The Exodus Project: A Jewish Answer to the University Crisis

The rival images emerging from universities across our land reveal a great struggle for the American soul. It is a tale of two cultures, with Jews and Israel at the center of the story. At Columbia, a mob of students, faculty, and professional activists camp out for days calling for the annihilation of Israel; they violently take over university buildings and intimidate Jewish students and teachers, all while the university’s leaders coddle and “negotiate” with the masked vandals for days. At the University of Florida, meanwhile, Jews gather together in strength, filling an entire university arena for a Passover seder, where President Ben Sasse proudly joins this transcendent celebration of Israelite freedom and actively works to expand the university’s academic program in Jewish civilization. At Rutgers and Northwestern, university leaders appease extremist demands for more pro-Hamas programming and professorships, while the entire campus lawn at Southern Methodist University is lined with hundreds of Israeli flags. At Yale, one of Tikvah’s student leaders is stabbed in the eye, while at Hillsdale College (where I was recently invited to speak about the Jewish meaning of the West) Christian students celebrate the Jewish people as their “elder brothers in faith” and see Israel as a heroic defender of good against evil.

For many decades, Jewish ambition and Jewish resources flowed into the most elite American universities. Jewish parents and Jewish educators devoted great energy to helping their kids get into the top-ranked colleges, and discussions of how to succeed in the admissions sweepstakes dominated many Jewish dinner table conversations. Jewish parents aimed to give their sons and daughters access to the finest professors, smartest peers, and best credentials; and they wanted their children to live the American dream of earned success on every playing field of American life. For much of American Jewry, the universities were our temples, and we affixed college stickers on the back of our cars like mezuzahs on our doorposts: outward symbols that we had fully made it in America.

After October 7th, the Jewish conversation suddenly changed. We felt betrayed by the very institutions that we helped build and long revered. Jewish parents began wondering whether their children would even be safe on campuses—walking among building named for generous Jewish donors—that were now being overrun by Jew-hating activists. They watched Jewish kids hiding from riotous protestors calling for blood, kids barricaded in libraries (as they famously were at Cooper Union), kids taking classes in undisclosed locations because campus security could not ensure their safety. In response to these video clips and media reports, many Jews were angry at their alma maters—institutions they once loved and long supported—for tolerating Jew-hatred and abandoning the culture of meritocracy that long enabled American Jews to succeed in college and beyond. They felt guilty rather than proud for sending their kids to schools like Columbia—or still wanting to send their kids there—given the anti-Semitic environment that now festers. Many Jews no longer knew what to do or how to think. They just knew that something was deeply wrong.