Marc Rod, Jewish Insider
Noah Pollak, a senior advisor at the Department of Education, offered a series of recommendations, including broader cultural changes and vigorous disciplinary action, on how universities can and should reform to better address antisemitism on campus.
Speaking at an antisemitism conference on Tuesday organized by The George Washington University Program on Extremism, Pollak said that schools need to have “backbone” in enforcing their disciplinary codes, offering as one example Brown University, which he said failed to uphold a new code of conduct rules when an encampment sprung up to protest the war in Gaza in 2024. He attributed schools’ reticence to a “cultural problem” for the universities.
“The schools have got to discipline students and faculty who are troublemakers, who break the rules, and discipline them hard, discipline them fast and discipline them very publicly,” Pollak said. “All it would take is a few examples of swift and severe punishment, expulsions, suspensions, that type of response, and everyone would get the message, and everything would settle down.”
Pollak argued that the ultimate answer to antisemitism on campuses lies in overhauls to university governance to promote political diversity and proper enforcement of civil rights. He called for overhauls of Middle East studies departments and other academic programs he said have lost sight of their original missions. “You have to go upstream,” he said.
Broadly, Pollak also described many campus protests as “anti-intellectual” and “anti-democratic” and often “pretty stupid,” saying that many students are joining in to shout slogans and intimidate people with little idea of the actual issue about which they’re protesting.
“Universities could stop encouraging protesting — they could stop and they could demand that their academic departments actually diversify and expose students to the actual complexity of the world and not the slogan version of the world,” Pollak said.
He also argued that issues of distinguishing between protected speech and unprotected discriminatory conduct have been overstated and that the line is “not actually that complicated,” saying schools “did a lot of hiding behind the First Amendment as an excuse to avoid taking action.”
In particular, he added, the use of “Zionist” as a euphemism for Jews is often “a pretty easy call,” and should not be treated as a “get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“It’s pretty obvious what [the anti-Israel activists are] up to. It’s pretty obvious the intent when they do that,” Pollak said. “A little too much stock has been placed in the idea that these are such blurry lines, it’s so hard to make these discussions. Well, it’s really not. You take a look at the activity that’s going on, and it’s pretty obvious what the intent is.” He also said that schools should make clear how students file Title VI complaints and that they should have dedicated officials responsible for handling such complaints, who understand and can apply Title VI rules and regulations.
Pollak said that schools had been “caught off-guard” by the years of organizing by anti-Israel groups prior to Oct. 7, but that they are “doing a somewhat better job” now that they have had time to catch up, noting that he has heard anecdotally that complaints have dropped this year.