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Campus Climate

At the University of Michigan,
and other colleges, multiculturalism
is a challenge to Jewish identity.

NOAM NEUSNER

SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS

n Arbor,
Mich., is a picture-postcard
college town. Its main street
sells T-shirts, books, records
and fancy coffee. Some of its
biggest homes are fraternity
houses. On the University of
Michigan campus, bulletin
boards are layered with an-
nouncements of speakers,
events and rallies. A vivid eth-
nic stew bubbles on leafy cam-
pus walks and city streets.
What sin-prises Jewish stu-
dents about it all is that long
after many of them left their
formal Jewish education, the
assertively multicultural cam-
pus is asking them important
questions about their identi-
tY.
This is happening at a time
when many of them had felt
little concern about their as-
similation into non-Jewish col-
lege life – and at a time when
it's tough to be a "politically
correct" Jew on campus.
With many young Jews
tending to be ambivalent
about their religious and cul-
. tural identity anyway, the
Jewish agenda is not often
u-1 taken up on campus with the
same urgency as those of
cf) African-American, Latino,
Asian-American, and other
student interest groups.
Worse, Israel is routinely bat-
cc tered in student-newspaper
editorials and by invited
speakers – some of whose
words, protected by the cam-
pus tradition of free speech,
spill into anti-Semitism.
A heartening number of

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Unlike other Hillels, which function as stripped-down synagogues, Ann Arbor's largely a social and political center.

Jewish students at Michigan
and elsewhere across the
country say they are commit-
ted to a Jewish life. But the
traditional barometers ofJew-
ish campus life — Are Shab-
bat services well attended? Is
there a strong Hillel? Is Israel
supported in academic fo-
rums? — no longer measure
the depth of Jewish identity
among college students.
"Jews on this campus feel
their Jewish identity not as
a responsibility, but as an ac-
tivity," says Mark Bernstein,
a Michigan senior. "It's some-
thing that they do, not some-
thing that they must do."
"Let's face it," says another
student. "How many of us
thought about what it means
to be Jewish before we got
here?"

PC Is Pervasive
Of more than 16,300 un-

dergraduates at the Univer-
sity of Michigan, almost 3,000,
or about 18 percent, are Jew-
ish. They are active not only
in the Hillel Foundation –
which has the second-largest
extracurricular-activity pro-
gram on campus, after the
university's own social center
– but all over campus. They
help program campus events.
They help lead student gov-
ernment. (Once, a liberal bloc
of the student assembly was
called the "Jewish caucus.")
Many of the staff on the Daily,
the campus newspaper, are
Jewish. Jews populate frater-
nity and sorority houses and
participate heavily in student
co-ops. Many prominent fac-
ulty members are Jewish. Vir-
tually the only major activity
in which Jews don't have a
high profile is athletics.
But for all their success,
some Jewish students feel, the

traditionally liberal climate
on campus has become selec-
tively sensitive.
When the Gulf War loomed
and the anti-war movement
came to life – gaining mo-
mentum in Ann Arbor just as
it had in the 1960s – it at-
tacked not only U.S. policy,
but Israel, too.
Lisa Bean, a junior, was one
of many Jewish students try-
ing to wedge her way into the
debate: Should America fight
Iraq? Because of its occupa-
tion of the West Bank, Israel
was labeled an "aggressor" –
and on campus, aggressors
are wrong, particularly among
minorities who feel them-
selves aggrieved as well. Ms.
Bean, who supported Israel
even with misgivings about its
West Bank policy, quit the
Daily as it became increas-
ingly anti-Zionist, and she
started Prospect, a literary

magazine devoted to Jewish
issues.
"I'd go to anti-war meetings
and it was intimidating," she
says. "It was very anti-Israel."
Many of those on the Pales-
tinian Solidarity Committee
were Jewish, she says. At one
rally she spotted someone
wearing a kippah and an Arab
kaffiyeh.
"To be liberal and to be PC
(politically correct) is to be
anti-Zionist," says Elliot Gold-
stein, a junior. "Because Jews
are seen as a visible, wealthy,
successful group, they're not
seen as a minority worth de-
fending."
Multiculturalism has a di-
visive effect on a campus, says
Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller,
director of the Hillel Founda-
tion at the University of Cal-
ifornia at Los Angeles. "For
the first time, the university's
emphasis is on particularity,"
he says. "It is no longer the
same intellectual environment
it once was. The campus cli-
mate is such that if you can
demonstrate that you are op-
pressed, then you are worthy
of certain rewards."
Jews on campus are not
perceived as oppressed. To the
contrary, they are seen by
many as part of the elite.
Last year, in the Daily, a
paid advertisement denying
the reality of the Holocaust
was accepted. The newspaper
editor, who is Jewish, defend-
ed publishing the ad on free-
speech grounds. Many Jewish
readers, however, argued that

