16 | MAY 23 • 2024 
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s a sharp increase of campus 
antisemitism continues to disrupt 
college life for Jewish students 
and, most recently, commencement cer-
emonies, including at the University of 
Michigan, Jewish students are left feeling 
frustrated, scared and wondering if they’re 
truly safe in educational institutions — or if 
these universities have failed them.
Detroit native and foreign policy expert 
Harley Lippman, who serves as an execu-
tive committee member on the American 
Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)
and as a member of the U.S. Commission 
for the Preservation of America’s Heritage 
Abroad, believes universities aren’t doing 
enough to protect Jewish students.
“It’s a combination of things,
” the Jewish 
adviser to the Biden administration told 
the Jewish News. Lippman, who has been 
instrumental in talks between Palestinians 
and Israelis, offers a few reasons why 
broader geopolitical dynamics are influenc-
ing local campus life.

CONTRIBUTING FACTORS
The first reason, he says, is the source of 
funding received by universities.
According to a 2022 study, Qatar con-
tributed a reported $4.7 billion to aca-
demic institutions across the United States 
between 2001 and 2021. “Departments 
have been bought and collected by a huge 
influx of radical Islamic money,
” Lippman 
explains.
Lippman believes the funding has 
played a role in what he calls “a failure” of 
American universities in keeping Jewish 
students safe. The second contributing 
factor, he says, is a simmering antisemitism 
that has persisted since the Holocaust, 
although it may not have been seen and felt 
as strongly throughout the decades as it has 
in recent years.

“We like to think it just went into hiber-
nation,
” he says. “Yet in the last few years, 
just think of the massacre at the Tree of Life 
Congregation in Pennsylvania [that claimed 
the lives of 11 individuals].
” 
With antisemitism never truly gone, 
Lippman says today’s stark rise of anti- 
Jewish sentiment, especially on campus life, 
is the worst in recent memory.
Now, a global outpour of outrage toward 
Jewish individuals as a result of the ongoing 
conflict in Gaza has only perpetuated what 
was already there, he adds.
Still, a third reason for increased cam-
pus antisemitism is the influence of what 
he calls “professional agitators,
” or people 
trained to effectively mobilize students at 
universities, Lippman continues.
These professionals, he says, have the 
ability to set up camps and influence 
campus dialogue. “They don’t know what 
‘from the river to the sea’ is, but that doesn’t 
make them any less dangerous,
” Lippman 
describes. “They are extremely dangerous.
”
With many protestors wearing masks, 
Lippman likens them to the KKK, or Ku 
Klux Klan, one of the only other groups in 
U.S. history that wore masks while demon-
strating.
“It’s very disturbing and menacing when 
students have masks on because it allows 
outsiders to infiltrate,
” he explains of exter-

nal influence on campus protests against 
Jewish students and the ongoing Israel-
Hamas war. “You don’t recognize people.
”

PUTTING AN END TO HATE
Lippman, who is on the Yale School of 
Management Board of Advisors and a 
member of the Dean’s Advisory Board at 
Columbia University’s Graduate School of 
International and Public Affairs, has wit-
nessed firsthand how campus life has been 
uprooted.
“It creates a very intimidating atmo-
sphere on campuses,
” says Lippman, who 
speaks on the issue worldwide. While it 
may seem like events are only worsening 
for U.S. Jewish college students, Lippman 
says there is hope for change and action 
that can be taken.
“Contact the Human Rights Commission 
to open an investigation into discrimi-
nation and harassment complaints from 
Jewish students at Michigan universities,
” 
he suggests. “That’s what needs to be done 
and to follow up to make sure it’s done.
”
Jewish community members can also 
“contact the Michigan Department of 
Attorney General and insist they use their 
full authority under civil rights laws to look 
at any institutional failures that enable or 
have given inadequate responses to antise-
mitic acts and hostile environments for 
Jewish students,
” he added.
Lastly, on a federal level, Michiganders 
can “urge the U.S. Department of 
Education to move swiftly to investigate 
Title VI prohibitions on discrimination 
based on race or national origin as it relates 
to antisemitism targeting Jewish students,
” 
Lippman advises.
“It looks very dark and bleak now,
” he 
says, “but I think it’s an opportunity for us 
to educate the world once and for all that 
Israel’s a legitimate nation.
” 

Detroit native Harley Lippman explains why 
campus antisemitism is on the rise.

Foreign Policy Expert Breaks 
Down Campus Antisemitism

ASHLEY ZLATOPOLSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER

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Harley 
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