What happens when the institutions teaching our children about the dangers of hatred begin making excuses for it?

We have spent generations teaching the Holocaust, condemning antisemitism and explaining how educated societies became comfortable persecuting Jews. Today, some of the institutions responsible for teaching those lessons have allowed hatred of Jews to become acceptable, and certain educators have contributed to it.

As a Jew raising children in New York, I find this deeply disturbing. As someone who has spent most of his life teaching, I find the role of educators particularly troubling. They have enormous influence over how young people understand the world, and some are using that influence to perpetuate prejudices we should have learned to recognize long ago.

I wonder what all our education has accomplished if we can recognize hatred so clearly in history while finding intellectual justifications for it in our own time.

I grew up in Israel, where the Holocaust was part of our collective memory. I understood why the Jewish people needed the ability to protect themselves and why remembering our history was an obligation we couldn’t abandon. I also believed that educating future generations would help prevent the hatred our ancestors experienced from becoming acceptable again.

Since 10/7/2023, I have encountered violence multiple times, sometimes while holding the hands of my two young children. That experience forced me to consider what they would learn about their Jewish identity from the society around them. Since then, I’ve become increasingly concerned about what they’ll encounter as they grow older, particularly in the educational institutions we’ll eventually trust with their future.

Columbia University’s own Task Force on Antisemitism documented harassment, exclusion, and hostility experienced by Jewish and Israeli students. Its December 2025 report examined the classroom experience, including allegations involving faculty conduct and concerns about intellectual diversity. These findings came from an........

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