The Hamas-Israel War Obliterated the Campus Microaggression

This week, the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT were dressed down by lawmakers for their refusal to unequivocally condemn expressions of antisemitism on their universities’ campuses.

Critics lambasted pro-Palestinian student demonstrators as antisemitic for chanting phrases such as “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—both of which have been used by supporters of Hamas to call for the eradication of Israel—arguing that they are calls for the genocide of Jews.

The university leaders said, correctly in my opinion, that context was required to determine whether such statements constituted acts of harassment or calls to violence.