Seffi Kogen is the American Jewish Committee’s Director of Campus Affairs.
Seffi Kogen
By Seffi Kogen
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Opinion Anti-Israel Activists On Campus Have Made Ignorance A Virtue
If you’re a close follower of the issues Jewish students face on campus, you could be forgiven for feeling a bit of fatigue after a number of shocking anti-Semitic incidents occurred on college campuses in Canada last month. At the University of Toronto, controversy ensued after the graduate student union initially refused to support a…
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Opinion No, Israel Didn’t Just Adopt Trump’s Muslim Ban
On Thursday, the Israeli government made a bad decision. Under pressure from President Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Interior Minister Aryeh Deri decided not to grant an exemption from Israel’s anti-boycott law to Representatives Omar and Tlaib. As a result, the two members of Congress won’t be able to enter Israel. We should be…
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Opinion Why Is AOC Tokenizing A Fringe Jewish Group?
For the most part, American Jews aren’t very religiously observant. Per the 2013 Pew study of American Jews, the single most widely adhered to Jewish practice in this country is the Passover seder. 70% of Jews reported taking part in the year the study focused on. That old saw about two Jews having three different…
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Opinion No Single Organization Speaks For Jewish Millennials
A recent op-ed in these pages by Madi Norman, a member of IfNotNow Chicago, argued that young Jews feel unrepresented by what she calls “the Jewish establishment.” In focusing on combating the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel, Norman argues, institutions have failed to understand how young Jews think. The focus on BDS, writes…
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Community An Easy Litmus Test For Monuments
Monuments are not mere markers of history; they are instruments of memory. Whom we choose to memorialize says a great deal about who we are as a people. Addressing Amherst College in 1963, President John F. Kennedy said: “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces, but also by the men it…
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Opinion ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ Negates Jewish History
For much of the rest of the spring, students affiliated with chapters of the rabidly anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) will stage events throughout the world marking “Israeli Apartheid Week.” The mission of these odious events, according to organizers, is “to raise awareness of Israel’s settler-colonial project and apartheid system over the Palestinian…
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Opinion We’ll Lose College Students If Israel Becomes a Right-Wing Republican Cause
(JTA) — For decades, supporters of the U.S.-Israel relationship have insisted on strong bipartisanship rather than allying their cause with the Democrats or Republicans. So even while a typical bit of punditry over the past few presidencies was to assert that Bill Clinton, or George W. Bush, or Barack Obama was “the most pro-Israel president…
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Opinion How BDS Is Pushing Jewish Students Out of Social Justice Activism
A Barnard College sophomore recently articulated the sad choice many progressive Jewish students face on campuses around the country. In a Columbia Spectator op-ed, she called on Barnard’s student government to not support a sexual assault prevention group — a group she herself had once helped lead. She took this stand because the group had…
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