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<\/a>Shabbos Kestenbaum: Administrators Have a Duty to Protect Jewish Students and Continue to Fail<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\nShabbos Kestenbaum<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Across the country, we\u2019re watching the same play staged, with the same script. Earlier this month, students at Ohio University passed a BDS referendum<\/a>. Last week, a different BDS referendum passed<\/a> at UC Berkeley. At Smith College, the Advisory Committee<\/a> on Investor Responsibility considered a BDS proposal on April 16<\/a> and then went silent on its timeline. On April 22, at San Diego State, the student government<\/a> held its final vote and passed a BDS resolution<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Four campuses, four tests, and the question for every administrator is the same: Will you stand up now, or will you do what Harvard did and let the crisis metastasize? I know the answer when administrators fail.<\/span><\/p>\n As a former Harvard student, I watched an institution ignore more than 40 written appeals to its antisemitism task force. I filed a federal Title VI<\/a> lawsuit as a last resort. A federal judge rejected Harvard\u2019s motion to dismiss. Harvard adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition<\/a> of antisemitism in January 2025 as part of a related settlement, and my case settled four months later. But none of that had to happen. If Harvard had rejected the ideological premises of the BDS movement clearly and early, rather than treating them as legitimate academic discourse, the crisis that engulfed its campus might have been contained.<\/span><\/p>\n The four campuses now facing BDS votes should learn from Harvard\u2019s failure, not repeat it.<\/span><\/p>\n Ohio University represents the worst kind of response: the response that isn\u2019t. When a BDS referendum passed on campus, the university\u2019s only pushback came through Senior Director of Communications Dan Pittman, who told Jewish outlets<\/a> that the university \u201cwill neither consider, nor act upon, any resolution or referendum that proposes illegal actions.\u201d The statement was never posted on the university\u2019s official channels. The president\u2019s office<\/a> has said nothing publicly. A quiet quote buried in the Jewish press is not a condemnation. It is a hope that the story will disappear. American Jewish students at Ohio University deserve a public, forceful, unambiguous rejection from President Lori Stewart Gonzalez, delivered on university letterhead and posted to the university\u2019s own website.<\/span><\/p>\n UC Berkeley now faces the same test. On April 18, the student government\u2019s referendum passed<\/a>, yet Chancellor Rich Lyons has not publicly rejected the result. Berkeley has already lived through the consequences of administrative hesitation. In March 2026, Berkeley Law<\/a> paid $1 million to settle a federal discrimination lawsuit after its \u201cJewish-free zones\u201d and harassment of American Jewish students became national news<\/a>. The university has been sued once for antisemitism. It should not need to be sued twice before its chancellor states plainly that the endowment will not be conscripted as a political weapon.<\/span><\/p>\n Smith College has an easier task and has somehow found a way to fail at it. In March 2024, the Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility rejected an<\/a> earlier BDS proposal, finding Smith\u2019s exposure to the targeted companies \u201cnegligible and entirely indirect.\u201d On April 16, the committee considered a second, nearly identical proposal. Smith spokesperson Deb McDaniel stated<\/a> that she \u201cwas not aware\u201d of any formal timeline for the board to vote on the matter. That is the institutional equivalent of closing the blinds. Smith does not need a new study, a new committee, or a summer recess before delivering the same answer it delivered last year. The trustees should reaffirm the 2024 decision on the merits, in public, before the next academic year begins. Every week of silence is a week in which American Jewish students at Smith spend wondering whether their college has quietly switched sides.<\/span><\/p>\n This week, San Diego State University passed its BDS resolution, and the administration must clearly demonstrate that no divestment demand will be acted upon. President Adela de la Torre should not wait for the student government to humiliate itself on camera before defending the university\u2019s fiduciary duty. American Jewish students at SDSU are entitled to know where their president stands, and they are entitled to know it in public, in writing, and this week.<\/span><\/p>\n These four cases share a single feature: Administrators who know the right answer and are hoping someone else will deliver it for them. Brown\u2019s Corporation<\/a> rejected divestment in October 2024. Bowdoin rejected<\/a> it in March 2025. Dartmouth\u2019s committee<\/a> rejected it nine to zero. Columbia\u2019s president said the university \u201cwill not divest from Israel<\/a>.\u201d Every institution that has engaged the question seriously has reached the same conclusion. The problem is not that the case against BDS is weak. The problem is that too many administrators would rather be quietly correct than publicly brave.<\/span><\/p>\n Quiet is not an option anymore. A 2026 study<\/a> found that 42 percent of American Jewish students have experienced antisemitism on campus, and 34 percent hide their Jewish identity out of fear. These numbers are not abstractions. They are the direct product of administrative timidity in the face of a movement whose explicit goal is the delegitimization of the Jewish state and the isolation of American Jewish students on American campuses.<\/span><\/p>\n On Oct. 7, 2023, young American Jews woke up. We are not going back to sleep. We are watching Ohio University, UC Berkeley, Smith College, and San Diego State. We expect administrators who were hired to protect students to do their job.<\/span><\/p>\n Shabbos Kestenbaum<\/strong> is a political commentator at PragerU and a former lead plaintiff in a civil rights lawsuit against Harvard University.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Zawarto\u015b\u0107 publikowanych artyku\u0142\u00f3w i materia\u0142\u00f3w nie reprezentuje pogl\u0105d\u00f3w ani opinii Reunion’68,<\/em> Shabbos Kestenbaum: Administrators Have a Duty to Protect Jewish Students and Continue to Fail Shabbos Kestenbaum The campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Instagram\/Screenshot Across the country, we\u2019re watching the same play staged, with the same script. Earlier this month, students at Ohio University passed a BDS referendum. Last week, a different BDS referendum passed at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130045"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=130045"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":130163,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/130045\/revisions\/130163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=130045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=130045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=130045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n![](\"https:\/\/www.algemeiner.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/649627970_17958785231919216_8081902386361798433_n-2.jpg\")
The campus of Smith College in April 2024. Photo: Instagram\/Screenshot<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
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