The Communist Roots of Campus Illiberalism

The rise in antisemitism since Oct. 7 has echoes of Soviet propaganda and the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

The rise in antisemitism on college campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel has ignited debates over the limits of free speech and the type of environment that universities want to create for students. However, the crisis in higher education runs much deeper than the rules governing protests or universities’ better-late-than-never embrace of institutional neutrality. The root of America’s collegiate ills, such as the reemergence of the “oldest hatred,” lies in the ideological capture of students and faculty.

Antisemitism has long been a feature of ideologically closed societies. Most notable is the 1930-1945 Nazi regime that produced the horrors of the Holocaust. A horror in which 6 million innocent Jews were murdered simply because they were Jews. However, antisemitism was also a major element of the 20th century’s other great totalitarian regime: the Soviet Union.