Talk:Universities and antisemitism

Recentism tag
I have added this as there have been universities since the 12th century and we know that there was serious antisemitism in many countries ever since then. Material for the subject throughout the relevant period should be added to the article or the article needs re-titling as a defined period. Moreover, the 20th and even the 21st century are poorly covered. Jontel (talk) 20:31, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Neutrality tag
I have added this because this article is principally a handful of geographically spread reports from the early 2000's, some just of single events. It is so limited it cannot hope to be a good guide to the subject. I wonder if we should revisit the nomination for deletion of 12 years ago. Jontel (talk) 20:49, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Concerns over UK section
I have a number of concerns over the UK section.

Issues over the validity of the source

1. The All Parliamentary Inquiry is quoting from the submission of a Jewish Community organisation with regard to the incident. The inquiry has not sought to verify the report of the incident and there is thus no reliable source.

2. The source clearly has an axe to grind and is not independent, as it "is active in defending Israel from delegitimisation, boycott and all forms of anti Israel or anti-Zionist attack." {https://jewishmanchester.org/about/}

Errors in the source

3. The forgery referenced was a 1930s publication: see the article on it. It is thus obviously untrue to call it neo-Nazi, which is a post World War Two movement.

4. The paraphrase "enslave the country and control its economy." is a misleading exaggeration as a paraphrase of the forgery. "Exploit the Christians and imperil their institutions" would be more accurate.

Other issues with the article

5. The article fails to make clear that the quoted elements in the leaflet are from the forgery.

6. The article omits context on the word vampires and links the word to the Vampires article about the mythical beings, when the forgery clearly meant the word metaphorically in the sense of financial exploitation.

7. The Inquiry, quoting the Jewish institution, reports the leaflet as saying "control the economy", not "destroy the economy", so the article has misreported this. However, even "control the economy" does not seem an entirely accurate reading.

8. The leaflet is supposedly from a Palestinian based organisation, so is a poor example of antisemitism in the UK.

Given these eight issues, I suggest that the section is omitted until better examples are found. Jontel (talk) 09:51, 13 October 2019 (UTC)


 * I don't know anything about that incident, and don't really care to research it in detail, but there have been many, many incidents in UK universities (see, etc).  The National Union of Students has played an overall moderately negative role, expelling many Jewish student organizations in the 1970s, and electing Malia Bouattia recently.  AnonMoos (talk) 07:37, 14 October 2019 (UTC)


 * "And electing Malia Bouattia recently". The student body during that year elected Bouattia, the NUS just confirmed it as they're supposed to do. What Boutattia said-- that certain Jewish campus organizations are "hotbeds of Zionism" may make people uncomfortable, but it's nowhere near what it was made out to be by some of those organizations and the more right wing elements in British media. It's not even an untrue statement-- it's not the same thing as some far-righter accusing the Muslim Student's Union as being a "hotbed of Islamism". If Hillel UK and other campus organizations that consider themselves to be representative of Jewish students routinely defend the Israeli government and army, or attack pro-Palestinian organizations/events on campus, then they can reasonably be described as politically Zionist.
 * It's worth noting that the second thing she said is far less controversial than what it was made out to be as well. Violent resistance against an occupying force or a militarily belligerent force on the part of paramilitary organizations is legal under the Geneva convention and under the laws of war. I can see how it would be controversial at the least if Bouattia was advocating for violence against pro-israel organizations on campus in the UK, but that's not what she said and anyone claiming as much in the media or on this site would be extremely disingenuous to say the least. 2607:FEA8:A4E0:11EC:595A:AC6:4FFB:DD5E (talk) 12:53, 4 April 2020 (UTC)


 * In that form, it's only legal under "Protocol I", which is not one of the four core Geneva Convention documents widely considered to be part of international law... AnonMoos (talk) 23:09, 6 September 2020 (UTC)


 * P.S. For Malia Bouattia, substitute Shaima Dallali nowadays (don't know why she doesn't have an article). As Lady Bracknell might have said, choosing one anti-Jewish leader may be regarded as a misfortune; to choose two looks like carelessness... AnonMoos (talk) 22:50, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

Now in 2023, see this story on the National Union of Students: Jewish students suffered antisemitic bullying within NUS, inquiry finds...AnonMoos (talk) 01:31, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

This would seem to indicate that there is a problem in UK universities
UK Education secretary Gavin Williamson accuses English universities of ignoring antisemitism by Richard Adams, Friday 9 October 2020, The Guardian -- AnonMoos (talk) 21:53, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Concerns with article balance and structure
The article structure is purely by chronology and place (location, university). How about a structure that includes subtopics? For example: (1) types of antisemitism, e.g., Jewish quotas, (2) types of university functions, e.g., teaching, research, (3) culture impact, and (4) university opposition to antisemitism and research on it, etc. Probably need a section on universities and anti-Israel activities, with contested relationship to antisemitism.

Currently, the article lacks balance. There's nothing on university resistance to antisemitism, research on trends or survey data, and very little on 18-19th C which was a crucial period for discrimination and Jewish emancipation in Europe. Nothing on the study of antisemitism.

There's too much content on current events, it is disproportionate in an article that starts in the medieval period.ProfGray (talk) 10:59, 26 March 2024 (UTC)


 * It's also very strange how brief the section on Germany is. There is a long, long history of academic antisemitism in German universities which pre-existed the Nazi regime, and there are many troubling parallels between the behaviour of academics at that time and today. There's this very strange and historically false impression that universities have historically opposed antisemitism, when in fact they've historically often been hotbeds of it. KronosAlight (talk) 09:56, 17 July 2024 (UTC)

There's disproportionate coverage of: For sections on specific universities, I see no reason to divide 20th and 21st centuries. If this content is notable, there's enough here for an article on antisemitism at US universities. I also doubt that it's encyclopedic for this article to cover the details of ongoing lawsuits etc, dwarfing coverage of, say, 18-19th C and the Nazi era. ProfGray (talk) 17:08, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Tufts, a controversy with little or no national media attention
 * Details about events at Stanford, George Washington, and Berkeley.
 * Paragraphs with details that should be moved to the 2023 United States Congress hearing on antisemitism. I will move these into a separate section and maybe propose to move that section.

Recent edit
I removed the section on MIT contributed on 25 April in this edit. My rationale was: "problematic section by non-ECP editor". Specific issues were: WP:OR; uncited segments; use of primary sources; etc. -- K.e.coffman (talk) 07:16, 5 May 2024 (UTC)