Jewish professors, students in Iowa condemn higher ed attacks in their name

IOWA CITY — Nearly 90 Jewish faculty, staff, students, and alumni across Iowa’s higher education system have issued a collective statement condemning threats to and attacks on their college and university campuses “in the name of the Jewish community.”

“Financial threats to universities and stripping First Amendment rights from students, faculty, and researchers in the name of the Jewish community is deeply offensive to us,” according to the statement signed by 89 past and present professors, students, and staff. “It must stop.”

The statement comes as the Trump administration withholds federal grants, revokes student visas, orders arrests and deportations, demands institutional changes, and threatens policy changes across college and university campuses in the name of fighting antisemitism.

“As Jewish faculty, staff, students, and alumni at diverse Iowa universities and colleges, we are committed to the values of academic freedom, pluralism, and independence that animate higher education,” according to the statement issued Tuesday morning. “We write to dispel misconceptions that are being wielded by people with little knowledge of academia to weaken university life and harm our students.”

Citing their deep familiarity with campus life, the signatories report that “broad-stroke portrayals of universities as hotbeds of antisemitism do not reflect our lived experience.”

“We recognize that antisemitism, like other forms of bias, is present on college campuses, and that the current environment is especially heated,” according to the statement, conceding, “Some of us have witnessed antisemitic or racist incidents.”

But political speech and assembly should not be conflated with hate speech, according to the statement.

“Speech regarding Israel and Palestine is no exception to this rule.”

One of the greatest attributes of higher education — and the college and university campuses that offer it — is its ability to host respectful debate and offer unique opportunities for exploration and discovery, opening minds to new ways of thinking and learning about “our complex society,” according to the statement.

“Far from a threat to a more just world, these opportunities are among the best antidotes to ignorance and hate,” the group wrote. “Diminishing higher education threatens our shared future.”

Among the campuses represented on the long list of signatories are the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, University of Northern Iowa, Drake University, Cornell College, and Grinnell College. Some identify the specific school or program they work in — like the Iowa Writers’ Workshop or UI Carver College of Medicine.

“We come from different points on the political compass,” they wrote. “We experience our identities as Jews or people of Jewish ancestry in myriad ways. But we are united by the conviction that a distorted view of antisemitism must not be used as a cudgel to silence the vigorous exchange of ideas that lies at the heart of university life.”

President Donald Trump in recent weeks has levied a barrage of threats and attacks on higher education — like freezing more than $2 billion in grants to Harvard University after the campus refused to bend to demands from the administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Columbia University, on the other hand, said it would comply with the Trump team’s demands in hopes of saving some of the $400 million in federal funding it risked losing.

The administration also has paused funding tied to grants and contracts with the likes of Brown, Cornell, Northwestern, Princeton universities, and the University of Pennsylvania, according to national media reports.

“To punish universities financially, to limit academic freedom, or to revoke student visas in the name of protecting Jewish students is both wrong and dangerous,” according to the Iowa statement. “It is an injustice to those very students and an injury to American society at large.”

In affirming their conviction, the group of Iowa faculty, students, and staff said they “join not only Jewish academics nationwide but also prominent Jewish institutions such as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, the Union for Reform Judaism, and the National Council of Jewish Women.”

“In signing this statement, we speak only for ourselves. Institutions are included strictly for purposes of identification.”

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com