In wake of the Boulder, Colorado, attack, in which a man threw Molotov cocktails into a pro-Israel group, Editor in Chief of Campus Reform Zachary Marschall Ph.D. talked with AFN about antisemitism in our nation today.
"I think people need to realize that the intifada is on American soil, and there is no longer any separation between being on campus and off campus when it comes to antisemitic violence. This crisis that we are in the middle of started on college campuses back in 2023, and university leaders chose not to combat it. They chose not to end it when they had the chance back then," Marschall says.
Marschall said that we have seen over the last year university presidents and boards of trustees tolerate rhyming chants, such as “free free Palestine" and “from the river to the sea” among others.
He referenced at least one chant the Boulder, Colorado, terrorist used when he set those eight people on fire saying that it "…was even the same rhyming chant that was used when another terrorist in D.C.killed two innocent Jews outside of the Jewish Museum.”
Marschall blames the university presidents.
“This is the direct result of university presidents like Liz Magill, Claudine Gay, Minouche Shafik, choosing to embolden anti-Israel activists and their violent rhetoric and letting them normalize open antisemitism in our society," Marschall states.
Marschall thinks that two answers to this problem should be ultimately taken to make this right.
“From a governmental perspective, I think the more pressure we see on universities losing federal funding, maybe if they got their accreditation status stripped like Columbia is now under threat with, that is going to be the most effective tactic, as well as the boycotts we have been seeing in terms of donors and students pulling their donations and application acceptances from those universities. I think that puts pressure on universities," Marschall says.
He added that he doesn't think this country is really going to "wake up" or feel moral outrage on the scale it needs to until we see an even worse example of violence against Jewish Americans.
“I don't see how that's not inevitable at this point. These are not isolated incidents. This is going to be part of a trend,” Marschall says.
