I recently spoke with a senior at Sarah Lawrence College (SLC), where I have taught for 15 years. We had never met before. The student hopes to graduate this spring, but that remains uncertain. Now at home, taking classes remotely, unsure if graduation will be possible.
The students stays away out of fear. As a Jewish Zionist, the student—like others—has faced threats and harassment. The college experience has been anything but normal. No real campus life. No security. No peace. Sarah Lawrence has let this happen. It has become a place where students like this one, and professors like me, are targeted for our faith, heritage, and belief in Israel’s right to exist.
As a professor and a Zionist, I find it heartbreaking. No student should fear their own campus. No student should have to choose between safety and an education.
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That choice should not be necessary. Writing in response to Cooper Union’s failed motion to dismiss Title VI claims, U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan made it clear: the responsibility falls on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment—not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic or attempt to escape from a place they have a right to be.
Yet SLC has done nothing to stop this. A Title VI claim filed by Hillels of Westchester in March 2024, for example, is now under investigation by the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education. The complaint, Hillels of Westchester says:
documented a long history of systemic hostility toward these students, who are subjected to discrimination, harassment, and intimidation on the basis of their Jewish ancestry and ethnic identity. The complaint established how SLC administrators and faculty failed to protect or defend these students and, in some cases, were complicit in perpetuating this hostility and discrimination.
And since the complaint was filed, the campus environment for Jewish students has worsened. In Spring 2024, Sarah Lawrence College awarded a “Group Excellence Award” to a student group that had celebrated the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israelis and hosted an event in support of Palestine. This recognition, which highlighted the group’s “outstanding leadership,” was deeply painful for Jewish students, especially when the DEIB Director forwarded the invitation to Jewish groups. In November 2024, anti-Israel activists took over an administrative building, held a multi-day protest, and called for divestment from Israel, while distributing materials supporting Hamas and other terrorist organizations. Several faculty members supported these actions, holding classes in the occupied space. The administration failed to support Jewish students, enforce the school’s code of conduct, or hold individuals accountable.
If the SLC’s commitment to inclusion were more than empty rhetoric, it would be working to resolve the serious problems on campus—not allowing its campus to remain hostile to Jewish students.
I don’t blame this senior, or countless other Jewish students, for feeling unsafe. How can this student, or any openly Zionist Jewish student, thrive in a college environment when Students for Justice in Palestine threaten them, telling them they “should have been killed in Israel,” or when social media posts attack them as “dirty, money-grubbing Juden mongrels”? Under these conditions, it’s impossible for students to prosper or have a normal college experience.
Yet SLC has chosen to ignore its own stated principles and allow this toxic environment to persist. In fact, SLC rebuked attempts to settle the Title VI complaint, and the OCR investigation is now moving forward. Sheila Rennert, the co-president of the Board of Directors at Hillels of Westchester, shared that “Months prior to the OCR opening its investigation, our counsel, Baruch Weiss, of Arnold & Porter, proposed to the college’s general counsel that Hillel and the college enter into mediation to address the issues raised in the complaint. Baruch’s proposal still stands, but has not yet been accepted by the college.” Haina Just-Michael, the other co-president, added, “Hillels of Westchester has tried, over the past decade, to engage Sarah Lawrence College in an effort to remedy the systemic antisemitism on campus, but to no avail.”
The fact that SLC has not even tried to settle and exemplify its purported values of tolerance, inclusion, and difference baffles me. Instead of taking decisive action, the school is waiting for the OCR to do its work. President Judd and school officials are well aware of the hate and dangers Jewish students have faced on campus for many years. Its officials cannot claim ignorance for their inaction; it was a powerful and deliberate anti-Semitic choice and, therefore, a powerful endorsement of anti-Semitism.
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Compounding this failure, since August 2024, President Judd has ignored my repeated attempts to engage with her regarding students’ efforts to boycott my work and teaching. Rather than defending intellectual freedom and open inquiry, SLC has allowed anti-Semitic students to defame me—explicitly targeting me for being, in their words, a Zionist and a “staunch advocate of Israel’s right to self-defense.” These students fabricated statements I never made, spread false accusations about me across campus, and actively pressured their peers to avoid my courses. Some even went so far as to privately message students over Zoom, urging them not to enroll in my classes.
A competent academic leader—one with integrity and intellectual honesty—would have confronted these incidents head-on and unequivocally condemned such behavior. Judd, however, remained silent. She failed to uphold the principles of liberal education, refused to reaffirm the school’s supposed commitment to academic freedom, and declined to denounce the harassment directed at me. Her silence was not just a failure of leadership—it was a tacit endorsement of the students’ hateful and disruptive conduct.
Judd’s very notable inaction sent a clear message to me, the students, and the wider community: at Sarah Lawrence, anti-Semitic intimidation is tolerated. The college’s stated principles of free inquiry and non-discrimination are little more than empty rhetoric. This abdication of leadership is a personal betrayal and a tragedy for an institution that once prided itself on fostering rigorous intellectual engagement.
Ironically, in Judd’s new semester message, she declares that SLC’s “principles are not just a set of ideals; rather, they are the foundation of who we are and what we stand for as an institution of higher education.” These words are empty. No student should be afraid to be on campus. No professor should go unsupported in this environment nor be subjected to such hostilities and threats. Judd’s continued lies and affirmations of the SLC’s “commitment to the values that define us” are impotent at best. SLC deserves and needs better management and a president who actually embraces viewpoint diversity, defends difference, and will demonstrate to the world the power and value of the education that long defined Sarah Lawrence College as a leader in higher education.
Image of Sarah Lawrence Westlands by TargetMarget on Wikimedia Commons
As a Jewish Zionist, the student—like others—has faced threats”?
None of these articles are about nonjewish Zionists, the majority of Zionists, getting threats. It’s always Jews.
Not even a hint how Jews are recognized.
This same slight of hand, article after article, decade after decade.
as a Sarah Lawrence alum of the late 50’s
I am distraught about the anti semitism I am reading about.
As along ago SLC graduate I am horrified at what it has become.