“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”-Elie Wiesel
By Skylar Ribotsky
I wrote my first article for The Ribotsky Institute when I was a freshman in high school, the day after the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. I recognized that there was power in the point of view of someone who was actually living through what journalists were ‘reporting’ on. I was that scared freshman who understood I was not safe from someone walking into my school with a gun in an attempt to murder everyone in the building. I wrote because I was scared, but I knew I couldn’t be both scared and silent. I continued writing because the topics to write about were endless, though if you have been a reader of ours for some time you would know that a lot of my articles have been about the rise in antisemitism throughout the years, at home and abroad, not because I think my people’s struggle is more important than anyone else’s, but because when I decided that I would write for The Ribotsky Institute regularly, I promised myself that I would write about things that I knew enough about and that came from a place of authenticity.
When I began writing about antisemitism, I knew that the ramifications could be dangerous, if action was not taken, though the world I am living in now is not what I ever could have imagined when I wrote those articles, even as recently as a few months ago. Following Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7th, I’ve seen a lot of excuses or justifications that are not just shocking but are neither based in reality or on fact. People have stated that the terrorist attack on Israel is justified because this is the Palestinian people’s resistance to occupation and oppression, all I will say on that is this, it is not possible to occupy land that belongs to you, further, the only Israelis in Gaza were taken there…as hostages…by Hamas. Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005, leaving the land to the Palestinian people.
The entire world has found every excuse to blame Israel, not only for their response but to what happened on October 7th. Somehow an unprovoked attack on the Jewish people into the land they call home is their fault. Hamas is not hiding their actions, they are live streaming them, they aren’t calling themselves ‘freedom fighters,’ they are showing the entire world exactly who they are in 4k. Yet people in America and around the world continue to ‘protest’ and march in support of their actions. The terrorists aren’t denying that they are terrorists, why are you?
These statements would be laughable if they weren’t so incredibly dangerous, but they are, and they have seemingly infiltrated every avenue of our world. Today I write to you about the avenue that I think is arguably the most dangerous of all, our institutions of higher education.
This has been the hardest article I have ever written and has taken me the longest because I am a scared Jewish college student who has watched my own campus become a place I could have never imagined. A college student who transferred to the school I currently attend because of the strong Jewish community it offers. So I write this article because I refuse to be silent in the face of the antisemitism that has infiltrated our institutions of higher education. I write this article because I refuse to take my Star of David necklace off to feel safe walking to class on campus, and I demand that those in power, on our campuses and in government, take a real stand in support of their Jewish students.
First off, I think it is important that we examine how we got here. You see, over the past couple of years, in a quest for a more palatable and ‘safe’ society, we have lost track of what is hate and bigotry as opposed to something we just don’t agree with. Colleges have become breeding grounds for extremist thought masquerading as social justice, where they demand safe spaces for students, and tell us our words are violent (if they don’t like what we are saying).
As a means of ‘promoting tolerance,’ there is no place for so-called microaggressions on American college campuses, but outright antisemitism and calls for the complete and total destruction of the one and only Jewish homeland, that’s not just ok, but in many cases, it has been protected and promoted. Again, I am not naive to the fact that antisemitism has been on the rise prior to October 7th but what has transpired on college campuses since October 7th is nothing short of horrifying. I think it is important that we highlight some of these events individually and allow you to decide if this is what many college students have been told, is freedom of speech, a right that cannot be denied by universities, or is this is blatant antisemitism.
A Cornell professor, Russell Rickford, stated publicly that the events of October 7th were ‘exhilarating’ and ‘exciting.’ A student took to social media platforms threatening to shoot up the kosher dining hall on campus. At Tulane, a “rally for Palestine,” ended with a Jewish student being physically attacked. Jewish students at Cooper Union were trapped in the library as anti-Israel protests stormed the outside of the building pounding on the doors. Students at GW University projected messages such as, “glory to our martyrs” on the outside of buildings. Students at Binghamton University gathered on campus to proclaim that Israel is worse than Nazi, Germany,” they took down posters of the hostages and gagged at Jewish students walking across campus.
A professor at Stanford forced Jewish students to take their belongings and stand in the corner. This professor asked these students how many people died in the Holocaust and when they responded, six million, the professor went on to tell them that “colonizers killed more than six million. Israel is a colonizer.” An Israeli student at Columbia was physically assaulted for putting up posters of the hostages taken by Hamas. A teaching assistant at UC Berkeley, offered students in the “Asian American communities and race relations” course five extra credit points if they attended the national student walkout against the settler colonial occupation of Gaza or they could watch a short documentary on Palestine and email their local representatives.
At The Ohio State University, Two Jewish students were assaulted near campus, while two other people entered the building that houses the school’s Hillel, then vandalized Israeli flags and made threats against Jewish people and against Israel. At the University of Wisconsin, people marched near campus, waving flags with swastikas on them, ‘heiling’ Hitler, and chanting, “there will be blood.”
If you feel disgusted, let us remind you that this is not an all-encompassing list but just some examples. Jewish students attend these universities, and to say that we are scared is an understatement of monumental proportions, we are in classes being taught by people whom we now know are indifferent to the murder of our people. We attend classes with our peers, who have stopped at nothing to show they don’t value Jewish life. All the while, we attend these classes in fear. I attend one of the universities I spoke of above, a place I never thought I would worry about my safety because I’m Jewish. For the past month myself and my Jewish peers at colleges across the country have been begging our administrations to take a stand. Jewish students have watched these same administrators speak out and condemn every single other issue that plagues the world. Though, when real hate is brought onto their own campuses, against a population of their own students, this is too controversial to take a firm stance on. All of a sudden these administrators don’t want to comment because the issue is so ‘complex.’ There is nothing complex about the fact that your Jewish students do not feel safe.
We here at The Ribotsky Institute warned for years that this whole move towards ‘tolerance’ on our college campuses is dangerous for it stifles the right that every student and citizen have to free speech. We understand that university administrators must uphold that right, but we also implore them to uphold the right that every student has to an education free from religious persecution. Jewish students have the same civil rights as every other student yet, those rights are not being protected the same way they have been for other students in recent years, and your Jewish students recognize that. We feel that your response to us in our time of need is different. To every college president or administrator, these statements that have been made on your campuses are not just offensive to Jewish students, they threaten our safety. Going to class as a Jewish woman in America in 2023, should not be an act of bravery, the time for action was last month, yet, we are either met with silence or sad excuses for standing with your Jewish students.
I’ll say it again for every college administrator, there is no world in which the decapitation of babies, or the butchering of innocent people living their lives, or the murder of entire Jewish families, communities, and defenseless children, or the hundreds of civilians and members of the IDF taken as hostages, or the physical brutality that was done to a pregnant woman, who was left on the street with her unborn child outside of her body but still connected by the umbilical cord, are justifiable means for anything whatsoever.
The actions committed by terrorists were brutal but the justification of these actions by normal people living amongst us, in our classes, on our campuses, and even teaching our classes, is even scarier. Every university president who has not unequivocally condemned violence and hate against their Jewish students should be ashamed of themselves. Your failure to protect your Jewish students is not just offensive, it violates our civil rights.
Furthermore, I urge institutions of higher education to understand that this is not just about Israel, none of us are safe from the actions of groups such as Hamas. In his memoir, Night, Elie Wiesel once described the Holocaust, and concentration camps, as, “the fiery altar upon which the history of our people and the future of mankind were meant to be sacrificed.” This is not just about the Jews, and it is time to wake up, and stand against this hate because our very humanity and civilization depend on it. To anyone who sleeps better at night by telling themselves that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, Jewish college students have something to tell you, your vitriol and hate for our homeland, has resulted in real threats and violence towards Jewish students on college campuses across the country. To every college student who has unfollowed me and my peers after October 7th or has instead decided to send your Jewish peers the most disgusting messages, you should reevaluate why our will to survive is so offensive to you. We are not going anywhere so you should check in with yourself and see where your morals, which you were so proud to have a month ago, went. Ask yourself why your humanity doesn’t include your Jewish peers and students. I’m not sure how we eradicate all this hate against the Jewish people when it is being promoted through our education systems, but I do know that I am prouder to be Jewish than I ever have been. Further, I know that the reasons I began writing all those years ago remain the same, the truth matters, even in a world as backward as this one.
Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel Live. ַ
RibotskyInstitute.com 
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