Robert Scott Horton, who lots of people follow on social media (and with good reason) occasionally makes semi-spectacular blunders, and this — framing Trump’s attack on higher ed as an attack on Jews — is a big one. The NYT article in question lists the targets as Columbia, Harvard, GWU, JHU, NYU, Northwestern, UCLA, UCB, U Minn, USC. Here are more accurate lists of schools with the highest proportion of Jewish students:
Top 10 in US higher ed: (1) Yeshiva — 96%, (2) Brandeis — 50%, (3) Tulane — 32%, (4) Barnard — 33%, (5) Sarah Lawrence — 33%, (6) Emory — 30%, (7) Goucher — 30%, (8) GWU — 29%, (9) Oberlin — 29%, (10) NYU — 28%.
Top 10 R-1 edus: (1) Brandeis — 50%, (2) Tulane — 32%, (3) Emory — 30%, (4) GWU — 29%, (5) NYU — 28%, (6) BU — 23%, (7) UF — 19%, (8) UMDCP — 20%, (9) UM — 16%, (10) UW-M — 13%.
This isn’t about attacking notionally Jewish schools or actual Jews, any more than pulling NIH funding was simply or only an attack on “science.” Instead, all of these moves and more are attacks on higher ed en bloc. In this case, it follows the evangelical logic of using all things “Jewish,” most of all Israel, as a tool in their nihilistic apocalyptic fantasies. But for Jews and their allies (though I’m not sure what that means now — vocal non-nazis?!) to step forward and frame this as an attack on Jews would be a catastrophic mistake on every level — for them as individuals and communities and for higher ed as as a sector.
It’s entirely understandable that many STEM-oriented faculties felt singled out by the NIH move, of course; but the flipside is that other faculties — humanities, arts, social sciences — assumed they weren’t the target. That’s a bit like the residents of one neighborhood in Dresden assuming they’re safe because the Allies were fire-bombing that other neighborhood. Just as those fires jumped from one building nd block to the next, the cuts in “science” funding will burn entire universities. nd not just any universities. The lion’s share of federal science funding goes to schools that are seen as bastions of prestige. If they buckle, everyone else will follow — just as Columbia’s needless brutality under Shafik set the template for the nationwide mishandling of pro-Palestinian protests.
But Trump & Co. don’t even need to take a divide-and-conquer approach, because higher-ed comes fractally pre- and sub-divided: into schools / colleges / departments / programs, across cohorts / undergrads vs grads / postdocs, between campus X vs building Y, this job status vs that budget line, etc, etc. All of these distinctions, which academia embraces as its very essence, have blinded the sector to what it needs most in this moment: SOLIDARITY. There isn’t time for epistemological bubbles, methodological quibbles, or definitional purity tests. You just need to organize. All of you: from the lowliest frosh up to the most illustrious emerita, and from the janitor graveyard-shift down to the last most popular prof.
And now, maybe, you’ll see why framing this in terms of “Jewishness” — histories, cultures, schools, populations, individuals, it doesn’t matter — is such a disastrous mistake. If the fires that were set and continue to be stoked every day by ultraists like Hamas and Netanyahu consume US higher ed, the entire sector — ALL OF IT — will burn to the ground.