Responding to a fellow tenured professor’s decision to resign his post rather than persist in teaching at an increasingly illiberal and anti-Semitic university, Samuel J. Abrams argues that Jewish academics can do more good by remaining in the lions’ den:

Sarah Lawrence College is not the friendliest school when it comes to viewpoint diversity; students regularly self-censor and often feel too intimidated to disagree with the prevailing—[usually] progressive—norms of the campus. . . . As an outwardly observant Jew who also publicly supports Israel even when I deeply disagree with its government, [I witness my] faculty colleagues regularly attacking Israel and me without worry. They habitually make deeply insensitive and inappropriate remarks to me and regularly assert that Israel is an illegitimate, genocidal, and apartheid state. I have found Nazi imagery on my office door over the years and have been told to make no real issue of it.

In my situation, it was made clear by the highest level of administrators and the college president that I may want to find employment elsewhere and that many would rather I no longer be on campus. But I have tenure and academic freedom; it is a sacred privilege to be a professor and I love teaching, my students, and the innovative liberal-arts curriculum that we have at Sarah Lawrence College. I promote viewpoint diversity and discourse and being able to be openly Jewish, which has backstopped scores of students who now feel far more comfortable pushing back on the anti-Semitic Zeitgeist. While I will never have a complete picture, I know that I have made many feel safer and more willing to question and express themselves.

I may not be able to stop anti-Jewish [sentiment], but I can certainly blunt it on occasion and perhaps change minds.

After several weeks of passionate political conflict in Israel over judical reform, the tensions seem to be defused, or at least dialed down, for the time being. In light of this, and in anticipation of the Passover holiday soon upon us, Eric Cohen considers the way forward for both the Jewish state and the Jewish people. (Video, 8 minutes. A text is available at the link below.)