The fall semester has begun in American universities, and with it, anti-Israel protests and subtle, or not-so-subtle, anti-Semitic calls for the annihilation of Israel. Protesting has become a serious business, it seems (although not serious enough to interrupt summer vacations), and thanks to faculty pressure, it is unlikely that students on many campuses will suffer any repercussions for their ugly actions.
It is no accident that the American Association of University Professors recently voted to allow academic boycotts. They didn’t say “Keep out the Israelis,” but then again, given the climate of opinion on many campuses, they didn’t have to, any more than people in the South had to guess the target when a mob demanded a lynching.
Scholarly associations are currently competing among themselves for the most expressions of support for student protesters. As the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, Daniel Diermeier, pointed out recently,
The Middle East Studies Association has released no fewer than six statements since Oct. 7, including calls for a cease-fire and expressions of support for student protesters. The African Studies Association . . . has called for a cease-fire and the release of hostages and signed on to a statement objecting to the use of police to shut down tent encampments established by protesters on some campuses. The National Women’s Studies Association condemned the U.S. government’s support for “Israel’s apartheid regime” and reaffirmed its support of the boycott, divest and sanctions movement against the Jewish state.
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The claim that Israel is an “apartheid regime” is particularly absurd, as non-Jews have significant representation in the Knesset, Israel’s legislature, are not kept out of public spaces, or required to use separate facilities: all defining features of the old South African apartheid state.
One might have thought faculty and students at American universities would be especially wary of casting the “apartheid” slur at others, since many of them work and study at institutions that built their wealth and reputations when there really was an apartheid regime in the states where they were established. Into the early nineteenth century, the Jesuits funded some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in America in part through profits earned by slave labor on their Maryland plantations. In 1838, to save Georgetown University from financial ruin, the Society of Jesus sold more than 272 slaves from their five Maryland plantations. How long was “separate but (not really) equal” the law of the land in American educational institutions? It wasn’t until 1963 that two black students were allowed admission to the University of Alabama. A young black woman had been admitted several years earlier but was “expelled for her own safety in response to threats from mobs.” Harvard had a “non-official quota” limiting Jews until the late 1950s. Instead of “dis-investing” in Israel, perhaps students should be demanding that universities take 10 percent of the return on those massive university endowments and invest it in inner-city schools. Would that raise tuition costs? Probably. But wouldn’t the faculty and students be more than willing to make the sacrifice, seeing how serious they are about “apartheid regimes”?
But even if we put aside the charge of an “apartheid regime” as rhetorical overreach, questions remain about whether having a self-proclaimed “Jewish state” isn’t essentially racist. In an increasingly “global” world, should any state be considered “racist” if it identifies itself with a certain national identity preserved and protected by the state? The answer depends on the purpose of that national identity and whether the institution possesses an identity based on a sense of mission.
Israel, for example, has a mission. Founded to be a Jewish homeland, it is still today a place where Jews, who had for centuries suffered persecution, can find safety and protection. While Israel is unique, parallel examples include Catholic universities and more conservative liberal arts institutions that define themselves by their common dedication to a specific mission, one not offered elsewhere. These institutions, too, are often under attack for choosing to preserve their purpose. While one can get a non-Catholic and non-conservative liberal arts education almost everywhere in the United States, one can obtain a Catholic or conservative liberal arts education only in very few places. Often under attack for sticking to their beliefs, these institutions find it much harder to guard their identity and mission. It is not hard to get professors or leaders who find it easier to “go along and get along” with the dominant cultural paradigms.
Can non-Catholics teach at a Catholic university? Certainly, if they are devoted to its mission. But to avoid the dissolution of those beliefs, Catholic universities must be careful not to hire those who oppose that mission, including Catholics. The same is true of conservative liberal arts institutions. St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, for example, is well-known for having a “Great Books” curriculum. While they can hire faculty who are not trained in a “great books” curriculum, they should not hire any faculty or administrators who are opposed to a “great books” curriculum, lest they weaken the institution. It is even conceivable to hire faculty who aren’t entirely supportive of the university’s mission as long as they aren’t put in leadership positions. Should this happen repeatedly, the character of the institution is soon in danger and quickly lost.
In Catholic universities, and in conservative liberal arts colleges, there should be room for those who challenge their presuppositions about what it means to be “Catholic” or what “great books” really are. So too, in Israel the state can and must preserve its identity and mission as a “Jewish homeland” while also including within its view of the common good the needs of many non-Jews, as long as those people are not committed to the destruction of the Jewish state, just as in the case of universities there are not leaders who despise Catholicism or oppose a classical education and the great books.
The issue of the identity of the “Jewish state” is more likely to roil American politics this fall than the identity of Catholic universities or more conservative liberal arts colleges, but we shouldn’t miss how these demonstrations pose fundamental questions about how we should understand the nature and purpose of our educational institutions. If campus demonstrations disrupt classes, keep students from their studies, and terrorize Jewish students, aren’t these things detrimental to the character and purpose of these institutions? However, wouldn’t shutting down campus protests completely also be detrimental to the purpose of the institution? So is it a question of degree? Is any campus protest against Israel contrary to the character and purposes of an educational institution? Or, is any attempt to limit such protests completely contrary to the purposes of a modern university? This suggests that the deeper problem being unearthed by these demonstrations is that we no longer have a clear sense of what a university’s purpose should be or what the elements of a good education are.
But it is not merely universities that are supposed to be devoted to freedom of speech and thought. It is not only in universities where one finds groups that have decided bullying, harassment, and violence are better means to their ends than voting or getting elected to office. Thus, it is not only in universities where crucial questions of identity—questions about who we are and what we are called upon to be—are being raised. These are questions the nation, as a whole, is raising.
The United States is a self-proclaimed constitutional republic. An important characteristic of a constitutional republic is the different forms of political freedom allowed in America. But should this constitutional principle require us to allow forces dedicated to the destruction of the foundations and constitutional order of this nation to take over our leadership? As we have seen in Latin America and elsewhere, democratic governance is often “one man, one vote, one time.” Once a Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, or Nicolás Maduro is elected, it is nearly impossible to remove him from power, even as such men systematically dismantle the constitutional order on which they depended to get elected.
As anti-Semitic violence continues to escalate around the world, those who oppose a “Jewish state” should think seriously about what would happen if Israel were no more. Similarly, those who oppose the current American constitutional order should be wary of what could replace it. Just as it would be self-destructive for Israel, a Catholic university, or a Great Books school to elect or hire leaders who work for its dissolution or destruction—either because they don’t understand the goals of the institution, or because they outright oppose them—allowing partisan groups to use the freedoms granted by our republic to violate the traditions, principles, and rights given to them by the Constitution would also destroy our nation from within.
A constitution is a piece of paper, but it is also an ideal based on a vision of what a representative government and a free, ordered society can and should be. But those guarantees are only as good as the willingness of the people who defend them. As the experience of many nations around the world shows, constitutions are easily dissolved, and constitutional order lost, when citizens allow their leaders to violate their charter to achieve partisan goals. When that happens, the delicate system of checks and balances usually gives way to an oppressive one-party rule.
As we have seen in several of our Latin American neighbors, the judiciary no longer serves as a check on presidential or legislative overreach; they legitimize it and become partisan accomplices. Presidents and their party-bosses in the legislature no longer seek legislative compromise; they steamroll their opponents and vilify them as “enemies of democracy” as they continue to manipulate people and elections in their own favor. Yes, there are “elections” in Venezuela and Russia, but we all know it is impossible to vote the ruling party out of power as its control over the engines of power in the bureaucratic state becomes more powerful with time. The threat to the constitutional order is even greater when the media no longer serve as another check on governmental overreach and corruption, particularly when they become instruments of a partisan takeover of governmental power. We also need to worry about a governmental system that has become an administrative state in which control is largely in the hands of unelected bureaucrats.
Election day is less than two months away, and while we all have our special interests and issues of concern, we must elect representatives and leaders who respect and defend our constitutional order—not those who would jettison it for their own partisan purposes. You don’t save a democracy or a constitutional republic by violating its principles.
And so we should hope that an overriding number of voters will elect candidates who respect judicial independence, value legislative order and compromise, and push for constitutional limits on federal power. In 1797, when Benjamin Franklin emerged from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Elizabeth Willing Powell is said to have asked him: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” He is said to have replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Those who override the order of that constitutional republic to do some “good” they think is more important than the nation’s constitutional order should be wary of the chaos they are likely to unleash on the nation they say they love. The framers of the Constitution understood that we should not only be wary of “evildoers,” but also of those who yearn for more power to do even more good. Often, the greatest evil is done by those who have convinced themselves that they are so good that all obstacles, even constitutional ones, must be swept aside to achieve their goals.
Image by nonnie192 and licensed via Adobe Stock.
