Countless examples of ugly anti-Semitism have been the norm at so many Western university campuses. And very few of those in charge have lifted a finger to bring this to an end and ensure that all students can safely go about getting the education they have paid for. In his new book, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (Spiked, 2024), English commentator Brendan O’Neill has spoken to this matter in some detail.

All over the Western world, especially since the horrific October 7 attack, we have seen universities pushing radical Islamist and pro-Hamas hate speech. Radicals have set up tent cities and occupied classrooms as they shout ugly anti-Israel chants. All the while Jewish students feel increasingly threatened and unsafe on their own campuses.

Examples of this are legion. One of the most recent and despicable cases involves an American academic who spoke at a pro-Palestine rally in Sydney a week ago. Khaled Beydoun of Arizona State University actually said October 7 was a day of “considerable celebration, considerable progress and considerable privilege”!

Not only have the Australian sponsors not called this out, but the American university where he teaches at has said there was nothing wrong in what he said, and that it is all good because it is “free speech”. As one media outlet reports:

Beydoun was also quoted as saying at the rally, “I want to talk about some good things because it’s a good day, and we’ve got to mark some of the good news that comes about that we often times neglect.” In response to inquiries from Sky News Australia, a spokesperson on behalf of Arizona State University said, “The university is aware of the professor’s remarks and is respectful of the First Amendment privileges associated with academic freedom and free speech.” https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/arizona-state-university-defends-american-professor-who-told-sydney-rally-october-7-was-a-day-of-celebration/news-story/cdc85ef23a92c6233f793819999501fd

Countless examples of ugly anti-Semitism have been the norm at so many Western university campuses. And very few of those in charge have lifted a finger to bring this to an end and ensure that all students can safely go about getting the education they have paid for.

In his new book, English commentator Brendan O’Neill has spoken to this matter in some detail. I have already penned two articles on his brief but valuable volume, After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation (Spiked, 2024). My earlier pieces can be seen here:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/13/clear-thinking-on-october-7-and-beyond/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2024/10/12/feminists-duplicity-and-hamas/

Chapter Seven of his book looks at how so-called safe spaces at campuses are certainly not of any use for Jews being targeted by the militants. Indeed, the double standards of the radical left is apparent to all. Consider his opening paragraphs:

So, we live in an era when you can be banished from a university for saying women don’t have penises, but you’ll be fine if you say ‘kill all Jews’. We live in a time when asking someone where they’re from is considered a ‘racial microaggression’, but hollering ‘Globalise the intifada’ in the aftermath of an ‘intifada’ in which a thousand Jews were slaughtered is apparently okay. We live in a culture in which students will demand access to ‘safe spaces’, complete with colouring books and bean bags, if a speaker they hate turns up on campus. And yet these same students who fear words like the rest of us fear death, will happily cheer the invasion of Israel and the murder of hundreds of its citizens. No safe space for Jews, it seems.

This was one of the most unsettling revelations in the aftermath of the 7 October pogrom: that snowflakes have a secret genocidal streak. That student activists who wail about feeling ‘erased’ if you fail to use their preferred pronouns don’t seem to have much of a problem with the literal erasure of hundreds of citizens of the Jewish State.

Overnight, students who had bristled at such ‘micro-aggressions’ as ‘Don’t you want a family?’ – it is an act of unforgivable ‘heteronormativity’, apparently, to assume everyone wants a family – (p. 114)

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