"One Simple Question" Revisited

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Editor’s Note: On December 11, 2023, Clarity published “The One Simple Question That Determines Everything: Part I,” the first section of a two-part guest piece by Professor Andrew Pessin on October 7 and its reception across college campuses. In “‘One Simple Question’ Revisited,” Professor Pessin details the intellectual and personal costs of campus antisemitism that he has witnessed since.

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My office door, covered with hostage posters, was publicly defaced twice, and one nasty anonymous note was slipped under it. A student social media campaign demanded not only that the college officially acknowledge the “genocide” in Gaza and divest from Israel, but that I be “removed from tenure and the college.” Sidewalk chalkings then exclaimed, “Fuck Pessin!” Security was assigned to shadow me while I’m on campus. This is the life of a Jewish Zionist professor on a typical liberal arts college in America in 2024—the only such professor on my campus, at least who speaks up publicly—and I had things easy compared to many colleagues elsewhere. 

When I wrote “One Simple Question” shortly after October 7 I didn’t think I could be more shocked than I already was at seeing American campuses explode in support rather than condemnation of that barbaric massacre. I was wrong. Now after seven months of open season on Jews both rhetorically and physically, culminating in very threatening encampments at 100-plus campuses, I find myself struggling not to think of the disastrous years 70, 1492, and 1939, alongside America of 2024.

My own campus was comparatively quiet right after October 7. We had no public rallies exulting in the mass murder of Jewish families, pregnant women, and elderly among others. Admittedly the bar was low, but I considered that a moral victory of a sort. The faculty were also publicly quiet, again a kind of moral victory compared to the exultation elsewhere, but, still, a troubling one: Last year, when our former President scheduled a fundraiser at a country club that decades ago had racist and antisemitic admissions policies, the faculty erupted in outrage for months. With cancelled classes and nearly every department producing public statements of solidarity with our suffering students, the result was a faculty no-confidence vote and the conferring of the label “former” upon the President. 

But when 1200-plus mostly Jews were sadistically slaughtered in cold blood, there was silence.

Nothing to talk about, folks, it’s just Jews being slaughtered on the largest scale since the Holocaust. 

But they weren’t silent for long. 

Within a couple of weeks several professors assembled a robust lecture series, which they called, “Connecticut College Educational Series on Israel/Palestine.” This consisted of weekly Zoom lectures, seven in number, each invited professor an Israel hater. That one-sided ideological assault was what counted for “education,” apparently, for these professors. I complained about the series title and the administration did the right thing, by removing the phrase “Connecticut College” from the title. In my view the right thing would have included removing “educational” as well. 

Consider the import of their feat. 1200-plus mostly Jews had just been slaughtered and 200-plus taken hostage and they instantly brought in no fewer than seven professors to explain exactly why those Jews had it coming. (To be fair, most of them began their lectures with a pro forma condemnation of October 7 before continuing with 30-45 minutes of basically explaining why the Jews had it coming.) 

I jumped into action, alone (having failed to find colleagues or allies). I insisted the administration fund me the same amount they funded my antipathic colleagues, plus got an emergency grant from the Academic Engagement Network. I managed to assemble my own diverse list of professors, to match them one to one, in a zoom lecture series I cumbersomely called, “Educational Series on the Israeli-Palestinian-Jewish-Arab-Muslim-Hamas-Iran Conflict,” not least to suggest what my colleagues did not seem to appreciate—that the conflict was far more complex than the standard “evil white Jewish Israelis oppressing marginalized people of color innocent victim Palestinians” narrative. My speakers were all pro-Israel, which for exclusively “educational” purposes would not have been appropriate but, given that I was balancing their one-sided onslaught, seemed acceptable. 

Their original seven-speaker series was apparently not enough. With the spring semester they brought in several more. I matched them up to eight, but then ran out of energy. Also, I remembered that my primary job was to teach my classes. I was gratified to be able to answer the call to defend Jews and Israel from the tsunami of slanders directed at us, but I also had a job for which I received a salary. I sometimes wondered how my colleagues had so much time to devote their campaign against Israel.

Sometimes I feel a deep simmering resentment: I got into this professor business because I valued my field (philosophy) and valued the idea of the classical liberal arts education. Instead, I must constantly defend my people from the dehumanizing, delegitimizing slander that ultimately justifies their genocide. The brave soldiers of the IDF are fighting the military war, the resilient people of Israel are fighting the existential war, and I, in my little way, am fighting what the scholar Richard Landes calls the cognitive war. All of us would rather be doing other things—living, laughing, loving, for example—but this is what our era, and our enemies, demand of us.

Still, they weren’t done. Perhaps because their instigating the students had not yet succeeded, the faculty produced a “Statement of Solidarity” with the pro-Hamas encampments popping up across campuses. They managed to get some ninety signatories (nearly half the full-time faculty here) on a statement that not only encouraged rule-breaking and law-breaking but included such delightful accusations such as that of “Jewish supremacy.” I was the sole faculty member to publicly reply to a document that, the more I thought about, the more revolting it became. A few days later I felt compelled to publish a longer, withering critique.

Well, the instigation succeeded. No sooner was the faculty statement in circulation than some student groups began their defamatory campaign to have me fired and then, a couple days later, the “Fuck Pessin” chalkings appeared. No matter that defamation and such chalkings violate various features of our vaunted “Honor Code” here; when half your faculty openly proclaim that the rules don’t apply to you as long as your cause is just—and what could be more just than Hamas’s aim to ethnically cleanse and genocide the seven million Jews in Israel?—then what’s a little defamation and hate speech directed toward the one Jewish Zionist professor who speaks up?

You know, the one who apparently supports genocide, in the name of “Jewish supremacy”?

Just reflect on where we are. Half the professors at a typical liberal arts college openly declare the Jews guilty of “Jewish supremacy.” Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels would be pleased that his trope flourishes so. No amount of fig leafing can conceal the fact that this is Protocols of the Elders of Zion-level conspiracy theory antisemitic rhetoric that professors in 2024 America are casually signing their names to. 

It is also dangerous rhetoric. A person who believes in “Jewish supremacy” will soon support drastic measures against Jews, up to and including genocide. Witness the Nazis, inspired by the Protocols, and Hamas, whose openly genocidal founding charter liberally quotes from the Protocols. That connection, note, is not accidental. The Muslim Brotherhood worked with the Nazis during WWII, and the infamous Mufti Hajj Amin Al-Husseini, representing the Brotherhood as the long-time leader of the Palestinian national movement, spent the war in Berlin to help the Nazis bring the Final Solution to the Middle East. Hamas is of course the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza. Contemporary progressives, including these professors, like to pretend: “Nazism bad, Palestinianism good.” But in the context of the current war, supporting Hamas—as every measure demanded by the encampments and thus by the faculty solidarity statement does—is supporting literally the same Jewish-elimination program as the Nazis.

Yes, I have had it comparatively easy here, so far—a defaced door, a nasty note, a campaign to be fired, some nasty graffiti.

But the trajectory isn’t promising.

1939, indeed.

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Andrew Pessin is Professor of Philosophy at Connecticut College and Campus Bureau Editor for the Algemeiner. His books include Anti-Zionism on Campus: The University, Free Speech, and BDS, and Poisoning the Wells: Antisemitism in Contemporary America, as well as the novels Nevergreen and Bright College Years, documenting the campus experience. More information about him and his work may be found at andrewpessin.com. Follow him on X and on Instagram.