21st Century Antisemitism: Higher Education – An Accelerant?

“Respondents with higher education levels are markedly more likely than those with lower education levels to apply a double standard unfavorable toward Jews.”^[1][1] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/are-educated-people-more-anti-semitic-jay-greene-albert-cheng-ian-kingsbury

“The range of people believing in and fomenting antisemitism is … unusually broad”

“From the uneducated peasant and day laborer to university professors and leaders of countries, from people on the political left to those on the political right, from the secular to devout believers in God, from people organized behind antisemitic programs to those having only imbibed available social and cultural notions, from the poor to the wealthy— all these factors, which usually greatly and differentially influence people’s prejudices and other belief systems, have had little influence on antisemitism’s general spread and power. The people who are in general the least prejudiced, the educated and the elites, have often been at least as prejudiced as the so-called common man and woman of their societies.”^[2][2] Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. The Devil That Never Dies (pp. 7-8). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

“Higher education levels are markedly more likely than those with lower education levels to apply a double standard unfavorable toward Jews.”^[3][3] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/are-educated-people-more-anti-semitic-jay-greene-albert-cheng-ian-kingsbury

“Across the four items in which the Jewish and non-Jewish versions of questions seemed the most similar, and which the overall sample answered roughly in the same way, subjects with college degrees were 5 percentage points more likely to apply a principle harshly to Jews than to non-Jews. Among those with advanced degrees, subjects were 15 percentage points more unfavorable toward Jewish than non-Jewish examples.”

“Contrary to conventional wisdom and past research, people with more education appear more unfavorable to Jews.”^[4][4] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/are-educated-people-more-anti-semitic-jay-greene-albert-cheng-ian-kingsbury

“This greater antagonism toward Jews among the more educated is troubling for a number of reasons. First, Jews may be mistaken about where threats to their interests predominate. Jews may believe that dangers mostly come from distant and unfamiliar groups rather than from circles in which they tend to live. Second, well-educated people tend to have greater influence over the course of events, so it does not bode well for Jews to be disfavored by them. Third, our strategies for addressing intolerance in general, and anti-Semitism in particular, tend to revolve around the belief that group-hatred is caused by ignorance, and that the solution is more education. Yet if more-highly educated people are more hostile with respect to Jews, higher educational levels and more courses and training could increase prejudice, rather than diminish it.”^[5][5] https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/are-educated-people-more-anti-semitic-jay-greene-albert-cheng-ian-kingsbury

“Political and civic leaders often tout education as the best antidote to extremism and its violent extension, terrorism….^[6][6] https://www.justsecurity.org/61998/research-shows-terrorists-arent-necessarily-uneducated-education-prevent-terror/
…Yet evidence suggests that terrorists are more likely than not to be educated.”

”Recruits to Islamic militant groups are likely to be well educated and relatively wealthy, with those aspiring to be suicide bombers among the best off” — a study by the World Bank has found.^[7][7] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/05/islamic-state-recruits-world-bank-study-education-boko-haram The research, based on internal records from the Islamic State group, will reinforce the growing conclusion among specialists that there is no obvious link between poverty or educational levels and radicalisation. The … study found that 69% of recruits reported at least a secondary level education while “15% left school before high school and less than 2% are illiterate”. The educational level of recruits from north Africa or the Middle East was significantly greater than that of most of their compatriot….” “Neither inequality nor poverty was a driver of involvement in violent extremism …..”

Hamas is an openly genocidal antisemitic terrorist entity: “The Hamas leadership, like that of other Islamist movements, have generally come from the educated middle and upper classes. They often have university educations and degrees in medicine, engineering, or law. As the Egyptian-American commentator Fouad Zakaria observed in July 2005, their Islamic fanaticism “resembles the Nazi ideology and it has nothing to do with poverty, wretchedness, social disorders and personal humiliation.”45 More than half of the Palestinian suicide bombers had a university education. They were no more hungry or miserable than the Saudi terrorists of al-Qaeda who bombed the United States in September 2001.”^[8][8] Wistrich, Robert S.. A Lethal Obsession . Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.l location 15151

Süddeutsche Zeitung: Poll in Germany 2019: 18% of “elites” agree that “Jewish people have “too much power over world politics” and the economy”^[9][9] https://www.dw.com/en/one-in-four-germans-hold-anti-semitic-beliefs-study-finds/a-50958589

“Anti-Semitism is also growing among the wealthy and well-educated, according to the study. The WJC found that 18% of “elites” — respondents with at least one university degree who make at least €100,000 ($111,300) per year — agreed with anti-Semitic sentiments. Within that group, over a quarter said they believed Jewish people have “too much power over world politics” and the economy.”^[10][10] https://www.dw.com/en/one-in-four-germans-hold-anti-semitic-beliefs-study-finds/a-50958589

“The highly educated can do what ‘lesser’ people cannot: churn out ideology”^[11][11] https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hatred-from-educated-people-is-still-hatred-666059

“…Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. Even casual students of the Holocaust recall the Wannsee Conference of 1942, where Nazi leaders decided on the annihilation of European Jewry. Of 15 participants, eight had academic doctorates. Already in the 1930s, educated Germans, including jurists, physicians, academics and some clergy, ran – not walked – to Hitler’s side…. The takeaway: Education does not automatically equal morality. … For too long, we have attached halos to the highly educated and trusted them beyond their areas of competence.… A mob can produce mayhem; ideology can help industrialize mass murder and systematize genocide, as it did during the Holocaust. The Shoah proves that elites can turn justice on its head to protect the powerful and immoral and crush the innocent, the weak, or the righteous. Their words provide the intellectual architecture for totalitarianism or cancel culture.”^[12][12] https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hatred-from-educated-people-is-still-hatred-666059

“It is worthwhile remembering historian Paul Johnson’s epilogue to one of his books, warning of the power of the intelligentsia. “Far from being highly individualistic and nonconformist people, [they] follow certain regular patterns of behavior. Taken as a group, they are often ultra-conformist. … That is what makes them, en masse, so dangerous, for it enables them to create climates of opinion and prevailing orthodoxies, which themselves often generate irrational and destructive courses of action.”^[13][13] https://www.jpost.com/opinion/hatred-from-educated-people-is-still-hatred-666059

CONTINUE READING

21st Century Antisemitism by the Numbers

Introduction

Why the Numbers Matter

Counting Antisemites and Measuring Antisemitism