(JTA) — Almost one century ago, countless families were forced to flee the country that then housed the best universities in the world. One of those families was mine. My paternal grandparents left Germany in the 1930s with my father, who was 6 years old, and my aunt, who was 4. They were driven out of their home by an intolerable climate of antisemitism. Members of my family who did not make that decision perished.
Against today’s backdrop of rising antisemitism across the nation, and as university leaders like me decide how to keep our Jewish students safe, I am reminded of my family’s experience.
A longstanding aspiration of universities has been to serve as exemplary institutions. This means that, through the values they profess and the behaviors they exhibit, universities can be models for the larger society of which they are part. When it comes to the fight against antisemitism, however, many universities are failing to fulfill this social obligation.
Violence and hate crimes toward Jewish people have surged in recent years. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Americans, already the most likely targets of religiously motivated hate crimes, have experienced an 84% increase in antisemitic incidents on campuses since 2023.
This moment calls for decisive action grounded in moral clarity. We have a duty to lead the charge against hatred not only in our institutions but in society as a whole.
Rooting out antisemitism and all forms of discrimination will take thoughtfulness, commitment, and a sustained effort across communities. We are eager to work with all leaders to reach that goal.
Suspending research grants will not root out antisemitism
What will not help these efforts, however, is the suspension of hundreds of millions of dollars for research grants. Like other top universities, UCLA was informed this summer that the federal government had halted funding in the name of combating antisemitism.
What kinds of work do these grants support? Clinical trials on therapies for lung cancer, data solutions that strengthen American cybersecurity, and research that helps farmers grow more food for families across the nation, among many other life-saving and life-transforming projects. Suspending this type of work affects not just those on campus, but everyone whose livelihood, health, and future depend on the groundbreaking research happening at US universities like UCLA.
Certainly, our Jewish students do not benefit from fewer medical advancements, less prosperity, or new technologies ended before they are realized. They will not be safer if we are no longer defending our country from cyber attacks or safeguarding the future of our planet.
Instead, we must prevent and combat discrimination by recognizing the inherent dignity of every human being. Nobody on our campus should feel unsafe because of who they are or what they believe in. This is why at UCLA we have launched a comprehensive Initiative to Combat Antisemitism, an essential element of our broader determination to end all forms of prejudice and intolerance on campus.
As chancellor, I am having thoughtful conversations with colleagues to ensure that our policies against discrimination do not infringe on other core values. Together, we are ensuring that UCLA not only tolerates but cultivates diversity of thought, through reason and dialogue, while standing against dogma, conformity, and indoctrination. This is difficult, and our faculty, staff, and students will not always agree, but it is very much worth doing. The soul of our universities is at stake.
As I stated in my inaugural address last June, we must respect each person’s right to embrace all dimensions of their identity. At the same time, we must resist the corrosive tendency to see people solely through identity-based categories, flattening individual identities and turning entire groups into the “other.” That is the ultimate form of dehumanization, and history teaches us that the stigmatization of groups, if left unchecked, has led to the worst atrocities.
When Jewish families like mine fled the murderous Nazi regime in Europe, many brilliant researchers found intellectual homes at American universities. Through their determination to advance the creation and application of knowledge, they contributed to the defeat of the Nazi regime and helped launch a golden age of scientific discovery in the United States.
A crucial history lesson
Today, American universities occupy the top global position that German universities held 100 years ago. In fact, some of the defining features of American higher education, most notably its research mission, were originally modeled on the German system. Eight decades after the end of World War II, German universities have not regained their past global preeminence.
That remarkable decline began with antisemitism. It led to an irreparable loss of talent, including many of the physicists who fled to the US and helped it win the war. Worse, antisemitism corroded the core of the university itself. German universities fostered the pseudoscience that justified racist laws. Professors in German medical schools sanctioned and, in many cases, designed the horrific experiments carried out on concentration camp prisoners, the worst breach of medical ethics in history, as documented by the Lancet Commission on Medicine, Nazism, and the Holocaust.
American universities need to learn this historical lesson. There are three reasons to combat antisemitism. The first is to protect our Jewish students, faculty, and staff. The second is to protect the non-Jewish members of our community, since we know that once bigotry against one group is tolerated, no one is safe. The last reason is less obvious, but if the history from a century ago teaches us something, it is that we must fight antisemitism to save our universities themselves.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.