‘We can’t criminalize everyone’: Jamaal Bowman floats a progressive response to campus antisemitism
Bowman’s letter to the White House comes amid a flurry of other messages from members of Congress that he says encourage “punitive” responses to campus hate
Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-NY, visits with constituents during a town hall meeting at College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York, last year. Bowman is gathering signatures for a letter calling on the White House to encourage universities to respond to campus hate incidents through education. Photo by Getty Images
By Arno Rosenfeld November 8, 2023
Amid a flurry of letters from members of Congress addressing antisemitism on college campuses, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, a New York Democrat, is taking a different tack. While many of the other missives call on officials to crackdown on speech targeting Israel, Bowman is gathering support for a letter calling on the White House to protect free speech — including activism aimed at Israel — and to emphasize education over what he calls “punitive measures.”
The letter, which Bowman expects to send sometime this week, comes at a pivotal moment for both the congressman and American college campuses.
A staunch progressive representing a district north of New York City home to many Jewish residents, Bowman is facing the prospect of a primary challenger backed by pro-Israel groups angry over his support for a cease-fire in Israel and Gaza, among other issues. He has also fended off left-wing attacks claiming that he is too friendly to the Jewish state.
His message to President Joe Biden comes as several universities have moved to ban Students for Justice in Palestine, a student group associated with a number of strident demonstrations against Israel in recent weeks, while other schools are facing pressure from donors and alumni over an alleged failure to protect Jewish students.
The complaints all center on how schools have handled the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, when militants killed more than 1,400 people, and Israel’s response, which has killed more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
“We have to make sure we are getting people who are doing wrong and causing harm and holding them accountable,” Bowman said in an interview Tuesday. “But we can’t criminalize everyone who is at these marches or part of these groups.”
New response to campus concerns
The letter asks Biden and Miguel Cardona, the education secretary, to increase mental health resources for students, implement training on antisemitism and Islamophobia and support educators to help students learn about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is a rare explicitly progressive response to concerns over campus antisemitism, an area that is often dominated by pro-Israel groups who promote an understanding of antisemitism that includes anti-Zionism and other harsh criticism of Israel.
On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel International and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a pro-Israel legal group, launched a hotline for students to file legal complaints against colleges and universities.
A poll conducted by Hillel in late October found that 56% of Jewish college students reported being “scared,” while 25% said “there had been an act of violence or hate on their campus.”
Members of Congress have written to George Washington University and the University of Pennsylvania, among other institutions, criticizing them for failing to sufficiently condemn or stop student protests that have used harsh rhetoric against Israel and its supporters, and in some cases celebrated the Hamas attack. And the White House held a summit with Jewish leaders early in the conflict to address campus antisemitism.
At the same time, Palestinian students and other activists critical of Israel have reported being targeted by national organizations who have placed them on employment blacklists and plastered their names and faces on billboard trucks driven around campus.
A number of organizations led by Palestine Legal, which represents Palestinian students in disputes with university officials, wrote a letter to the Department of Education last week demanding that federal officials address the “rise of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic racism.”
The Education Department released a letter to university officials Tuesday stating that “All students, including students who are or are perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian… are entitled to a school environment free from discrimination.”
Bowman defiant
But unlike Bowman’s letter, that document did not address the particular concerns of Jewish students. Bowman said he is trying to help “Israeli, Palestinian, Jewish and Muslim” students studying at both universities and K-12 schools across the country.
He said that support for Hamas was “anti-Jewish” and that schools needed to respond to that kind of speech. But the deeper problem, Bowman said, was ignorance about current affairs and siloed communities that don’t have strong relationships with each other.
“We haven’t learned about Israel-Palestine during our K-12 experience and now we’re in higher education and pick up so much on social media — we may not know from what we say, and next thing you know there’s a kid being criminalized for saying something he didn’t know what it meant.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has sought to recruit a primary challenger to Bowman, who has faced criticism from some centrist Democrats and other activists in his Westchester district for his positions on Israel. He held a meeting with Jewish constituents Monday about “fighting antisemitism and hate” that had to be moved after protesters disrupted it.
Bowman said he’s “not concerned at all” about a primary challenge, and called Monday’s event one of “deep connection, engagement, learning and reflection and so I’m grateful for that.”
He has also faced backlash over Israel from the left, including a spat with the Democratic Socialists of America, which considered expelling him after he voted in favor of funding Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system last year. A spokesperson told Politico that Bowman let his membership in the group lapse following the incident.
Nonetheless, Bowman has remained an outspoken advocate for a cease-fire in Israel and Gaza and reiterated his criticism of the Israeli military’s actions in the interview Tuesday.
“It’s deplorable to celebrate the Hamas attacks,” Bowman said. “What I’m worried about is that being generalized to all students who are fighting for — and justly fighting for — Palestinian human rights.”
“We have this siege that is happening in Gaza right now, indiscriminately killing tens-of-thousands of civilians.”
As for what he wants college students to know right now, Bowman, a former middle school principal, said his message is one of love.
“Do not succumb to hate,” he said. “If you seek conflict and allow hate to seep in, that hate will destroy everything.”
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