"For humanities faculty, the past five years have felt like a relentless assault on our ability to do our jobs. We have endured COVID, generative AI, budget cuts, and bitter fights over the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel's war on Gaza. At times it has been a challenge to remain human, let alone humanistic: to calm the nervous system enough to read a book, refine an argument, or show up for our colleagues and our increasingly fragile students."
"Now we are facing the Trump administration's effort to gut-renovate our universities under the pretext of "combatting antisemitism." With local enablers paving the way, that destruction may yet succeed. In February of this year, a few colleagues and I co-founded a group called Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff (CJFS), which now has more than 200 members on more than two dozen campuses."
"We recognize that Jewish safety is inseparable from the safety of all people, and we work to foster academic environments that reduce antisemitism by treating educators as partners, not as suspects. Fearmongering Versus Tea As a Jewish professor of Arabic at Boston University, I mentor students with many different identities: Arab, Jewish, both or neither."
Humanities faculty endured five years of consecutive crises—COVID, generative AI, budget cuts, and polarized conflicts—making teaching, scholarship, and student care difficult. Political efforts framed as combating antisemitism threaten structural changes to universities that could damage academic institutions. Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff (CJFS) formed in February, growing to over 200 members across more than two dozen campuses and connecting to a National Campus Jewish Alliance. CJFS links Jewish safety to the safety of all, advocates treating educators as partners rather than suspects, and provides mentoring, trusted reading material, and communal support for students processing violence and uncertainty.
Read at Inside Higher Ed | Higher Education News, Events and Jobs
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