Normalization of bad schools
Exploring our response to normalized problematic behaviour on campus
"But Berkley has always been one of the worst for this stuff" she said dismissively.
"Always," I enjoined, "it attracts too many crusaders"
We were discussing a recent policy change from several of the largest student organizations at Berkley's law school to ensure that no student or speaker with even the slightest Zionist inclination was able to join or present. The rules imposed by these clubs are so overbroad that all Jewish students would effectively be banned from the clubs.
It's wrong, horrifying, and as a recent JD graduate, deeply saddening that law students at a high ranking university would do this. And it's also completely unsurprising to those of who are familiar with what takes place on campus. We have become desensitized to Antisemitism on campus, even those of who have been on the receiving end of it. For all the work we do to push back and push for change, our first reaction so often is, "well yeah, but that's [insert school name], they've always been bad".
Schools like UC Berkley in the US and York University in Canada need to say no when student groups present them with these policies. University administration needs to be the adults in the room and just say no or cut funding. It shouldn't be a discussion or negotiation when a club imposes a racist policy. The fact that it is, is consistently baffling. It is a discussion I have engaged in many times, several of them here, and not one I wish to dive deeper into today.
Today, I want to talk about the normalization of viewing certain schools as “bad schools” for Antisemitism. This phenomenon is not dissimilar from the stories I have heard from women in the workforce from the 1980s and 1990s where sexual harassment was a frequent occurrence and where some workplaces received the honorary designation of being a bad place to be female.
With little hesitation, when we hear stories about Antisemitism on certain campuses, the first response is to say, “well of course it happened there, that school has always been a problem”. But in having this reaction, we are, on some level, declaring these schools to be lost causes - we are accepting that these are not the fights we can win, but the ones to steer clear of. We are resigning ourselves to or perhaps even accepting that this is the way things are. While things never should have been allowed to get to a place where any campus can gain this reputation, this is nevertheless where we find ourselves.
Surprising though it may be, I firmly believe there is little use in attempting to determine why some schools became such hotbeds for hatred. Doing so, while perhaps interesting for the purposes of understanding these progressions, does little to alleviate the circumstances on these campuses. What would be more beneficial, would be to look at these schools and say: “This has always been bad. How do I keep it from getting worse and how do we take steps to make it better?”. It is too easy to be pessimistic when staring down deeply ingrained practices and behaviours. But of course, just because something has been the case for a long time, does not make it right. That Berkley has been a bad campus for Antisemitism for a long time should not excuse what is going on now. It should, however, inspire us to take action to change the status quo rather than resigning ourselves to it.