How problematic is the current atmosphere on college campuses for Orthodox and pro-Israel students?
I am not an expert on religion or religious affairs, and so I leave the spiritual aspect of this question to the individual student’s parents and rabbi. However, as far as the political and social atmosphere encountered by a freshman entering college or university is concerned, it depends to a great extent on the university’s culture. Although it is always perilous to generalize, my experience is that science-oriented universities – MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech – and most Ivy League colleges generate much less of an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic atmosphere that would feeling intimidating to a Jewish student.
However, even within these universities, humanities departments tend to be more stridently critical of Israel than in the sciences. Ironically, the more “liberal” the department, the more likely you will find supporters of BDS, and [the more] willing they might be to support anti-Israel protests and denounce anti-jihadist speakers such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Academic freedom has no meaning if the free exchange of ideas is restricted in the name of preventing hurt feelings, or if any criticism of Islam is denounced as racism.
Do you think this starts at the top, and that what some would call President Obama’s “tone-deaf” attitude toward radical Islam contributes to this atmosphere?
No, not really. I think that President Obama, a former law professor, reflects the typical university culture, which is “liberal” in that it is anti-colonial, anti-occupation, multicultural, and views all cultural values in relative terms – meaning all cultures have their own logic, and it is intolerant, ethnocentric, and judgmental to say that beheadings and stonings are morally wrong if it is widely accepted in another people’s culture. But we have to be able to set standards on human rights, and we have to be able to judge the conduct of other nations, otherwise we will be without recourse to barbarism.
Your recent op-ed articles and speeches reflect almost a conservative tone. Have you receive any feedback?
[Laughs] “Feedback”? I was widely attacked for daring to defend Israel’s actions in Gaza and for calling attention to Palestinian complicity in their own failures. I have also questioned whether democracy is the magic bullet in the Arab world that we had hoped it would be. For the most part, however, the Arab Spring has been a failure because promotion of democracy and free elections translates into victories for Hamas, Hizbullah, and the Muslim Brotherhood, groups that are fundamentally incompatible with democratic principles and who will disband democracy as soon as they come to power. The students tweeting from Tahrir Square, as romantic as that looked on CNN, did not reflect the passions of the Arab Street. What Egyptians wanted was the Muslim Brotherhood, and we know how well that turned out and how short lived it was.
