Breaking the Brand: the Palestinization of Academia

The 2023-2024 academic year will be remembered for its inept university presidents, antisemitic college deans, fringe left activist professors, and gullible, pro-Hamas students. Collectively and individually, especially at the nation's top schools, they have twisted to the breaking point the carefully-curated reputations of their institutions. Across the nation, campus sympathy has shifted from the victims to the perpetrators of terrorism. College students are waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags and chanting their praise for Yahya Sinwar. Academia has become Palestinized.

To specialists who follow the problems of Middle East studies, the displays on college campuses after October 7 were not surprising. But to the majority who do not follow the ins and outs of academic politics, watching college students and faculty members align themselves with political violence in the name of "resistance," celebrate the murder of Israelis, and call for a "global Intifada" had many Americans questioning whether the results of a college education are worth the cost – and not just in dollars.

The Academic Brand

On one level, academic brands are merchandizing tools – bumper stickers and clothing displaying school mascots and logos. More importantly, though, is the intangible dimension of the academic brand – one part reputation, pointing to the past, and one part promise, pointing to the future. Universities with storied histories promise that their past success will be repeated with future success.

At the nation's top schools, brands are focused on exclusivity. Only a very small percentage of students can attend these elite institutions. If the people who run them don't appear to be the smartest, most impressive and erudite people in the nation, the brand suffers. Claudine Gay lost her job as president of Harvard because of the damage she did to the brand.

The Brand Killers: MESA & SJP

Academia could not have been Palestinized without Middle East studies programs and their leaders in the embattled Middle East Studies Association (MESA). Together, they are largely responsible for academia's realignment against Israel and in favor of Palestinian "resistance." They are also responsible for much of last year's academic brand deterioration. The more prominent the Middle East program at any given school, the greater damage to that school's reputation.

Since the 1980s, academia has been dominated by leftists, many of whom view the U.S. negatively and elevate America's adversaries to heroic status. David Rapoport argues that, for the left, "When the Vietnam War ended in 1975, the PLO replaced the Viet Cong as the heroic model." For today's campus radicals, Hamas has replaced the PLO as the heroic model.

Middle East studies professors have spent the last several decades supporting academic boycotts of Israel, excusing or downplaying Palestinian violence, and "normalizing" Hamas. They have dedicated their energies and expertise to creating a language that justifies "resistance" against "settler-colonial empires."

MESA and the Middle East studies professors who control the profession lead by example, demonstrating how they expect their students to think and write and behave. Too many accept political violence by Palestinians as a form of "social justice" and expect their easily-influenced students to do likewise. After all, they also control how or if graduates have access to the job market.

In 1993, one of those professors, Hatem Bazian at the University of California, Berkeley, founded the most virulent of all the student protest groups – Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is a leading vector of the antisemitism eroding academia. It published a "Toolkit for Resistance" on October 8th that provided the template for the first wave of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests and continues to be the most significant instigator of campus unrest. Schools that have an SJP chapter have protest problems. Most schools that don't have an SJP chapter don't have protest problems.

Schools that do not have an SJP chapter should do everything possible to prevent one from being established. Fordham University is the biggest winner in this category, since it didn't allow an SJP chapter to take root on its campus.

The Ivy League Schools

In 2003, when a young anthropology professor at Columbia University named Nicholas DeGenova publicly declared his wish that U.S. troops headed to Iraq would face "a million Mogadishus," the University distanced itself from him, and president Lee Bollinger expressed his "shock" over the comment. DeGenova no longer teaches at Columbia. But on October 8, 2023, just one day after the horrific attack of October 7th, an old Middle East studies professor at Columbia named Joseph Massad perversely celebrated Hamas's rape, torture, and infanticide as "astounding," "striking," "awesome" and "innovative," as originally disclosed by the Investigative Project on Terrorism. The university and then-president Minouche Shafik defended him, citing his academic freedom. Massad still teaches at Columbia. A lot has changed there in two decades.

Because Ivy League schools represent the top brands in academia, they also have the most to lose. Partly because of its location, Columbia has become the epicenter of anti-Israel protests. Consequently, its brand degradation has captured a great deal of media attention. Not surprisingly, Columbia is also a leader in the Palestinization of academia. Its Center for Palestine Studies, founded in 2010, employs ideologues like Massad and Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman.

The Columbia brand suffered a damaging blow when Judge Matthew Solomson of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims announced in the Wall Street Journal that he and dozens of his colleagues will not hire law clerks from Columbia.

The new academic year began at Columbia with protests continuing, followed by news that the university had hired one of the pro-Hamas protesters (Johanna King-Slutsky) who took over Hamilton Hall in April, to teach a class on Western Civilization.

Brown University has also suffered self-inflicted brand erosion. Brown has been Palestinized almost as long as Columbia. In 2020, it endowed the first ever chair for Palestinian studies at an American university, naming it the Mahmoud Darwish Chair, and installing a BDS-supporter named Beshara Doumani. In 2021, Brown announced that Doumani was taking 2-year leave of absence to become president of Birzeit University near Ramallah.

Harvard was the first school to have its brand tarnished in the immediate aftermath of Hamas's October 7 massacre of civilians. On October 8, a group of 31 student organizations issued a joint statement blaming Israel for the attack. They gathered on campus to have their photo taken, which subsequently went "viral." It was the first of several devastating blows Harvard's brand suffered last year. Another came when hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alum Bill Ackman announced that he would no longer hire graduates from his alma mater.

Not content with having suffered a disastrous Fall 2023 semester, in January 2024, Harvard announced a partnership with Birzeit University in Ramallah involving an "intensive summer course ... designed to introduce students to the social, structural, political, and historical aspects that determine Palestinian health."

The New Academic Year

Now that the 2024-2025 academic year has begun, anti-Israel protests have resumed at some schools. Minus the tents, Columbia today looks like it did last year. Further brand erosion continues apace.

After enduring months of pro-Hamas encampments, Brown president Christina Paxon acquiesced to the undergraduate mob with a deal that brought temporary peace in return for entertaining student demands for divestment from Israel. Brown's Advisory Committee on University Resources is scheduled to provide Paxon "with a recommendation on the matter of divestment by September 30, 2024." If Paxon doesn't make more concessions, expect more trouble. If she does make more concessions, the troubles may be worse.

Like Brown, Harvard too brought an end to its encampment problem by agreeing to discuss divesting from Israel. How long will that ceasefire last?

The administrations at these schools may think they have solved their problems, but by taking the demands of the students seriously, they have only emboldened them.

Not only are these administrators failing to convince most people that they are the most capable and wise among us; they are failing to demonstrate that they are competent stewards of the brands they inherited.

How soon until the majority concurs with William F. Buckley's 1961 quip that he "would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Cambridge telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty"?

Chief IPT Political Correspondent A.J. Caschetta is a principal lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology and a fellow at Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum where he is also a Milstein fellow.