“Unapologetic antisemitism—whether the incidents are few or numerous—is a college phenomenon because of what we teach, and how our teachings are exploited by malign actors.” That’s a line you’d expect to hear from some right-wing activist or conservative think tank. Instead, it came from Harry Lewis, Harvard grad, Harvard professor, and former Harvard dean. 

In his article “Reaping What We Have Taught,” Lewis took his own school to task: 

When complex social and political histories are oversimplified in our teachings as Manichaean struggles—between oppressed people and their oppressors, the powerless and the powerful, the just and the wicked—a veneer of academic respectability is applied to the ugly old stereotype of Jews as evil but deviously successful people. 

It’s not easy in today’s academic environment to point out the emperor has no clothes. Ideas have consequences, but so does courage. Let’s hope others in ivory towers are willing to call out the dangerous ideas that control these institutions.