This commentary was written by Dr. Felicia Kornbluh, professor of history and of gender, sexuality and women’s studies. Kornbluh is an affiliated faculty member in Jewish studies.
On Sept. 15, I was standing in a taxi line at LaGuardia Airport when I saw that the president of my university had written a letter to the community about a federal investigation into possible civil rights violations of Jewish students on campus. I was stunned by the tone and content.
Initial news reports about the federal investigation, brought by the Department of Education and authorized by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, had left me with mixed feelings, as had the very few conversations I had on campus or at synagogue when the incidents under investigation occurred.
I wondered if UVM was really as bad for Jewish students and other community members as the complaint alleged, or as news reports based on the complaint represented it to be. What kind of data collection methodology was used to reach the conclusion that in 2021 UVM saw, as reported, the highest number of antisemitic incidents of any North American college campus?
I certainly believed that students were telling the truth about what they experienced. But I also feared that politically right-of-center advocates might be using those experiences to make an example of a university and state that have wide reputations for progressive politics — including, in the case of our senior U.S. senator, progressive Jewish politics. Even with those reservations, however, President Suresh Garimella’s response made me think that there was something amiss at the University of Vermont.
For those who have not been following the situation closely, or have not had the opportunity to study the history of antisemitism, allow me to explain a few of the ways in which President Garimella’s letter to the UVM community struck troubling chords, at least to this Jewish professor who also teaches, among other material, American Jewish history:
The president opened his letter with broad-brush assertions about the veracity of the claims that underlay the argument that students’ civil rights were violated. These worked, he insisted, to paint UVM in a “patently false light,” were made by an “anonymous third party,” and made for an “uninformed narrative.”
I do not know all of the ins and outs of the university’s past or ongoing response to the reported allegations of antisemitism on campus — and this is the central issue in the federal complaint, the university response, since the university is legally obliged under the law to ensure that it is accessible to students from racial and religious minority groups on an equal basis with those in dominant groups. However, I do know that one persistent rhetorical strategy of antisemites in Europe and the United States has been to say that there is no antisemitism — to discount and aggressively deny the observed and felt reality of Jews and their non-Jewish allies.
President Garimella continued in a similar mode, underlining his belief that the university always responds appropriately to allegations that the institution has not done enough to protect the rights of historically oppressed populations. “We denounce hateful actions,” he wrote, “and respond briskly and decisively whenever those responsible are identified.”
Unfortunately, in the light of an ongoing federal investigation that seeks to discover whether the university did or did not act appropriately when it learned of “hateful actions” — and in the face of reports by members of the university community that it did not — this landed for me like gaslighting. The point of gaslighting, in the case of antisemitism as well as in other arenas, is to get people who experience something disturbing to doubt their own interpretations of reality, as well as to intimidate and silence them so that they do not report what they know or attempt to change policies that promote or allow bias, discrimination or violence.
That line in particular concerned me because it seemed to be enacting a kind of legalistic verbal jujitsu, more political wordsmithing than heartfelt response to the pain of some UVM students. Perhaps it is technically true that the UVM administration habitually “denounce[s]” instances of antisemitism: Is that a sufficient way to discharge its legal responsibilities, or to care for the young people (and not-so-young people, like the faculty) whose thriving is the heart of the university’s mission? Perhaps it is even true that the central administration is in the habit of “respond[ing] briskly and decisively whenever those responsible are identified” — although from the president’s assertion later in the letter that his administration bore no responsibility to act when a prominent student activist group barred “Zionists” from participating, it does not appear entirely true. Is that all the administration can do, or can be expected to do? Whose burden is it to identify “those responsible” if not officers of the university?
Unfortunately, President Garimella’s letter left this reader with the sense that he and his administration were aggrieved by the federal complaint and investigation. This, too, rang tones that are familiar from the history of world antisemitism and from revanchist politics in the modern United States. He identified the main problem at issue as the existence of a government effort to find out if civil rights have been violated at UVM, and, undergirding that effort, a set of student reports. It is this, he wrote, and not any insensitivity, bias or negligence on the part of people affiliated with the university, that “has been harmful to UVM” as well as to “our Jewish students faculty, staff, and alumni.”
American political history has taught us that the reaction to an allegation of misdeeds often matters more than any misdeeds themselves. In fact, institutional reactions have often been the most revealing aspects of important controversies — and have led ultimately to greater understanding and ameliorative action. In this instance, the insensitive response matters as much as the incidents under investigation. I can only hope that a serious reckoning with the missteps in that response will lead to understanding how prevalent antisemitism is at the University of Vermont and whether the university administration has appropriate mechanisms in place to address it.
