“Whatever the cause, the pattern is clear: Pro-Palestinian protests are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon”
Once those institutions are firmly in place and new communities built, the second generation begins to feel that they are rightful citizens of their host country. Their need to be “mechadesh” is no longer satisfied either by the institution building of their parents’ generation or by the chiddush of the batei medrash. Rather, as soon as they feel securely at home in their new surroundings, they are drawn to the most advanced and progressive ideas of their host society.
Yet that illusion of acceptance, along with the Jews’ remarkable success according to the standards of their new host country, inevitably triggers winds of hostility directed at the Jews, culminating in their expulsion and the need to start anew in another country.
In the pre-Hitler Weimar Republic, Jews constituted a wildly disproportionate percentage of the members of the learned professions, Nobel Prize winners, and university professors. Yet is was precisely from the universities of Europe’s most civilized nation that Hitler yemach shemo drew some of his most ardent support. Martin Heidegger, Germany’s preeminent philosopher, was appointed rector of the University of Freiburg shortly after Hitler’s ascent to power and shortly thereafter joined the Nazi Party.
Something similar is taking place today. The May 24 Washington Monthly asks the question: “Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?” And answers: “Whatever the cause, the pattern is clear: Pro-Palestinian protests are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon.” The protests and encampments are primarily a phenomenon of those colleges with the highest tuitions and lowest acceptance rates — i.e., the most elite.
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