How Prof. Andrew Pessin documented the rise of campus antisemitism

When reflecting on his decade-long experience with campus antisemitism, philosophy professor Andrew Pessin sees himself as a canary in the coal mine. In 2014, he was among the first to experience the toxic atmosphere developing in academia. Since then, he has documented its malignant spread from the margins to become mainstream thinking, culminating in the explosive protests that erupted on US college campuses after October 7.

“I’ve been watching this happening in slow motion for years and writing about it,” says Pessin. “It didn’t surprise me in the least; the trajectory was so clear – this was the next step. Yet the reality still proved shocking.”

A prolific scholar with 17 books of philosophy and fiction to his name, Pessin has recently published Israel Breathes. World Condemns, a two-volume collection of his articles and essays. The compilation traces the ideological evolution and incidents that gave rise to today’s campus protests and encampments.

“They document the stages by which an Islamist jihadi terrorist group massacred the civilians of a democracy, and the dominant campus response was to blame the democracy,” writes Pessin, a tenured professor at Connecticut College, a small private liberal arts institution with some 2,000 students. “They document, perhaps for later historians, how Jew-hatred has moved from the fringe into outright dominance on campuses and the infosphere. The primary focus is on the campus, on the many students and professors who, through the lens of their ideologies, have come to see the mass murder of Jews as the moral high ground. But, of course, what starts on campus, what is incubated on campus, does not and has not stayed on campus. It’s in our cities, on our streets, all over the Internet, permeates the media, and this intifada against the Jews is now fully globalized.”

With his laid-back style, wit, and sense of humor, the bespectacled Pessin was a popular philosophy professor at the college until 10 years ago when he found himself at the center of a firestorm. Though aware of Jewish professors being marginalized for their pro-Israel stance, he hadn’t imagined it could affect him – until he became the target of a coordinated digital attack by pro-Palestinian students, sparked by a deliberate misinterpretation of his words.

Pro-Palestinian protesters march in front of University of Michigan president’s residence. (credit: REUTERS/EMILY ELCONIN)

The incident began with Pessin’s 2014 Facebook post criticizing Hamas during the IDF’s Operation Protective Edge. His comparison of Hamas terrorism – not Palestinians – to “a rabid pit bull chained in a cage” that when freed “comes roaring bounding out, snarling, going for the throat” would prove darkly prophetic, given the events of October 7.

Seven months later, in a coordinated attack, three editorials appeared in the Connecticut College student newspaper accusing Pessin of racism and promoting Palestinian genocide, deliberately stripping his words of context.

They were written by a Muslim student active in Students for Justice in Palestine and others majoring in the college’s Global Islamic Studies program. The student paper published the articles without asking Pessin for comment, violating a basic tenet taught in “Journalism 101.”

The campaign of vilification spread rapidly. Academic departments and even the university president fell in line, condemning Pessin’s allegedly “hateful” rhetoric. The student paper’s editor, who did not contact Pessin for comment, launched an online petition demanding administrative action against his “racism.” Death threats poured in from around the world.

Pessin took a two-and-a-half-year leave of absence from campus but found unexpected purpose in the crisis.

The avalanche of supportive emails he received from Jews worldwide and a petition on his behalf signed by more than 10,000 people inspired him to become a foot soldier in what he calls “the cognitive war” of information and narrative. He began reporting on campus antisemitism for the Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner and authored several books on the subject, finding himself compelled to defend the Jewish people.

“I had a new mission. I was energized,” he says. He began scouring the Internet daily for campus anti-Israel incidents.

Teaching Zionism at Connecticut College

Upon returning to Connecticut College, he began teaching courses on Zionism.

“I am clearly, unapologetically, and unabashedly a Zionist, and when I teach the first-year seminar called Zionism and Anti-Zionism, I have to do my best to present the other side. I’m a pariah on campus; no one will speak to me, literally no one,” Pessin says matter-of-factly during a Zoom interview.

On the wall of his home office is a quote from Isaiah 62: “For Zion’s sake, I will not keep silent; for Jerusalem’s sake, I will not rest.”

Pessin says, “When I step back and look at the collection of my writings over the past 15 years, I see how antisemitism on campus developed and grew more extreme in each passing year. Back in 2010, there were a few BDS campaigns on campus that were easy to dismiss. These volumes offer documentation and analysis of a trajectory of this growing hatred about Israel and the Jews – and make no mistake, it’s about the Jews.”

According to Pessin, the convergence of the BDS movement with the progressive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) woke ideology “created this perfect storm whose lies get bigger and broader over the years. All that was needed was for Hamas to attack to take the masks off.”

Back on his Connecticut College campus, things have not improved.

“For the first couple of days after October 7, I had these moments of naiveté where I thought the whole campus was going to apologize to me because, obviously, I was proven right. It didn’t happen except for one case,” says Pessin.

Last spring, some 90 faculty and staff at Connecticut College, almost half the full-time faculty, signed a statement of solidarity with the university encampments, citing “Israeli apartheid and Jewish supremacy...”

Pessin was the only faculty member to openly voice his objection to what he calls “Protocols of the Elders of Zion-level delusional antisemitic rhetoric” in a letter published in the student newspaper.

“It is a sad day when some 90 Conn College faculty members can publicly sign a statement accusing Jews of ‘Jewish supremacy’; Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels would be proud to see his trope so widely adopted.”

In an ironic twist, Katherine Bergeron, the Connecticut College president who did not stand up for Pessin when he was under attack, was herself “canceled” and forced to resign her position in the spring of 2023 for having planned to hold a college fundraising event at Palm Beach’s exclusive Everglades Club that had formerly excluded Blacks and Jews.

A musician, the former president wrote a song, “No Common Ground,” which she uploaded to YouTube two months ago in which she acknowledges that Pessin was right.

If there is one point that this collection of essays is trying to get across, says Pessin, it might be this:

“One must take a good, long, hard, and clear look at the wall and see what is written there. We look back on the 1930s and wonder why so many Jews stayed in Europe. It’s because we have the benefit of hindsight. I now see the writing so clearly on the wall. It’s either banal or painfully insightful to remark that the Nazi Holocaust didn’t happen overnight. One wonders if future historians will see our current trajectory of rising and spreading antisemitism as clearly, and wonder the same thing about us.”

As antisemitism continues to surge globally, Pessin’s two-volume collection Israel Breathes. World Condemns offers more than historical documentation – it serves as a warning about the consequences of institutional silence. “The question isn’t just what future historians will say about this moment,” says Pessin. “It’s what we choose to do with these warnings now.”■

To learn more about Andrew Pessin, visit his website at www.andrewpessin.com.

Proceeds from the sale of the books will go to support Israel.