In 1990, a sociologist concluded that there is an inverse correlation between education and prejudice against Jews. The idea that people can be educated out of anti-Semitism informs the thinking of the Anti-Defamation League and the White House’s strategy for combating anti-Semitism. Jeff Jacoby has his doubts. Take the case of the Slovenian jurist Boštjan Zupančič, a seventeen-year veteran of the European Court of Human Rights, who believes Jews are “the central enemies of Western civilization.”
Until recently, Zupančič had a sterling record as a legal scholar and a protector of human rights. He earned degrees from Harvard, lectured at colleges around the world, and published extensively in multiple languages. He even wrote poetry. He is also, it transpires, a raging anti-Semite. Zupančič has spread numerous smears about Jews. . . . How could someone known for such intellectual achievements be an unabashed Jew-hater?
It’s a trick question. The premise is false. Towering artists and learned intellectuals have always been numbered among the most virulent defamers of the Jewish people. Martin Luther, T.S. Eliot, Richard Wagner, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Edgar Degas, Amiri Baraka—the list could be extended indefinitely. On college campuses, hostility toward Jews is becoming endemic. The Nazi genocide may have been inspired by Adolf Hitler, but it was planned and carried out by SS men with PhDs.
So why have studies repeatedly shown a link between low levels of education and anti-Semitic beliefs? Because, as the University of Arkansas researchers Jay P. Greene, Albert Cheng, and Ian Kingsbury explained in 2021, . . . respondents with more education are sophisticated enough to realize what is being asked, . . . and more likely to respond in ways that hide their anti-Semitism.
The preventive and cure for anti-Semitism is not more book learning. It is the cultivation of good character, which is a far harder task.
Read more on Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/09/10/opinion/jeff-jacoby-antisemitism-education