‘I went to NYU so long ago, it was in the Bronx,” my conservative Midwestern father once joked. He wasn’t thrilled to send his left-wing daughter to New York University to study creative writing. My husband, a Tisch professor, and my prelaw niece Dara also love our school. Unfortunately, the recent anti-Semitism sweeping the campus is testing our affection.
Jewish students were assaulted at an Israeli Independence Day celebration last year in Washington Square Park, where two anti-Israel student agitators were arrested after desecrating Israeli flags. The NYU Jewish Center received threats; swastikas were found in a residence hall. The student government passed an anti-Israel BDS—boycott, divestment and sanctions—resolution. NYU activists confronted a pregnant Chelsea Clinton and insanely blamed her for the massacre at a New Zealand mosque because she criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitic slurs.
Most shocking, last week the university gave a President’s Service Award to Students for Justice in Palestine for its “positive impact on the community.” SJP is known for pushing BDS, demonizing Israel and leading a boycott of Zionist student clubs.
A Zionist with relatives in the Holy Land, I’m also pro-Palestinian and for a two-state solution. I’ve criticized President Trump’s bigotry and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s expansion of settlements, and I co-authored a book about the genocide of Muslims in Bosnia. Why can’t my fellow Democrats call out smears against Israel and the Jews?
BDS advocates hypocritically object to the existence of the one Jewish country while ignoring the vast human-rights violations against more than 1.2 billion people in around 50 Muslim-majority nations. They don’t boycott Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran or Somalia. They don’t rage against Hamas, the fundamentalist terror organization whose leaders have stated: “America and Israel will be annihilated, Allah willing.”
NYU President Andrew Hamilton has called academic boycotts of Israel “contrary to our core principles of academic freedom, antithetical to the free exchange of ideas, and at odds with the university’s position.” He didn’t attend the SJP award ceremony, and NYU insisted the prize was decided by “volunteer staffers and a student representative.”
But hate is hate. My alma mater should rescind an honor given for discrimination, bigotry and bias, and condemn all injustice, not just the kind that’s politically correct this week.
Ms. Shapiro is author of “The Byline Bible” and a co-author of “The Bosnia List.”
