Campus antisemitism is a symptom of the underlying disease of failure to impart American and biblical values to the next generation, Yeshiva University President Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman explained in an interview on Sunday, relating how faith-based universities are providing a space for students to seek proper education and meaning.
Antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish issue, Berman said, not just because the hatred doesn’t end with the Jews, but also because it is a broader societal issue. The US was founded on biblical values, and at President Donald Trump’s January inauguration Berman prayed for university leadership to return to those values.
“Antisemitism is a symptom of a disease. The disease is the battle for the soul of the American university, and whether it’s going to be rooted in core American values, which are actually core Jewish values,” said Berman.
Universities, taking in and catering to so many foreign students, have “lost their sense of identity as an American institution.”
“They were like a global institution that took place in America. And what happened was, the whole story, the canon that begins with the Bible, continues with Aristotle and Plato and through the Western world, which roots us and the set of values of freedom and democracy and human dignity – the values that America was built on, the values that made America great – they’re no longer being rooted in that story.”
Students are supposed to study this story through great books and treatises. Berman differentiated that instead of asking students what great figures thought, students were being asked what they thought about them. When talking about the positions of figures such as philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, students would then need to debate about interpretation.
“Every student makes their own curriculum, their own major, and takes their own classes. But there’s no common bonds between the students that’s rooting them in America and in Western values,” said Berman. “They’re not giving them values. They’ve lost the American story. They’ve lost that. The rootedness in Western civilization and the purpose of a great undergraduate education, being part of a great intergenerational conversation, exploration that embeds you and roots you and deepens who you are – it doesn’t happen anymore in those colleges, but it does happen in faith-based colleges.”
Yeshiva University doubles in size
In 2024 Yeshiva University saw an exodus from other institutions, and not just Jewish students, seeking refuge in an academic structure that focused on values and education. This is a trend that has risen over the last seven years, said Berman, with YU doubling in size.
Berman said YU is “bursting at the seams” with the number of applications because there is an understanding that students could develop themselves spiritually, educationally, and would leave with a future and career ahead of them.
The trend is not limited to YU but extends also to other faith-based universities in America. The like-minded institutions found that 10% of the country’s students are in faith-based colleges and universities. Berman said that such institutions continue to outperform in the national average of enrollment, growing because “the American university has failed.”
American students are seeking more than just professions and partying at college. They are looking for values, which Berman said had not been offered.
“They’re seeking purpose, and they’re finding it in those universities,” said Berman.
Some of these non-Jewish students had never met a Jew in their lives before coming to YU, Berman shared. After being welcomed at YU, the students gained an understanding and appreciation of the Jewish people and Israel. In this phenomenon Berman saw a true way to address campus antisemitism.
The US Department of Education held the more “problematic universities accountable” for antisemitism, said Berman, defending the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus radicalism over the last year because “nobody was holding them accountable before.”
“The changes that we’re seeing now are absolutely due to the watchful eye of the administration,” said Berman. “We’re concerned about academic freedom and universities continuing their mission, but that cannot come at the expense of their Jewish students. It would not come at the expense of any other minority student. No other minority student would have faced the kind of terrible abuse that Jewish students faced in campuses around the country. And it was high time for the government to step in and hold people accountable.”
Yet Berman also noted the importance of the administration’s efforts to help other universities tell “the right story” to help the country “try to move forward.”
The university president’s prescription for fighting antisemitism is to not just hold the “bad ones” accountable, but to also promote the “good ones” through partnerships. He said that over the last two years he had been engaging with like-minded institutions. Right after the October 7 massacre, he created a coalition of 100 university presidents who took out a full-page Wall Street Journal ad professing support for Israel against Hamas.
It is also vital to engage with students to become “ambassadors of light,” teaching Jewish and non-Jewish students “to be on a mission to spread positivity and core values.”
“The good news is that there are great people in America, too, and there are great partners that we have,” said Berman. “A lot of the news focuses on very few select universities, but that is not the whole country. It’s not even the majority in the country. It’s a small minority in the country, I would say. When you find the partners for good, you really get a sense of what America is about and the respect for Israel and the love for the Jewish people. And that is our opportunity, which is to focus on that and develop that and grow that, in America and across the world.”
While the focus is often on stomping out antisemitism, Berman wants to take more positive measures than that, because he believes that most Americans don’t think about antisemitism or Israel. Instead of apologizing on behalf of Jews and Israel, he feels, representatives of organizations and governments should be talking more about the contributions of the Jewish people to society.
“We need to be focused on the blessing that the Jewish people are to America and to the world. That’s the real story. The real story is the great things that Jews are contributing, have always contributed, to America,” said Berman. “When Jews act with pride and they show their positivity and what they’re contributing and what they stand for, people are attracted to that and they appreciate that.”
Berman sees many opportunities available to “build bridges” and give students the tools to be successful and also represent Jewish and Zionist values in the broader world.
YU is a proudly Zionist institution, according to Berman, and he believes anti-Zionism to be antisemitism.
“Anti-Zionism isn’t a criticism against the government of Israel. It’s a fundamental belief that the Jews don’t have a right to their own state. Now that’s discrimination, because there are 28 Muslim countries and 13 Christian countries, and nobody’s saying anything about them. It’s just the Jews that don’t have a right to their own state. That’s discrimination against the Jews. That’s a double standard. That’s antisemitism,” said Berman.
“The overwhelming number of Jews I know, and a large percentage of non-Jews that I know, are Zionists. So you’re saying you’re anti-Zionist. Could somebody say they’re anti-Hispanic? How do you even say these words? And it’s really important for people to understand, what’s at stake is that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.
“It never stops with the Jews. It does always move to another group. When you start discriminating in one place, it goes on to the other place, and there’s another group that’s next. So I think this is a very important educational moment. It’s a teaching moment. And it just heightens the responsibility for Yeshiva University, a Zionist institution, and for all people of moral conscience to explain what’s at stake in our culture.”
For the last two years, the university has put those values into practice with its advocacy for the return of the hostages abducted by Gazan terrorist organizations during the October 7 massacre. Students, alumni, faculty, and rabbis have participated in rallies for their release.
During one commencement speech, Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of slain hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, explained to students that they were not just what they thought or felt, but what they did. Berman said that this was in line with his institution’s teachings, and manifested in the way that students had fought for the hostages.
“We are an embassy in New York. We are a little embassy for Israel. So the hostage families, when they come, they come visit us, they come visit our students, they have tremendous love and the sense that we’re one family, and that we’re there to help them, to support them, to care for them, and to advocate, and that’s what we’ve been doing for two years,” said Berman. “We pray for the hostages. Three times a day, every single day.”
These prayers for the return of the hostages were transplanted from the university to the White House at the beginning of the year, when Berman delivered the benediction at the inauguration. During the prayer for the return of the hostages, Berman said that he locked eyes with the president, and that he could see how committed he was to their return “from moment one.”
Trump felt the pain of Israelis and Americans taken from their families and trapped in Hamas tunnels, said Berman. It was real and personal for him, and the genuine feeling he had for those in captivity was made evident by how hostages and their families would visit him in the White House.
Berman saw parallels to the inauguration in Trump’s October 13 address at the Knesset, as the living hostages were returned in a deal that he brokered on September 29. These two events served as a beginning and end point for the president’s journey on the issue. Berman attended the Knesset address as well, which he described as an emotional experience, with Trump’s speech resonating with him as the father of an IDF reservist.
Yet with the celebration, the commitment to returning every hostage had still not yet been fully met. Berman said that everyone needs to continue to work until everyone is returned. He recalled that deceased hostage Omer Neutra was an American citizen, and his mother was a graduate of Yeshiva University.
“We need to bring back all the hostages. Of course, there’s still this war with Hamas, their demilitarization; it’s still there,” said Berman, adding that we are starting to see on the horizon the moments where “we could start focusing on the much greater story of Israel, of the Jewish people.”