The War Against the University: Shabbos Kestenbaum, Zev Mishell, and the Campus Protests

Back when he was running for Senate, Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) made his views on higher education abundantly clear.

“Professors are the enemy,” he said in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, endorsing a quote from former President Richard M. Nixon. “If any of us want to do the things that we want to do for our country and for the people who live in it, we have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.”

Vance’s views on higher education aren’t unique, nor are they new. For decades, conservatives across the country have waged war on higher education institutions, denouncing the so-called liberal orthodoxy and, recently, smearing critical race theory.

Since Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7, conservatives have opened up a new assault on higher education, claiming that professors promulgate a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion agenda that teaches their students to be antisemitic.

As a rabbi and a professor at Harvard Divinity School, let me just say that this narrative couldn’t be further from the truth. To see why, let’s take a look inside my own classroom at HDS, where I teach modern Judaism.

After Oct. 7, HDS was reeling from the impact of Hamas’ massacre, the brutal war in Gaza, and the campus protests that ensued. As a result, my classes this year, like those of my colleagues, were not easy. Students entered the classroom every week amid rancor and controversy, their actions constantly scrutinized by the national media.

My classes drew students with diverse experiences and wide-ranging political views, all coping with the events of Oct. 7 in different ways. I taught many Zionists, including Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum, a recent speaker at the Republican National Convention, alongside Zev Mishell, who wrote a response to Kestenbaum in The Forward, as well as other members of “Jews for Liberation,” a non-Zionist group.

Outside of class, Shabbos and Zev and other students in my classes attended protests and counter-protests. In class, they debated complex issues with open minds. My classes were filled with disagreement; students sometimes felt upset at what others were saying, some felt personally attacked. Like most of my colleagues, I sat during office hours with many students who expressed frustration and felt hurt by what transpired in some of those discussions. But every week they returned, and every week we continued to wrestle with themes of Jewish identity and the unfolding crisis on campus.

Why? Because that is what universities do.

Did dialogue sometimes break down? Certainly. That is the price of serious and passionate dissent. But my students, no matter their political views, learned to sharpen their own positions by hearing those who disagreed with them.

In his speech at the RNC, Kestenbaum repeated an oft-cited platitude from the right that universities like Harvard are no longer teaching students “how to think, but what to think.”

This platitude misunderstands the entire purpose of the university. Yes, university education should train students how to think. But to suggest that professors should not also at times teach students what to think, at least about their course subjects, is ludicrous.

Professors are human beings, not machines. We have opinions and viewpoints that we express with conviction. In general, students are encouraged to disagree, make counter-arguments, and present different evidence or logic to challenge us.

Does the “power of the lectern” sometimes get abused? Does the “how” sometimes become doctrine rather than argument? Certainly. But after over thirty years teaching at public and private universities, a rabbinical school, and HDS, in my experience those are the exceptions, not the rule.

And let’s be honest. It’s mostly not professors who are teaching people what to think about the Israel-Palestine conflict. It’s politicians, groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, social media “influencers,” and some rabbis in the pulpit.

The fact that Kestenbaum, who knows my leftist views on Israel, chose to speak at the RNC after sitting in my classroom for a year, demonstrates that professors don’t indoctrinate; they encourage independent thought.

So what was really happening at Harvard this year? In event after event, Harvard’s commitment to intellectual openness was laid bare.

Amid the protests, Harvard hosted Rashid I. Khalidi, professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University. More than 300 people — including Jews, Israelis, and many of Middle East origin — attended his lecture on the Israel-Hamas war. The audience, diverse in background and opinion, engaged in respectful dialogue, including an Israeli student who asked a pointed question about the phrase “from the river to the sea.”

No interruption, no rancor, no disturbance. The student who asked the question may have disagreed with Khalidi’s answer, but after the lecture ended we all left peacefully.

On Oct. 23 the School of Education hosted a forum on the war with three panelists, all experts in their field with pro-Palestinian perspectives. Each speaker was informed, respectful, but also passionate and, at times, controversial. This time, an audience member sharply criticized one of the panelist’s remarks about genocide, leading to an intense exchange. Though the questioner stormed out of the auditorium, the panel continued, and when it ended, we all left without incident.

In November, former University President Lawrence H. Summers spoke at Harvard Law School about the economics of the conflict in Gaza. When he began his talk, many students silently protested, some holding “Stop the Genocide” signs, and staged a silent walked out. This was obviously their plan. Summers paused as they exited, acknowledged their right to protest as part of university life, and then continued with his remarks.

J.D. Vance is wrong. Professors are not the “enemies.” In fact, we are essential to democratic society because we create space for robust debate where Kestenbaum and Mishell can sit with students who disagree with them.

Despite what Kestenbaum may have said on stage, I know that he didn’t see me as an enemy. In fact, he praised his professors in his graduation profile — including me — calling the experience “intellectually enriching” and “an immense privilege.” We will continue to create these open spaces for future students, until the government hauls us away to prison.

Shaul Magid teaches Modern Jewish Studies at Harvard Divinity school and is a senior research fellow at Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions.