OPINION:
Like so many Americans, I’m watching the anti-Israel campus protests in disbelief. I graduated from Harvard about 20 years ago, so I’m not surprised by reports of wayward Ivy League students. We’ve seen it before.
But this time seems different. It’s shocking — even to me. It’s not the run-of-the-mill disorder and discontent that we’ve come to expect from liberal college campuses. And it’s no longer confined to the Ivy League. USC canceled graduation, and Cal State protesters shut down a campus. Schools like Texas, Emory, Indiana, UConn, City College of New York, Emerson, and George Washington are dealing with unrest.
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Many of us were sickened in 2017 when we watched radical youth gather in Charlottesville, carrying torches and chanting, “Jews will not replace us.” But back then, those protesters seemed fringe. It seemed hard to imagine that antisemitic views would gain purchase on campuses around the country only a few years later — and do so after an attack that brutally killed Jewish women, children, and babies.
Who would have thought that college administrators and professors — usually the first to speak out in favor of belonging and inclusion — would allow the situation to deteriorate to the point that Jewish students and professors would be forced away from campus because their physical safety is at risk? Imagine the response if that were happening to any other minority group on campus.
We don’t hear these same reports coming out of faith-based colleges and universities. As the dean of a Christian law school, I’d be horrified to see my students act like this or to see any campus guest treated the way Mike Johnson was treated at Columbia. I expect so much more of our students and hope we’ve taught them better than that. And I wonder whether faith-based colleges offer a model to help navigate the current campus discord.
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I don’t claim that everything is perfect on my campus. I suspect there’s more disagreement on politics and policy than most outside observers would expect. And no campus community always lives up to its highest aspirations.
But my campus is different from the ones I see on the news. On the news, I see academic communities overwhelmed by anxiety, anger, fear, and division. Outside my window, I see a community of students and scholars that aspires to live, work, and study together, exhibiting the fruit of the spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Even when we disagree on politics, we share common aspirations for our life together.
As a dean, I strive to model and encourage those characteristics in our community. And I am not alone. Professors at Christian colleges around the country seek to know and love their students in an extraordinary way – the way the Bible teaches that God knows and loves us. Students notice. What they observe gives us credibility when we need to speak hard truths into broken situations. Our shared aspirations and a common vocabulary of faith make disagreements easier.
I don’t expect the Ivy League to do spiritual formation. But they can do character formation. The current campus crises suggest more is needed. Much more. Too many campuses have lost all sense of shared values and basic decency.
Administrators can model shared aspirations. Professors can point students to what is good, true, and beautiful. Universities — and not just Christian ones — used to do that.
How about starting with George Washington’s aspirations for our young nation in his 1790 letter to the Hebrew congregation in Newport?He envisioned a country where “everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Maybe today’s campus radicals would feel differently if they were taught how pervasively the Jewish people have been persecuted and oppressed across many cultures and centuries. Perhaps they’d be surprised to learn that not too long ago, in our own country, many of the same establishments that discriminated against African Americans also discriminated against Catholics and Jews.
They don’t teach that on TikTok. I suspect some students mimicking the Hamas rallying cry “From the River to the Sea” do not understand the meaning of their words. I’m not sure what is more disturbing — that they know the meaning of that phrase or that they do not. Do they not realize it’s just a more extreme way of saying, “Jews will not replace us — in fact, we will replace them”? I’m sure some students don’t even know what river and sea it refers to.
Universities can and should do better. As a dean, I often speak with donors and alums who are discouraged by what they see on television and are pessimistic about the future of our nation. I tell them that if they want to be filled with hope — they should spend time on campus. Meet our students. Visit our classrooms. Perhaps the Ivy League presidents should do the same. And to the Jewish students feeling besieged on campus, you’re welcome here, too.
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Bradley J. Lingo is a 2003 graduate of Harvard Law School and dean of Regent University School of Law.
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