Rachel Fish on the Corruption of Jewish Studies

The Tikvah Podcast - Tikvah

The Tikvah Podcast features a discussion with Dr. Rachel Fish about the findings of a major audit revealing that a significant portion of Am

Key takeaways

• Nearly 40% of identified professors teaching Jewish studies, Israel studies, or related fields publicly oppose Israel, with higher rates at Ivy League institutions.
• The audit distinguishes between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and fundamental opposition to Israel's existence, which constitutes a more serious ideological stance.

Main topics

• Audit findings on anti-Israel sentiment among Jewish and Israel studies faculty
• Distinction between policy criticism and existential opposition to Israel

Notable quotes

"I'm not talking about sociologists or English professors... Nearly four in ten of the professors specifically teaching Jewish civilization on American campuses just don't like Israel very much."

"It's a very clear position that's being held: Israel has no right to exist. That Israel is the pariah among the global world order."

Conclusion

The episode concludes with a call for vigilance among students and families entering academia,

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Friends Speaker 1 (0:09) of Israel and enemies of Israel both commit the same mistake when they assume that in the colleges and universities of America, the faculty whom the university has hired to teach Jewish subjects are, in their own way, supportive of the Jewish state. Now, the assumption is a reasonable one, and each side's error mirrors the other. The friends of Israel naturally suppose that academic scholars of Jewish history Jewish thought, the history of Israel, and the arts and letters of Hebrew, are there to offer context and support and to explain Israel's case on campus. That doesn't mean that they support any particular Israeli policy or Israeli politician or each and every maneuver of the Israeli military. but they support the Zionist project in some fundamental sense. And Israel's enemies think the same thing. But of course, they think that from the opposite point of view, seeing in the entire enterprise of Jewish studies and all of its related fields and disciplines, a vehicle for propaganda. It turns out that in many cases, both of them are wrong. There's a good chance that your average member of the faculties of Jewish studies, Israel studies, Hebrew, Holocaust studies, holds a documented public position against Israel. I'll say that again. I'm not talking about sociologists or English professors or postmodern professors of grievance studies. Nearly four in ten of the professors specifically teaching Jewish civilization on American campuses just don't like Israel very much. Welcome to the Tikvah Podcast. I'm your host, Speaker 2 (1:45) Jonathan Silver. Speaker 1 (1:45) Those data come from newly released findings of the largest audit yet undertaken of the views of professors of Jewish civilization in America. This was published recently by the Ron Tarossian Foundation and a publication called The Olam. The audit's own headline number is higher still, better than half and past 70 % at the Ivies. But that figure blends named professors together with institutional listings and petition tallies. The number that I gave you above, about 4 in 10, is the one that holds up. Faculty individually identified as teaching these subjects and what they've put their name to in the public record. Now, to think through what this means, we're joined today by Dr. Rachel Fish. She is a scholar of modern Israel, Zionist thought, and contemporary anti-Semitism, and she's the incoming CEO of the Israel Institute. We discuss not just these numbers, but how a discipline built to study Jewish civilization on serious scholarly terms. ended up, in a meaningful share of cases, working against that civilization's national survival. We talk about what it means for the pipeline that produces the next generation of professors, graduate admissions, dissertation topics, the hiring committees that decides who gets to teach and where. And I ask her what a Jewish family sending their children to campus in the coming weeks needs to understand about what that student is going to walk into in the classroom. If you enjoy this conversation, you can discover more big ideas and in-depth analysis on Judaism, Israel, America, and the West at tikvaideas.org. Subscribe to access our full library of podcasts, videos, and essays, and join a growing community focused on Jewish life and the glories of Western civilization. You can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I hope you leave us a five-star review. to help us grow this community of ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast at tikva.org. And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can visit our website, tikva.org, and follow us on Facebook and X. Here now is my conversation with Rachel Fish. Rachel Fish, welcome to the Tikva podcast. Speaker 2 (4:02) Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you for having me. Speaker 1 (4:04) I want to... try to lay out what's prompting this conversation. Earlier this month, the Ron Tarossian Foundation and a research outlet called Olam published an audit of Jewish studies, Israel studies, Hebrew, Holocaust studies across the United States. They say that it's the biggest study of its kind. And the headline number that came out of it is one that's been repeated in a lot of places. It's that about 52 % of the faculty that they audited have a documented anti-Israel public position. And in the Ivy League, it's about 72 % of the people that they spoke with, faculty members that they spoke with. Now, when you press into the numbers, I want to be honest about this and clear about this, that number is a little inflated because it counts institutional entries and petition level aggregations alongside professors. So it's not really buried, but a little farther into the study itself, in its own methodology, it... I think that a more honest number is that about a thousand faculty members could be identified as teaching in these fields and 40 % of them are on the record against Israel. Even so, it's a very serious finding. 14 endowed chairs funded by Jewish philanthropists are held by faculty members who signed these petitions against Israel, including the Yerushalmi chair at Columbia that's named for a scholar who would have found the whole thing. completely unrecognizable. I want to just begin by asking you to react to this data and from your own experience, ask if to you it sort of rings true working in the field. I Speaker 2 (5:35) will tell you from my own experience, it is ringing true, which is quite concerning. I will also just highlight that when you look at the research, it is very clear that the researchers were willing to take into consideration serious nuance. So it wasn't critique of Israel. It wasn't just critique of Israeli policy. That was kosher. That was acceptable. I want people to understand that. This was really serious positions that created binaries that ultimately held positions suggesting Israel has no right to exist. that Israel is the pariah among the global world order, that ultimately the only solution is dissolution of the state of Israel. So it's a very clear position that's being held. Speaker 2 (6:25) I don't know the research organization. This was publicly accessible material that was accessed. So this is not qualitative research. It is quantitative based upon, you know, gathering the names and signatures. Speaker 2 (6:42) This all being said, as someone who cares about Jewish studies, as someone who deeply cares about Israel studies, and as someone who cares about higher education in general, it is very concerning and not at all surprising because we have seen this trend and not just in Jewish studies, but in humanities over the last, you know, several decades. This Speaker 1 (7:03) is a really important point that you make, and it's worth just spelling out. If a person comes along and says, I detest. you know, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich and Prime Minister Netanyahu and this and that, that is not what the architects of the survey are counting as anti-Israel. Speaker 2 (7:21) Correct. That's exactly right. That's acceptable critique, as it should be. Speaker 1 (7:25) All democratic citizens, of course, are allowed to say that and should say that. And by the way, if they say that, they're in the good company of significant portions of the Israelis. So that is not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is what you said, which is... a much more fundamental conviction that there is a stain in the world and that stain is Israel. And if it were to be wiped away, the world would be better. Speaker 2 (7:47) Yes. And I think for me, first of all, as someone who, again, cares about the fields of Jewish studies and Israel studies, but more than just caring about the fields, because as someone who is an academic in those fields, I'm deeply concerned about the students who walk into that classroom. who are going into that classroom, Jewish and non-Jewish, because it's not just Jewish students who take these kinds of courses. They are going there for a whole variety of reasons. Some because they actually are interested in the subject. Some because it just merely fills the elective they need. Some because it was the right time in their schedule. For some, it's because of an identity interest. For others, it's an academic curiosity. For others, it will lead to pursuing graduate work. in very interesting spaces. And what it suggests is that seriously academically rigorous scholarship is being put aside for a pursuit of advocacy interests, which have a starting point and a very clear ending point, which is, in my opinion, educational malpractice, deeply unfair to these students, not worth paying a dime for, and ultimately co-option of the pursuit of emmet, truth, veritas. Speaker 1 (9:09) Let's enter into the subject a little bit and what a calling of an academic is and what a person is supposed to be doing in the classroom. If a student were to come and want to study the Hebrew Bible or the confrontation of the Greek philosophical tradition with the biblical tradition in medieval philosophy, or Jewish literature. Why couldn't a person study those things very effectively, like just to play devil's advocate, why couldn't a person study those things very effectively with a professor who thinks that Israel is a stain and needs to be wiped off the map? What's wrong with that? Speaker 2 (9:49) First of all, I just want to say there are plenty of faculty who hold that particular position about Israel who may not ever bring it into the classroom, Jonathan. so that you can study those subjects without ever once touching or talking about the modern nation state of Israel and without talking about Zionism as a movement for Jewish self-determination. They can compartmentalize. They understand that that is not part of what the subject matter is for them, and so they're not touching it. There are plenty of subjects like this. Think about political science, political philosophy. We have academics who... hold positions that are anathema to the current federal government's positions, and they don't bring it into the classroom. Faculty can do that. So this is not about creating a litmus test that faculty have to pass in order to be able to teach. If they do bring it into the classroom, particularly when it is irrelevant to the subjects, then they themselves have actually violated their own sort of credo because they are no longer involved in academic integrity. They are just harnessing under the guise of academic freedom and freedom of speech to push and advance their own political advocacy position. I would find that problematic in any discipline or department, let alone then when it's specifically around Jewish studies or Israel studies, where it is already an emotional lightning rod on campus, where... It has become very challenging for students to have open, nuanced conversations and actually learn in these settings rather than just chant slogans and rhymes as if that's sufficient. And so it's a disservice by the university to allow the proliferation of that pseudo academic approach, which lacks that academic rigor. Speaker 1 (11:45) You've been trained in this field yourself intellectually. What were the premises of Jewish studies? Why did it get founded the way that it did? And what was it trying to do? Speaker 2 (11:53) Jewish studies emerges in a European context in the 19th century, where you have individuals who say, I want to study in as humanly, objectively as possible, with as much human detached objectivity, Jewish ideas, Jewish civilization, Jewish texts. But I'm not studying them in a religious institution. I'm not studying them in a cheder. And there is a difference to be able to look at, let's say, the writings from the prophets or biblical texts and not look at it through the lens of belief, but rather look at it and say, how did this document emerge? Who might be the authors of this document? And that tradition found a home in what is called Wissenschaft des Judentums, the scientific study of Judaism in Europe. And it was a school, an approach for creating what we now would call Jewish studies. And it was very much also a way to say you can look at these subjects in an interdisciplinary manner and you can look at these subjects while putting belief aside and how you practice aside. That didn't have to be part of the equation. And it's really the beginning of what we would refer to as serious scholarship in Jewish studies. Some of it is going to be related to biblical criticism. Some of