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The views expressed below are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy or Harvard Kennedy School. These perspectives have been presented to encourage debate on important public policy challenges.

Let me start by saying that my approach to Gaza and the Israel/Palestine conflict has long been to emphasize its moral complexity. I developed this perspective in , as well as a statement following the horrific attacks of October 7, 2023. I have submitted this perspective as a way of capturing the human-rights standpoint on this crisis. Part of seeing the moral complexity here is to acknowledge that Antisemitism on American campuses is real, as is Anti-Muslim sentiment. From the beginning, much of the campus debate has been about interpreting the significance of the attacks, about their historical context, and about what the future might hold for the region. Those who have lived or spent time on our campus in the months after the attacks experienced very different things, depending on where they moved and whom they spoke to. Those who engaged around these events tended to use vocabulary differently: Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Antisemitism, “from the river to the sea,” and so on. These phrases have meant different things to different people. Fear on our campus and elsewhere has been real, among Jews and Israelis, among Muslims, among those who meant to be allies or who just did not want to be drawn into something against their intentions. 

The large-scale characterization of American campuses as Antisemitic strikes me as an exercise of gaslighting by the Trump camp.

But the large-scale characterization of American campuses as Antisemitic strikes me as an exercise of gaslighting by the Trump camp. This gaslighting has unfortunately reached the level of concrete political action, as expressed in the  to Columbia University and the arrest and possible deportation of . In both cases it seems these steps are meant to be the beginning of more attacks against universities and some of its students under the pretext of combatting Antisemitism. What really seems to be going on is that the Trump camp is using accusations of Antisemitism to attack our universities as places where people work and learn who do not easily fall in line with their illiberal understanding of democracy.  The gaslighting enables them to pursue these sinister goals from a moral high ground and enlist people who genuinely believe they occupy this ground. 

In a recent commentary on JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, I defined “gaslighting” as follows. X gaslights Y in the presence of Z if X tries to persuade Y and Z that Y violates certain values or commitments that X, Y, and Z all are taken to endorse, whereas in fact it is X that violates them. One example is what Trump did after the 2020 elections. He (X) accused Biden’s Democrats (Y) of violating democratic norms (targeting the electorate, Z), whereas it was him who did so by filing and inspiring hundreds of  around “election fraud,” persistently ascribing multifarious versions of dishonesty to Democrats, and getting many followers so agitated that they stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Another example is Vance’s accusation against European nations in Munich of not defending freedom and democracy sufficiently when it is in fact he and his camp who should be charged along such lines. 

Successful gaslighting has two major effects: it creates a moral high ground for X and followers, and it puts a burden on Y to show that it is not Y that violates norms. Inevitably, the resulting cacophony voices in defense of Y do not sound different from those in defense of X. 

Accusations of large-scale Antisemitism on our campuses are another exercise in gaslighting. Again, Antisemitism is real, as are the fears many members of our communities experience. That is why this instance of gaslighting is so effective in creating the intended cacophony. (“So you admit there is Antisemitism on campus? Then how are we wrong? And how do you know all details of what happens on every campus?”) I obviously do not know all details on what happens on every campus, but a  is worth echoing here for how it makes the case that overall the accusations of large-scale Antisemitism are best understood as gaslighting. 

Beinart makes three points. The first is that the best data show that, once attitudes towards Jews as a people and attitudes towards the state of Israel are separated, universities are not more Antisemitic than the general population, but they are more Antizionist. Antisemitism is understood as prejudicial and violent attitudes toward Jews as a people. Antizionism consists in negative attitudes toward the state of Israel. Distinctions among these concepts are blurred: they are not fully exclusive. It is fair to say that some of those who on the face of it hold Antizionist views do so as a way of promoting Antisemitism. But a  from the University of Chicago shows that college students by and large are capable of distinguishing between hatred of Jews and criticisms of Israel. They are not as Antisemitic as the general American public is on average while also being more Antizionist. As someone who has spent extended amounts of time talking with pro-Palestinian protesters and others with views on the matter on our campuses, I can confirm that most of them have been able to separate these perspectives throughout. 

The second point is that the epicenter of Antisemitic attitudes in the U.S. is on the far right.  by Eitan Hersh at Tufts and Laura Royden at Harvard finds that Antisemitic attitudes are most strongly present specifically among young people on the far right. This already leads me to Beinart’s third point: People on the far right are likely part of Trump’s coalition, and the Trump coalition itself has drawn on Antisemitic tropes, as summarized . These tropes have included depicting prominent Jewish politicians and businessmen in ways that eerily resemble political machinations from dark times. If the finger points at large-scale Antisemitism, it should point away from our campuses. 

So large-scale charges of Antisemitism are best understood as gaslighting much as Vance’s accusations in Munich are. Meanwhile, thousands of students on our campuses will live in fear that what is happening to Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia will happen to them: that their lives will get upended because they protested against the Netanyahu government. Meanwhile Harvard – America’s oldest and most visible university – is  to safeguard its finances not in response to difficult economic circumstances (as was done five years ago during Covid), but in response to threats by its own government. As Beinart rightly concludes, all those who echo large-scale accusations of Antisemitism on our campuses for reasons of their own – perhaps only out of a well-meaning intention to make life safer for Jews – should reflect on whether they are not drawn into something rather sinister, and in the process, accidentally support efforts that will definitely not make life safer for Jews nor create stable alliances. We should not expect this government to make credible proposals for peace in the Middle East because the 47^th president is unwilling or incapable to take Palestinians seriously as human beings and therefore will also not be able to make Israel secure in strategic perspective.

Let me conclude with some remarks on a related topic: that our campuses have a strong liberal bias. It is important to understand some of the trends in the background. As I argue , one whole brand of conservatism incorporates a rejection of moral equality either among humans or among citizens (core commitments of the human rights movement). This brand was traditionally the norm of what conservatism was understood to be: it kept certain people in power, and others out of power. Typically, in much of the Western hemisphere that meant a certain group of white men hung on to power to the exclusion of women, people of color, and other white men. This kind of conservatism was present at universities because faculty tended to come from the ruling circles (broadly conceived). But over time thinking people have increasingly realized that denials of moral equality among humans or citizens are hard to sustain intellectually. This point explains most of what is meant by the disappearance of conservatives at top universities. Another group of conservatives that is not often found on campuses like Harvard is those committed to Trump’s election lies. That is because there is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. 

People on the left do not think places like Harvard lack conservatives. What they mean in this context by “conservatives” is either one of two other groups. On the one hand there are those committed to moral equality who nonetheless take that to be consistent with considerable social and economic inequalities. This is a common view among academics at Harvard, but often they do not self-describe as conservative because they do not want to be run together with groups mentioned earlier. But the left still sees them this way. Then there are many who come to Harvard as students or faculty because being here makes it easier to achieve or maintain prominent social status. Those too would easily be identified by the left as conservatives but again might not see themselves that way. All this should be kept in mind as people assess the thesis that campuses, especially Harvard, lack ideological diversity. 

In my experience, dislike of institutions like Harvard is a conservative elite phenomenon, something pushed especially by the kinds of conservatives that for good reason are not well-represented on campus.

In my experience, dislike of institutions like Harvard is a conservative elite phenomenon, something pushed especially by the kinds of conservatives that for good reason are not well-represented on campus. Such a dislike is evident in Pete Hegseth’s performative act of “ because he was allegedly steeped in “critical theory” while a student at ����vlog����. I was teaching in the core curriculum of the Master of Public Policy (MPP) program the whole time Hegseth was enrolled. Back then, he would have needed a magnifying glass to find classes in the course catalogue touching on what is normally meant by “critical theory.” They would have been small, and they would have been electives. Unlike Hegseth and the right-wing elite pushing the Antisemitism gaslighting, in my experience most Americans – all over the political spectrum – seem to be proud to live in a country that has advanced knowledge like no other in history. Not that Harvard could not do better in many ways but Americans have good reason to be proud of its oldest and most visible university. We should continue to work very hard to reward their trust. And we will. 

Mathias Risse, Faculty Director, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy