Why Is Congress Funding Campus Antisemitism?

Antisemitism has been quietly simmering for years in American universities and has now broken out into the open after the October 7th massacre in Israel. Congress has been sending billions to our higher education systems while foreign countries have also pumped billions into the system.

Countless demonstrations demanding destruction of Israel (“From the river to the sea!”), a Cornell professor proclaiming to a crowd that he found the orgy of targeted murder, rape and kidnapping of civilians on October 7th “exhilarating” and “energizing,” and three university presidents unable to clearly say that “calling for the genocide of Jews” violates their schools’ codes of conduct, display a hatred and ignorance that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.

While these university “leaders” were unable to forcefully condemn Antisemitism, Congress recently took action in a bi-partisan manner by voting in favor of a resolution calling on the presidents of Harvard and MIT to resign following the hearing.

While this Congressional action is well received by many, it’s just the first step on this. Next Congress must move to strip federal funding and to prohibit foreign countries from donating to universities.

We as Americans should also recognize that it’s not just University Presidents that are slow to respond to Antisemitism but also the Biden Administration and many Democrats in Congress that have shown similar reluctance to condemn Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism.

In what world does the Biden Administration live where they thought that including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization long known to have ties to Hamas, in a group the White House put together in May 2023 to fight antisemitism makes sense? This was a short sighted decision, and as of December 7th, the Biden Administration has now removed CAIR from the National Antisemtism Task Force after CAIR’s executive director told the 16th Annual Convention for Palestine in the U.S. that he was “happy” about the October 7th massacre.

The spineless reaction in academia and politicians’ tolerance for the genocidal demands of pro-Hamas demonstrators bear witness to intellectual and moral decay, especially in America’s universities, many of which have lost sight of “critical thinking” to become incubators of hate against Israel, America and western civilization in general.

Much of this moral decay can be directly linked to Critical Race Theory (“CRT”).

Just like its predecessor Marxism, CRT views our complex society, with its high level of geographic and social mobility, as a simple clash between an oppressor class and the oppressed. Marxism used economic status to divide society into the bourgeoisie and the proletariat and believed that western society would shatter along the fault line of the economic class.

Critical Race Theory has infected all aspects of American higher education despite CRT’s severe intellectual flaws, including an extreme oversimplification of American society, denial of obvious facts, circular reasoning, and definitional games.

The shameful testimony of the three university presidents was just another example of intellectual cowardice in academia.

American universities must relegate CRT to its proper place in academia as just another failed ideology like communism and fascism. This first requires intellectual confrontation to reveal the fundamental racism, simple-mindedness, and fatal intellectual flaws in CRT.

Two recent books directly challenge CRT: James Lindsay’s “Race Marxism” shows that CRT is merely warmed over Marxism. My book “The Critical Race Theory Scam – Dissecting a Racist Ideology” proves with rational, logical argument that CRT is a racist, emotionally driven ideology couched in pseudo-academic blather that leads to ridiculous policies.

Reversing the intellectual decay in academia also requires that political leaders stop spending billions of dollars on ideological indoctrination. Neither academic freedom nor the First Amendment requires donors and the American taxpayer to generously finance CRT proponents in their efforts to sow hate and tear down our country.

Congressional action could impose restrictions on donations by hostile foreign governments used to finance courses directed against America and our allies.

It’s time for Congress to use the power of the purse strings to stamp out Antisemitism on college campuses by making it very simple for these colleges; if they want to allow their students to call for the genocide of the Jewish people, they will no longer receive federal funding from the government.

Christopher Arend is a retired attorney (California, Germany) who served on the Paso Robles school board in California and authored that district’s 2021 resolution.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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