Recently, Federal Judge Mark C. Scarsi ruled that a leading university (UCLA) acted illegally when it worked with pro-Hamas protesters to deny Jewish students access to portions of campus, including a library. Putting this in perspective, Scarsi wrote that “in the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith … This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of freedom that it bears repeating.”
One must go back to the 1940s to find public organizations in the West imposing what Nazis called Judenfrei (Jew-free zones). It’s sadly true that in some places, Black-free zones continued into the 1960s, but at least educators denounced them. So how did prestigious 21st-century universities devolve into copying Joseph Goebbels?
In Cynical Theories, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay detail ideologies like postcolonial theory, which lead many people with doctorates to view Israeli children slaughtered on October 7th, not as individuals with decades of family history in the region and historical roots dating back millennia, but instead as “settler colonialists” who deserved what they got.
Less noted is how these questionable ideologies colonized non-rigorous disciplines like Anthropology, whose chief professional organization supports boycotting Israel, but not countries with far worse human rights records. Anthropology’s leaders warned young scholars not to work with the U.S. military in Afghanistan if they ever wanted to work in academe. Afghan women can now enjoy the results of this de facto pro-Taliban stance. Anthropology’s hard left positionality contrasts sharply with more pluralist fields like my own, Political Science.
Alas, Middle East Studies, an interdisciplinary field that has gained considerable influence in recent years, resembles Anthropology more than Political Science. Speaking out of school, I can bear witness to one episode epitomizing that field’s cognitive rigidity.
Two decades ago, I was a tenured professor at a respected university considering hiring a well-published academic who had been denied tenure at another institution, likely because their anti-Israeli research offended that school’s leaders. (I’m not using the individual’s name or gender to respect their privacy and their stated desire to leave this incident behind them.)
I initially favored hiring because the professor seemingly suffered unfair treatment at their prior campus and since I saw—and still see—reasoned arguments for reducing U.S. aid to Israel. I soon had second thoughts. In their writings and job talk, the professor described the Israeli lobby as Washington’s most powerful interest group, supposedly stronger than big pharma, insurance companies, the National Rifle Association, and teacher unions. Yet they seemed unable to define power. Their “research” involved collecting anecdotes without considering alternative evidence.
This led me to ask a question any scholar should have anticipated.
From Arthur Bentley to Theda Skocpol, hundreds of political scientists spent a century studying interest groups. Yet, the professor failed to learn from—or even cite—that massive body of research. Asked why, they answered: “I chose not to.”
“I chose not to” is the response of a religious fundamentalist avoiding the temptation by shouting, “Get behind me, Satan”—not a scholar considering contrary evidence to understand complex phenomena better. My university decided the job candidate lacked the depth to teach our students. Unlike much of higher education, we made the right call.
In a notable book that came out shortly before that ill-fated job talk, Ivory Towers on Sand, Martin Kramer exposed Middle East Studies as a field out of touch with reality. Lacking scientific rigor, Middle East Studies “replaced proficiency with ideology,” consistently erring in its predictions about the region’s politics. As Kramer wrote, the field “had failed to ask the right questions, at the right times, about Islamism” and “produced mostly banalities about American bias and ignorance, and fantasies about Islamists as democratizers and reformers.”
Normatively, its professors never accepted Israel’s legitimacy, opposing President Bill Clinton’s efforts to negotiate a two-state solution that could have assured Israeli and Palestinian safety and sovereignty. Empirically, the field predicted the “Zionist entity” would devolve into a garrison state and U.S. vassal rather than a multicultural democracy with a vibrant economy, which was what Israel became.
In short, for decades, Middle East Studies professors have chosen not to teach their students uncomfortable facts, including that while other governments in the region expelled Jews, 1.8 million Muslims freely practice their faith in Israel, where gays and lesbians are also welcome.
For scholars, humanity is complicated. For fundamentalists pretending to be scholars, everything is simple, with easy to catalog heroes and villains. From the 1940s Germany to UCLA today, we see what comes from willful ignorance.
Image by Bryan of UCLA Campus – Janss Steps on Flickr — Colorized black and white by Jared Gould
This claim is particularly absurd: “One must go back to the 1940s to find public organizations in the West imposing what Nazis called Judenfrei (Jew-free zones).”
Does Maranto honestly believe that no public universities in the 1950s (and far beyond) had fraternities and sororities that excluded Jews? To this day, many student groups are explicitly Christian, which would seem to exclude Jews far more than the encampments where Jews actually were present.
There are lots of groups that are explicitly Christian, or Jewish, or Mormon (LDS), or Wiccan, or whatever. We have true religious tolerance in this country which means you and yours have the right to practice your religion however you please as long as you don’t infringe on the rights of others…
The encampments were different — they sought to EXCLUDE others from a public area, and the only purported Christian organization that does that is the Klu Klux Klan.
I say “purported” because they aren’t Christians, and I trust you have a fairly good idea what would happen were the Klan try to exclude Jews (or Blacks — they hate both) from a public lawn on a state university campus. State authorities are closer so probably would respond first (even if the university itself didn’t), but do you honestly think that Meritless Garland would tolerate this? Or the FBI?
A group of Christian students singing Christmas Carols on campus aren’t denying Jews the ability to walk to the library — a Team Hamas checkpoint does. And if you can’t understand the difference between the two, Lord help us…
John, you have to remember by key qualifier in my piece: PUBLIC ORGANIZATIONS. Sure, people have a right of free association—including often within public settings, where my buddy’s gay and lesbian group which gets student activity fee money might not have traditional Mormon officers—but that is very different from banning people based on their religion from geographic parts (public accommodations as it were) of campus such as libraries. It’s a HUGE difference. And UCLA reportedly hired security to help make it so. You will admit that is weird, no? And probably unconstitutional. Surely you will agree that if pro-Israel protesters banned Muslims (unless they renounced their faith’s claims to Mecca) from parts of campus that would be completely unacceptable. And I would agree completely.
Also, my key argument is that Middle East Studies has devolved into more of an ideological movement than a scholarly enterprise. Its students are quietly banned from studying in Israel. A professor I know supports a two state solution (as do most Americans) but dares not say this publicly, for fear they would get harassed out. Are these not problems? I admit they are under-researched, so we are largely going on anecdotes. FIRE has a lot of data on this, but alas it goes under-examined. We both know why that is.
Please cite specifically which fraternities and sororities have officially excluded Jews.
Please cite which “Christian” student groups have excluded Jews.
So far, only UCLA, to use your words, “to this day” have I discovered that purposely sought to exclude Jews. From the Campus. And that was done by SJP/Hamas.
Tell us please John, why are you and the AAUP so quiet about that? A judge has said so, after all.
This is 2024, not 1964 or 1924 — past discrimination was bad, but we are now enlightened enough to realize that discrimination is wrong, or at least we have laws against it.
Can you imagine if UCLA was posted “Whites Only”? Worse, that a student group was using force and violence to exclude persons of color from the campus — with the UCLA authorities nonchalantly ignoring this?
It’s difficult to predict what would happen next because it would be a case of which happened FIRST but it would be some combination of (a) “mostly peaceful” Black protesters burning the campus flat, Federal and California authorities using the full powers of the state to end it, and (c) UCLA no longer being considered a reputable university.
If the Admn asked for the National Guard and let them act, it would be one thing — but if they just nonchalantly ignored this as they did last spring’s fun, UCLA would lose its accreditation, lose its state funding, and lose its students — it would be shut down.
The portions still standing would be shut down.
And how is what happened different?
Because South Africa has become such a beacon of individual rights and freedom — not to mention nutrition….d
This was supposed to be a response to Jonathan’s comment.
But it will also stand on its own. Is the average South African better off today than he/she/it was 40 years ago? And in Africa, discrimination is based on tribe, not skin color (remember Rwanda?) — so how does replacing one favored group with a different favored group help the majority who are in neither?
Forty years ago they had enough food to eat. Now they don’t.
I ruefully wonder whether Israel is not indeed becoming a “garrison state and American vassal.”
Well, we want them to fight the war very differently than they are and we (including me) would prefer a different prime minister, so if Israelis are vassals they are very disobedient ones. And they are spending a lot less of their GDP on war/defense than they used to and far less than Gaza, which is in fact a garrison state. Plus, many Israelis are protesting against their prime minister, who will likely lose the next election. If Gaza residents could hold their leaders accountable in that way, peace might be possible. This does not mean I approve of everything Israel does, but the notion that Jews should go back where they came from (Iran? Iraq? Libya? Russia?) is a farce. So is the notion we should tear up recognized long established, internationally recognized nation states like Israel and Ukraine and hope for the best. Only strongmen like Putin will win in that world order.