MARSCHALL: It’s not hyperbole, it’s real. Your professors and classmates hate Jews.

Hamas terrorists rape Jewish women next to civilian carcasses, lock Jewish children in cages, and threaten to behead Jewish Holocaust survivors, and yet far-left academics and students do not care.

Reactions in the United States to Saturday’s horror in Israel reveal the left’s moral failing to come to grips with the extent and depth of anti-Semtisim in American higher education. Professors and students alike are celebrating the carnage as the moment Hamas finally puts resistance and decolonization into practice. Leftists’ rabid hatred for Israel is the veil that masks their underlying contempt for Jews, and liberal scholars and administrators have turned a blind eye to the vitriol.

As Israel prepares to wipe Hamas off the earth, American liberals watching news coverage need to realize that they have been dangerously naïve about their far-left flank. This lesson cannot come soon enough for liberals running academic institutions, because in their moral negligence, they have let college campuses become breeding grounds for unrepentant Jew hatred.

News reports show captured women’s dead bodies and detail Hamas burning an elderly woman alive. These are premeditated crimes Hamas committed as part of its operation “al-Aqsa Flood,” which it planned with Iran’s assistance.  But condemnation against this brutality is too much to ask of anti-Semites.

On Saturday, the Palestine Solidarity Alliance at CUNY Hunter College posted on Instagram, “We demand ALL educational institutions and organizations to stand up against the occupation and actively support the Al-Aqsa Flood initiative.”

Also this weekend, Boston University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter posted that “victory is ours” and the student group CUNY4Palestine posted “From the river to the sea, Palestine WILL be free!” on X above pictures of New York City protests, which included at least one person waving a swastika.

Photos allegedly taken at Stanford University this weekend show bedsheet banners flown from university buildings, including the Charles B. Thornton Center for Engineering Management, reading “The Israeli occupation is NOTHING BUT AN ILLUSION OF DUST,” and “The illusion of Israel IS BURNING,” alongside the Palestinian flag.

I was nearly expelled from @Stanford for not getting a “booster” vaccine -- I was deemed a threat to the community.

I am really curious: what is the university policy toward students that paint bedsheets red with incitements to genocide against Israeli Jews? pic.twitter.com/XH9OB5wFJw

— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) October 9, 2023

Campus liberals are culpable in these reactions because they have never taken the leftist activists as a serious threat against Jews, whether on or off campus. Instead, they have enabled the rise of anti-Semitism because they have accepted its lurking specter in decolonization research, conferences, and lectures as a polite byproduct of academic freedom.

That fundamental mistake explains why former Harvard University President Lawrence Summers’ is currently in disbelief at the anti-Semitism pervading his old college.   

As activists continued to champion the destruction and desecration of Jewish bodies, statements from Palestinian solidarity committees poured online from Columbia University, Northwestern University, and Harvard University, all victim-blaming Israelis for being raped, taken hostage, or murdered.

Signed by over 30 student organizations at the Ivy League school, the Joint Statement led by Harvard’s Palestine Solidarity Committee states that “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame” for Saturday’s horrific acts.

“In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today,” Summers, who was Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, posted on X Monday afternoon.

I have no compassion for his shock. As I have written for Campus Reform, far-left activism breeds uncontrollably on college campuses because liberal professors and administrators are too meek to call out the radical vocal minority turning classrooms into indoctrination camps.

Campus Reform is one of the few outlets reporting on the true extent and depth of anti-Semitism in higher education and just about the only one that is not affiliated with a Jewish organization.

Liberals have chosen to ignore anti-Semitism coverage or dismiss reports as hyperbole. Time is up for the delusional center left. What is happening this week on America’s campuses is the escalated continuation of sustained and sanctioned Jew hatred hiding behind anti-Israel academic work.

In 2021, a history class syllabus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stated that “Hamas isn’t the obstacle to peace.” In recent years, a teaching assistant at Johns Hopkins University declared her intention to fail “zionist [sic] students” in her class, Williams College denied a student group recognition for being pro-Israel, and Syracuse University gave class credit to students interning at a local activism group that touted Hamas for doing “a lot of good for Palestinians.”

Today, radical leftists in higher education relish the largest single-day killing of Jews since the Holocaust because they have systematically erased Hamas’ status as a terrorist organization and taken up the genocidal chant “From the river to the sea.”

Liberals like Summers have allowed this rhetoric to proliferate on campuses. The former Obama official would be less shocked if he paid attention to the 2021 anti-Israel petition that nearly 1,000 Harvard students and 100 student clubs signed. The document condemns Israel for violence between the Jewish state and Palestine, but makes no mention of Hamas.

Liberal college administrators and scholars need to hold staff and colleagues accountable for their anti-Semitism – both veiled and naked. Academic freedom stops when pro-genocidal activism begins, and that is exactly what leftist scholars and students want.

Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, reminded X readers of just that. “DECOLONIZATION IS NOT A METAPHOR,” one post from this weekend reads. “Palestinians have the right to resist,” he stated repeatedly in a series of posts arguing that there is no such thing as an innocent Israeli civilian.  

Rape has been a tool of warfare for ages, and Fúnez-Flores’ online posts appear to affirm that as norm to deploy when fighting in a battle.

Anti-Semitism in higher education is so entrenched and institutionalized that ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy referenced colleges first in his speech Monday morning when he addressed the need to confront Jew hatred in America.

“To every single president of a college and university, do not sit back,” McCarthy stated. “Do not let anti-Semitism grow. Confront it and deny it.”

The message is right, but the objective will be hard to achieve. Leftists’ anti-Israel academic work is a Trojan Horse for anti-Jewish hatred legitimized through student rallies, seminar rooms, conference halls, and peer-reviewed publications.   

The problem is not that the people steering our education system farther left do not believe in Israel’s right to exist. They do not believe in Jews’ right to exist.

Liberal college administrators need to institute new and more rigorous processes for hiring, tenure review, and curriculum oversight. But first, they need to own up to their culpability in this problem.

Editorials and op-eds reflect the opinion of the authors and not necessarily that of Campus Reform or the Leadership Institute.