not to attend.
Professor Russell Rickford, who was put on leave after describing Hamas’ bloody operation in Southern Israel as “exhilarating,” has also visited the encampments and spoken with students, according to Silberstein.
A woman walks by a Cornell University sign on the Ivy League school’s campus in Ithaca, New York, on Jan. 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)
“He’s still here. He’s still a professor engaging in illicit activity on our campus, and no action is taken against him. No action has been taken against any students, even after repeated warnings, for the repercussions of their actions. They’ve all been empty threats,” Silberstein said.
Students, according to Silberstein, are being told by professors that Israeli Jews are “settler colonialists” and have been openly critical of Zionism in class.
“They’re teaching opinions as fact and really removing any, any opportunity for open dialogue, which is frankly, a shame. And it’s something that, you know, I, I really think about every day that I’m wasting my tuition dollars on,” she said.
University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) student Andrew Goldberg told Fox News Digital that students have been spat on and yelled at for wearing a yarmulke on campus. One of his friends was allegedly told to “Go back to Germany.”
