Encountering Anti-Semitism at NYU
And how could the university be handling it better.
When Marlene Artov was a sophomore, her professor John Regan Ward would make “Heil Hitler” jokes in class (Regan Ward no longer teaches at NYU after it was reported he allegedly had a sexual relationship with a high school student in the ’90s). When she went on to NYU Prague, another professor, Bill Cohen, kept making comments that she couldn’t be Jewish because she didn’t “look Jewish.” Several students later confirmed that Cohen would make comments in class that they deemed “not politically correct.”
Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, said they have been told things like “wow, your nose isn’t that big for a Jew” or “everyone in power is always a Jew.” According to them, “anti-Semitism usually appears in the form of micro-aggressions on campus.”
Of course, sometimes anti-Semitism can be much more overt. There was the time back in November of 2016 when a Gramercy door was decorated in swastika sticky notes. NYU brought in the NYPD to investigate the case but that seems to have been a rare reaction from NYU as “a lot of the times these experiences of anti-Semitism on campus go unacknowledged” according to the anonymous student.
Anti-Semitic hate crimes like the sticky notes are nothing new: according to the Washington Post, anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 37 percent in 2017 and are already the most common type of religious hate crime in the United States. Recent hate crimes like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the vandalism of a Jewish professor’s office uptown at Columbia are more prominent examples of overt anti-Semitism.
According to Rose Asaf, a student senator-at-large, “by and large NYU has a lot of resources for Jewish students” but she does feel unsafe when “NYU brings anti-Semites to campus under the guise of free speech” citing the now postponed Milo Yiannopoulos event. “People like him who have mocked Jews, made Holocaust jokes, and have aligned themselves with explicitly anti-Semitic figures make me feel unsafe when the University welcomes them to campus.”
The Bronfman Center, NYU’s center for Jewish student life, “believes that NYU is a safe place for Jewish students” and that “the NYU administration and departments do everything it can to make sure that all students have a home here and feel safe on campus” as said in an interview with Emily Rachel Hirsch, Bronfman’s Operations and Communications Associate. However, based on what Jewish students have expressed through private messages, there seems to be some gaps in what NYU could be doing for its Jewish students and what they actually are doing for them.
In fact, just over a week after that interview was conducted, the Bronfman Center was temporarily closed due to “several public online postings by an NYU student which were antisemitic in nature and potentially threatening.” The tweets, posted by student Alejandro Villa Vasquez, were condemned by student groups such as NYU Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace.
With anti-Semitic hate crimes on the rise across the country and with multiple students reporting that they have experienced micro-aggressions on NYU’s campus, perhaps it is time for the university to tackle anti-Semitism head on and really address the issue. The Bronfman Center recently hosted a teach-in on anti-Semitism and hate in America. Instead of it being a one-off in response to the Pittsburgh shooting, the University itself should start making the effort to put on more similar events, events that specifically focus on the anti-Semitism taking place right here on NYU’s campus.
But even if NYU doesn’t start putting more effort into addressing the concerns that were raised here, Jewish students will probably be okay. As Artov says “we are [a] tough people…we will make it through.”
NYU did not respond to requests for comment.
