CSPAN - University Leaders Discuss Combating Antisemitism

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March 13, 2025 19:34-20:03 - CSPAN

28:51

University Leaders Discuss Combating Antisemitism

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dan senor

10:11

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patty murray

sen/d 00:04

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		Next, a discussion about combating anti-Semitism on college campuses with university leaders hosted by the Anti-Defamation League.
		Participants talk about freedom of speech and possible root causes of anti-Semitism in schools.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		It's 3.45 p.m. on Monday, March 3rd, here in New York City.
		It's 10.45 on Monday, March 3rd in Israel as Israelis wind down their day.
		And these two are wondering why I'm actually explaining the time.
		We're time stamping this for my podcast.
		I open all my podcasts with a time stamp.
		We are going to jump right into this conversation.
		It's a real honor to be with both of you here today, who have had two very different experiences, I think, at your respective universities.
		But both of those experiences and trajectories speak to this moment we are in and provide an opportunity, I think, for both of you to provide leadership at your universities, but also nationally in higher education.
		So I want to start with the experience at WashU, Andrew, but specifically a piece you just co-authored with Chancellor Daniel Diermeyer from Vanderbilt for the Chronicle of Higher Education.
		And the article is titled, Universities Must Reject Creeping Polarization.
		And I just want to quote, it's a long piece that speaks to these principles that you and Chancellor Diermeyer just published.
		But you say in this piece, in a polarized era in which every American institution has become a political Rorschach test, the Israel-Gaza conflict in particular has divided college campuses and public opinion to a degree unseen since the 1960s.
		And you go on to diagnose the problem, and then you say, in describing what you think is the prescription to address this problem, a culture of civil discourse is essential, but we also need rules.
		The word rules is what jumped out at me, and you write, and those rules must be enforced.
		Clear policies governing expression, protests, and dissent that include appropriate limitations on time, place, and manner are necessary to provide maximum freedom of expression without trampling on the rights of fellow classmates and faculty or obstructing the core operations that support the teaching and research mission of these institutions.
		So the idea of rules seemed to be almost of paramount importance for you and Daniel to highlight in this piece.
		Why?
unidentified		Rules are important because rules structure the way in which we can interact any place in society, but particularly on a college campus.
		And we've thought long and hard at WashU, first about our mission, focus on education, the research that we do, and the patients that we treat.
		And we've developed a set of rules to help drive that mission.
		I mean, a lot of the rules that we have, particularly around protest and so forth on the campus, are not there to stifle opinion.
		In fact, we want opinions to be lifted up.
		But at the same time, we need to be able to focus on the mission.
		Teaching has to continue.
		And so that's why we have those rules.
		I think one of the challenges that we saw on many campuses last academic year is that we had rules, and then we had campus leaders who chose not to enforce them.
		And it is difficult.
		I mean, it is difficult to enforce rules, particularly when you have people screaming at you, questioning every decision that you make.
		But I'd posit that if you have rules and you're not going to enforce them, you probably shouldn't have rules, or at least rethink the rules that you've got.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		And can you talk a little bit specifically about the role that encampments have played as it relates to enforcement of rules?
unidentified		Absolutely.
		My first year as chancellor in 2019, we had a small little encampment by some of our graduate students and undergraduates advocating for a change in our minimum wage policy.
		It was not disruptive at all, but it was actually really difficult for us to provide safety and security to students who were sleeping in the middle of our campus 24 hours a day.
		And so we established a no-encampment policy in 2019.
		As we saw what was happening on other campuses last fall, fall before last, we made the decision that, look, if an encampment was going to come onto our campus, we wouldn't allow it to do so.
		And we publicized that.
		I think we have some opportunities to have perhaps publicized it a little bit better.
		But we had this policy, and we made it very clear to folks that that's what we were going to do.
		And in fact, in April, when things got a little spicier on our campus, we had a protest.
		We made sure that it happened safely, and as soon as they brought out the tents, we said, you have to go.
		And on that day, they chose to go.
		The following week, we had 400 individuals on our campus.
		75% were unaffiliated from Washington University.
		These are community members who were playing out their advocacy on our campus.
		This is at a time when our students are in reading period, getting ready for final exams.
		And they again brought out their tents and said, come and please join the encampment.
		And we said, that's not going to happen on our campus.
		And we used our police force to ensure that the stakes didn't go in the ground and there wasn't an encampment on our campus.
		And we did that because the presence of that encampment would interfere with our mission of education and was make it more difficult to provide safety and security for all of our students.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Sanda, I want to talk about the experience of rules and encampments at the University of Michigan because it seems like it has been a bumpier road.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		I personally last spring was speaking at the University of Michigan with former Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, hosted by FOG, one of the pro-Israel groups that I think you know them.
unidentified		Facts on the ground.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Facts on the ground, that's right.
		See, you know better than I do.
		And The anti-Israel groups on campus had literally hacked the ticketing system to the event to the point that the event had to be shut down.
		Prime Minister Bennett and I had to be moved around to an undisclosed location.
		It was quite, it was, and this was months after October 7th.
		So can you talk a little bit about what you have experienced in those first few months after October 7th and then as it relates to the new school year?
unidentified		Yeah, it's a great question.
		You know, I was, unbeknownst to you, actually involved in some of those movements.
		I had the privilege of working with students in Facts on the Ground and other groups, and they've been incredible.
		And I received a phone call from the father of one of the leaders of Facts on the Ground saying that he had some concerns about safety for the former prime minister, but also for students attending the event where it was scheduled to take place.
		There had been another similar talk organized by Fogg.
		That was perfectly fine.
		But it became obvious in looking at individuals who would sign up that the audience would not be completely friendly.
		And so we were involved in trying to find an alternate location.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		We weren't friendly because I think there were real security concerns.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		Absolutely.
		And so that was probably the most difficult time for us as an institution.
		There was a radio clip that was released a couple days ago that it was precisely at that moment that I was speaking to the chairs of departments about that time.
		So this audio clip was from over a year ago.
		And it actually is me responding to the chairs about at that time encampments had already occurred and there was House hearings of people like Claudine Gay and Elizabeth McGill.
		And so I was talking to the chairs about what was going on and the question was asked, why is there this focus on anti-Semitism?
		And of course I said that certainly that's a predominant thing that's occurring.
		It's like encampment on the DIAG.
		But we had also had some instances of Islamophobia.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		And just to be clear, that wasn't supposed to be a private meeting.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		This wasn't intended to be.
unidentified		No.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		It was a private meeting.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Someone recorded it.
unidentified		That's right.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Let's just say a mischief maker recorded it and then clipped it and then it has leaked out and it got a whole life around that time and then it got a new life coincidentally over the last 48 hours.
unidentified		That's right, that's right.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Totally coincidental.
unidentified		Yes.
		In any case, so that's what happened and it was a very tumultuous time, as you said.
		We're dealing with the encampment.
		We were able to take the encampment down.
		We have set up since then rules and we hold people accountable.
		Individuals who've broken civil and criminal statutes are actually in criminal cases before the courts.
		The Attorney General Dana Nessel has been amazing.
		And our regents, by the way, have been amazing.
		They are lockstep.
		We, like Andrew, we are completely focused on ensuring that the core mission of the institution, teaching and learning and health care, are uninterrupted.
		That's the only way to deal with this.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		So just staying on that recording, because I know you want an opportunity to address it very directly, there were two things in that recording that jumped out at me and I think jumped out at a lot of people who were circulating it in recent days that were disconcerting.
		One was your reference to quote-unquote powerful groups that had organized or shaped the hearings against that featured the university presidents last year, I guess a year and a half ago.
		And the second issue was this seeming comparison between, yes, there's anti-Semitism, but there's also Islamophobia.
		And that second one, I will be honest, I'm particularly sensitive to because there's a tendency, I think, especially since October 7th, to try to universalize the outsized hate, violence, and discrimination applied to Jews and sort of universalize it in a way that dilutes the significance of the Jewish experience.
		According to the FBI, the American Jewish population is roughly, the Jewish population in the United States is roughly 2.4% of the entire U.S. population, but it counts for 68% of hate crimes.
		there is something different going on with the Jewish community than other groups are experiencing and I think I agree 100% So let me explain.
unidentified		So in terms of powerful groups, I was referring to a number of committees in Congress.
		And in terms of the common- the committees, the committees.
		Committees, committees in Congress.
		One was the House Education and Workforce Committee, but there were many other committees.
		Jim Johnson was, I think, in charge of one.
		And so that's what I referred to.
		In terms of the common Islamophobia, is because the question was, why isn't there a focus on Islamophobia?
		Why so much focus on anti-Semitism?
		I said, obviously, because there are so many things going on, there's an encampment, and most of the cases in our office, Title VI office, were focused on like 80% of them.
		But there were cases of individuals who were doxxed, who were from the MENA groups on campus.
		And so the chairs that were in that room were asking about them.
		So it was not possible for me not to respond about that as well.
		But for me, it was no desire at all to dilute the focus on fighting anti-Semitism.
		That has been a predominant focus of ours because that is the real issue on campus.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		So among the ways you have expressed solidarity with the Jewish community and spoken out includes the university's relationship with Israel, which I want to talk about in a moment.
		But before I do, just anything other specifically that you've done to make it clear that actions against Israel or actions against the Jewish community on campus are going to be unacceptable, including, from what I understand, something that just happened the last couple days with the ROC.
		So can you describe?
unidentified		Well, the first thing I would say is that early on there was sort of a BDS kind of vote that was coming from the student government itself.
		We call it the central student government.
		And if you go back and look, and those of you who are affiliated with Michigan know that I personally stepped in to stop the vote.
		And that's because I thought it was wrong.
		I've said before.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		So they were trying to get a vote to get the endowment to divest from Israel, Israeli companies.
unidentified		And also to sever connections with Israeli institutions.
		And as I've said before, I view BDS to be anti-Semitism.
		And in terms of doubling down on our relationship with Israeli institutions, great ones like Technion and Weissman, we have long-standing relationships.
		We have 60 projects that have been funded between the University of Michigan and these great institutions.
		And my response and the board's response to this call to divest or to cut those relationships was to actually invest even more.
		And so the three of us have put more money into it.
		And great things have come out of these relationships.
		And more great things will come in the future.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		And specifically the incident over the last couple days with this, the ROC.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		The ROC, yes.
unidentified		Yeah.
		So the thing is that if you're not from the University of Michigan, which I'm not, so I needed to later.
		It looks like The Rock is part of the campus, but it's actually not.
		It's an Ann Arbor Park, and it's surrounded by things like fraternities and sororities, but we actually don't have the jurisdiction to do anything because it's not our land.
		So if we could, we do review surveillance videos and things like that.
		If we can identify somebody, but for us to go in, it'd be like going into your house.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but the audience knows what we're talking about, so The Rock, there was this moving tribute memorial for the B bus family painted onto the rock, and then that was vandalized.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		And I abhor that.
		I think it's completely unacceptable.
		And if I could, I would do something, but it's not on our land.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		And Andrew, on the you, WASHU has done a lot with Israeli institutions.
		And just pivoting off of what Santa said here, there is this growing sense, this growing momentum for an academic boycott globally in the context of the BDS movement that we were just talking about.
		In fact, it's actually one of the most worrying parts, one of the most alarming aspects of BDS as far as I'm concerned, because it's the only one that seems to right now have legs.
unidentified		Yes.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		So can you talk about what WASHU has been doing with Israel-Israeli institutions that deepens these ties?
unidentified		We've been on the record institutionally for a very long time that BDS is antithetical to academic freedom.
		As an institution, I mean, if an individual faculty member chooses to collaborate with one individual or another, that's their prerogative.
		I mean, that's part of their academic freedom.
		But to say, as an institution, you cannot collaborate with another institution or a principal investigator from another institution, that's antithetical to academic freedom.
		And we've talked about that on our campus for a very long time.
		We're also deeply committed to institutional neutrality.
		Part of that means that we don't advance any cause through our investment policies other than generating maximal return to drive our mission.
		And so one of the interviews I did with some student reporters, sort of doing my every semester interview, it was a long question about whether we were going to divest from Boeing, which was the topic du jour, last spring.
		And it was this two-paragraph question, and will you divest?
		And my answer to that question is no.
		I just looked at the reporter and said no.
		I didn't explain why.
		I explained why for seven years.
		But we're very clear that our collaborations with Israeli scholars and Israeli institutions bring great value to our university.
		We want our students and faculty to have the academic freedom to participate in those programs.
		And we're just not going to choose, we're not going to do anything with our investment policy other than doing whatever we can to increase our return.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		In terms of the other principles, this document that you and Chancellor Diermeyer have published, which you're hoping other institutions, I think, will sign on to, can you just quickly summarize what these principles are?
unidentified		Yeah, the Vanderbilt WashU principles, we think, are actually a restatement of what research universities have always been.
		And at times, we've lost our ways.
		And our institutions, in some respects, have lost our ways.
		Look, at the heart of everything we need, everything we do is excellence.
		We have to make sure that our students and our faculty can live up to their full potential and make sure they have the resources to live up to their full potential.
		Politics has nothing to do with excellence.
		We need to support all of our faculty.
		We're also deeply committed to civil discourse.
		And part of that, part of that is actually having reasoned principled discourse.
		Part of that also means we need to have diversity of thought on our campuses and create environments where people with diverse thinking about important issues can interact with one another.
		And that's something that we're doing at WashU and I know Daniel's doing at Vanderbilt.
		That we need to center the work that we're doing to help drive our local economies.
		Much of that is through the work we do in healthcare, but also as large employers and present institutions.
		And then the final piece is student access.
		I mean, I think one of the great stories of American higher education over the last 30, 40, 50 years, one of the areas where the University of Michigan has been an absolute leader is how do you open the doors to super talented students from limited income and ensure that they can thrive on your campuses.
		And part of our principals are saying, look, that's an important part of our DNA.
		And the reason why we do that is not just because it's the right thing to do, although it is the right thing to do, it's key to making our institutions as excellent as possible.
		If we're leaving talent on the table because students aren't able to afford our tuition, POC's on us, and it also means we're not going to be as great as we could be otherwise.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Over the weekend, when this recording was surfaced, I heard from a number of universities, I mentioned this to you, a number of University of Michigan alumni and some students who were making the case that the climate on campus at Michigan had improved considerably for Jews from last year to this year.
		And they wanted me to make sure I said that.
		So for all of you who are here, you're everywhere, you Michigan alumni, I said it.
		Okay.
		But my response to them as they were pushing their line was, okay, I hear you, but if you were the place can't be perfect, right?
		So if you were to wave a magic wand, if you could wave a magic wand and improve one thing, what would it be?
		And it was interesting because it wound up, it was sort of like a crowdsourced survey, which I didn't intend to be analyzing over my weekend, but such are events.
		And the one thing I heard over and over is the discomfort many students feel in the classroom with professors who are hostile to Israel and, as you articulated, hostile to Jews.
		To the point that many students feel that they can't even answer tests and essay questions the way they want to for fear of seeming misaligned with the faculty member to the point that it could have implications for their grade.
		That, by the way, it's interesting because I asked this question and I was hearing a version of this over and over and over.
		So you run a massive institution and you supervise directly, indirectly.
		I can't even imagine how many faculty.
		How do you impose a standard that is applied throughout the institution that doesn't leave Jewish students feeling the way they're feeling?
unidentified		Well, it's a combination of offense and defense.
		That's not because I'm a Wolverine, but honestly, you know, there have to be rules.
		There have to be conduct that is, there's accountability for actions by faculty and staff that are inappropriate, that are anti-Semitic.
		And if you read the New York Times, we're often in it for holding people accountable.
		And we've fired staff who have said things that are anti-Semitic.
		We have faculty members.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		How do you deal with that with tenured, with tenured faculties?
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		That's where it gets complicated.
unidentified		There is a process with tenured faculty as well.
		But this is kind of one side.
		The other side, I think, is that we're educational institutions.
		And I think one of the most powerful ways that we can address this, not just at Michigan, but once our graduates go out into the world into different sectors, is through education.
		So we've done two things I'm going to talk about real quick.
		One is we launched the Rau-Wallenberg Institute, which is really focused on understanding the root causes of anti-Semitism and actually educating at every level from K through 12 into the general society why anti-Semitism has occurred for millennia and how we can actually try to eradicate it.
		So that's the focus of the Wallenberg Institute.
		The other institute, like Andrew has said, is we have launched an Institute for Civil Discourse.
		And so we have to intentionally diversify our faculty to have a broad set of ideologies, and we will do that.
		And we have to bring them together and model to other faculty, but also to students, how to have civil discourse.
		And then we have to embed that into the curriculum of all the 19 schools in Ann Arbor.
		And so that's happening with this Institute for Civil Discourse.
		And so the other way to eventually win is to get at the fact that people don't have civil discourse.
		They don't listen to each other.
		They shout each other down.
		And we have to be leaders through education.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Question for both of you.
		I go back and forth, and I have over since October 7th, as I've watched these mini-pilgrims emerge at so many campuses.
		And I question: is this an organic, grassroots, spontaneous or semi-spontaneous uprising?
		Or is there something else going on here?
		Are there influences from outside the university that are stoking, organizing, resourcing?
		And by the way, it's not like one answer, the answer to one of the questions being affirmative will give me comfort because both scenarios are really bad.
		But, I mean, you're both involved with your own campuses.
		Obviously, Andrew, you're working now nationally with these other universities.
		Yes.
		You guys are talking to your peers.
		What's like, you guys are insiders in this world.
		What are you seeing?
unidentified		So the data from the WASHU experience, I think, definitively answers your question.
		On multiple occasions, including the April 27th protest, which was the one we had 400 on the campus, had 100 individuals arrested, 75% of them were unaffiliated with the university.
		75% were unaffiliated with the university.
		I don't know.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		But that doesn't mean necessarily just people coming in from St. Louis who just happened to sign.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		It could be.
unidentified		No, no, we know that many of them, we booked them, many of them weren't from St. Louis.
		They had flown in from around the country to carry out their agenda on our campus at the time that our students were studying.
		And so I don't know where those networks are coming from.
		And yes, we did have, we had students and some faculty members and some staff who were involved as well.
		But this is not just spontaneously happening on our campuses.
		And it's certainly the case.
		It's certainly the case that this social media environment is being leveraged by other actors to sort of spin things up on campuses as well.
		Just want to end up by echoing your data in that near the end of the encampment on the DIAG, the vast majority of people had no affiliation with the university.
		The second thing is that if you look at what's in the encampments, the kind of materials that are there, they're clearly not from the United States in many cases.
		And so what I've said to a lot of my friends in government and in media is follow the money.
		There's something behind what's happening.
		And you got to find those people to actually stop this from happening.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		Santono, Andrew Martin, thank you for a candid conversation.
dan senor ▲ ● ▼		And I look forward to continuing it.
unidentified		Thank you, Dan.
		Tonight on C-SPAN, next, a meeting with President Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Ruda at the White House.
		Following that, House Democratic leadership discusses their party's legislative agenda at their annual issues conference in Virginia.
		And then, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal and Senator Bernie Sanders discussed legislation aimed at protecting veterans' health care and employment.
		C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum, inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
		Coming up Friday morning, we'll talk with Nadia Shadlow, former Trump Deputy National Security Advisor, about the Trump administration's approach to NATO and European security amid Ukraine peace talks.

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