Mick Hartley

From the Times:

Antisemitic abuse on university campuses has reached record levels, with Jewish students increasingly concerned for their safety in the face of online hate from fellow students.

In the previous academic year there were 111 antisemitic incidents recorded at British universities, a rise of 59 per cent on the year before, according to figures shared with The Times.

They include a student at Glasgow who was told to “go gas herself” and another at UCL who was sent a death threat that included a photoshopped picture of her head beneath a guillotine.

The news follows a demonstration last Tuesday by students at the London School of Economics, when threats of violence were issued to the Israeli ambassador.

The Community Security Trust (CST), the charity that collected the data, said the increase was largely down to the spike in reports during the conflict in Israel and Gaza in May, when 64 of the 111 incidents took place.

The highest number of incidents took place at Bristol and Warwick universities, both with 11. At UCL there were ten, with nine at Oxford and eight at Birmingham.

Almost all the incidents in 2020-21 involved verbal, written or online abuse, although one was assault, with a Jewish student at Birmingham being hit at university accommodation.

Emilie Eisenberg, a second-year student at Warwick, said she would often encounter racist tropes and “jokes about the Holocaust” from fellow students.

Eisenberg, 19, an active member of a student campaign to make the campus a safer place for women, said was made an “outcast” by her peer group after writing a post that pointed out a rise in antisemitic crimes during the Gaza conflict.

In the days after, many of her friends wrote to her severing their relationships, while others wrote threats such as “Israel is going to get what’s coming to it”.

Eisenberg, who studies English literature, said she considered herself to be left wing. “But it seems that now there isn’t a place for Judaism with the package of being left wing.

“People go along agreeing with [antisemitic behaviour] because this is what it is to be left wing for many students.”…

Lucinda Bathie, 22, former president of the Glasgow University Jewish Society, told The Times earlier this year she was told to “go and gas yourself”.

She was also pelted with avocados and called a “dirty Jew” when she wore her Star of David necklace.

A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism said that British universities were at risk of becoming “incubators” of antisemitism if they did not act against racist abuse.

Meanwhile:

New students at Wolfson College, Cambridge have been told to complete an anti-racism course covering issues such as microaggressions, whiteness and privilege.

The college’s black, Asian and minority ethnic officer emailed first-years saying: “As part of your induction, all freshers are expected to attend a mandatory anti-racism workshop,” The Sunday Telegraph said. The online session informed students that microaggressions were brief, everyday interactions that leave people feeling devalued, such as saying “you speak good English”.

One part of the session said that white supremacy operated in modern British life and used a number of Google search results as an example. “In society whiteness [is] centric,” a slide claimed. “This involves whiteness being seen as the ‘default’ race and everyone else being an ‘other’.” It added: “Google search images are white people unless you specify otherwise.”

Other universities – Imperial College, St Andrews – have similar schemes. Which is nice…but of course Jews don't count. They're seen as privileged: über-white even. Antisemitism is "punching up". So, you know…that's OK. Carry on as you were.