Nearly forty years ago, Professor Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago wrote one of these seminal books that end up becoming a permanent fixture of the cultural discourse, a la George Orwell’s “1984.”
Bloom’s book was titled “The Closing of the American Mind,” and one reason for its lasting impact is that it has become more and more true with the passage of time. If Bloom was railing against a shrinking appreciation for the search for truth in American academia, what would he say now when politically-driven propaganda often substitutes for truth?
We hear a lot about the billions thrown around by foreign players to buy influence, which is a serious concern. But equally serious is the quiet spread of propaganda in college classrooms that poisons the minds of our future leaders.
Exhibit A in this propaganda machine is the undermining of Jews and Israel.
Put yourself in the shoes of the typical American college student whose knowledge of Israel revolves around words like genocide and apartheid, and whose knowledge of Palestinians revolves around one singular identity: helpless victims of big bad Israel.
Imagine how vulnerable these students become when they enter classrooms and are confronted with propaganda that reinforces the anti-Israel cliches they hear on the street. Far from the bright lights of the loud protests that get all the attention, these classrooms are the real crime scenes, and the perpetrators are the faculty who camouflage their anti-Israel bias with innocent-sounding titles like “Mideast Studies” or Cultural Studies.”
But who’s monitoring these propaganda labs? Certainly not the universities themselves.
At least one watchdog group has been digging into it. A 2024 report by the Amcha Initiative exposed a group called the Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), a national network with over 160 chapters established after Hamas’ October 7 attack.
According to the study, “The primary mission of FJP chapters is to use their members’ academic positions and departmental resources to actively promote the academic boycott of Israel (academic BDS) by engaging in actions to purge their campuses of Zionism and Zionists.”
The report added that “FJPs are colluding with and encouraging anti-Israel student and departmental activity: Nearly 70% cosponsored anti-Israel events and/or co-authored statements with one or more anti-Zionist student organizations and more than one-quarter co-authored anti-Israel statements and/or cosponsored events with official university academic departments.”
In sum, the report concluded that “FJP chapters played a pivotal role in the explosion of antisemitic violence, anti-Israel protests and BDS activity” we saw in the wake of Oct. 7.
Remember, we’re talking about faculty here—not activists. Of course, when one sees their nefarious work, it’s hard not to conclude that many of them are activists disguised as faculty.
Who’s pouring the most foreign money into our campuses? According to a report by the Middle East Forum (MEF), since 2012 “Qatar has granted $6.25 billion dollars to U.S. higher education institutions, making it the single largest foreign donor to American higher education, through which it yields significant (and dangerous) influence.”
That big money comes with brazen chutzpah. According to the MEF, “As public scrutiny intensified in the aftermath of October 7 over Qatar’s role in promoting anti-American and antisemitic attitudes on college campuses, the emirate’s grants to universities only increased, with a record $980 million in contributions to U.S. schools between January 2023 and October 2024.”
In the old days, donors to universities were expected to share some common values. If they didn’t believe, for example, in the basic principles and ideals on which America was founded, their money was tainted and not worth accepting.
Evidently, on U.S. campuses today, money talks more than ever, even money that comes from bad actors. That foreign influence is bad enough, but when it starts to poison the minds of America’s future leaders, not just against Jews and Israel but against America and the West, the money itself become poisoned.
Universities have an obligation to open student minds to the complicated search for truth. Whether propaganda is driven by foreign money or otherwise, whether it has to do with Jews or Israel or others, propaganda is indoctrination– the very opposite of truth. Allan Bloom warned us many years ago that the real poisoning of the mind is when it becomes closed off to that search for truth. That has never been more true.
It’s time universities open their minds and listen.
