On June 30, a task force set up by the U.S. federal government, aimed at combatting antisemitism, published an open letter to Harvard University. "Harvard University is in violent violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin," the letter alleges. "The enclosed Notice of Violation details the findings of fact supporting a conclusion that Harvard has been in some cases deliberately indifferent, and in others has been a willful participant in anti-Semitic harassment of Jewish students, faculty, and staff."

The letter continues to outline the task force's findings, including that a majority of Jewish students feel unsafe; Jewish and Israeli students have been physically assaulted; and antisemitic imagery and slogans have been prominent on campus. The letter concludes by stating that failure to adequately change Harvard's culture "will result in the loss of all federal financial resources". The university, meanwhile, has told reporters that it "is far from indifferent on this issue and strongly disagrees with the government's findings."

So how much of this has to do with Jews, really? And how much is President Donald Trump's administration simply taking aim at left-leaning, Democratic-aligned instutitions?

David Weinfeld—a Harvard alumnus, former columnist with The CJN and current associate professor of world religions at Rowan University—joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to analyze the issue, and how the university's symbolic status makes it an ideal focal point for a larger assault on America's higher education system.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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When Zohran Mamdani announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City in late 2024, he flew under the radar of voters and critics. But as his campaign gained steam—notably for arguably radical proposals such as free bus fares, municipally owned grocery stores, and a $30 minimum wage—he wound up overtaking his chief rival, Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, and winning the Democratic candidacy for an election that will take place Nov. 4, 2025.

Some of New York City's Jews started to fret. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, is a vocal ally of Palestinians and a critic of Israel, promising to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were to visit the city, as per the International Criminal Court's arrest warrants for the Israeli leader.

On this week's episode of The Jewish Angle, Phoebe Maltz Bovy—who grew up in Manhattan—speaks to Aryeh Cohen-Wade, an opinion editor at The Hill, to unpack Mamdani's background, from his college days as a co-founder of his campus's chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine to his role as a state assemblyman. They examine how his youth, charisma and progressive policies have inspired voters—while angering others—and whether a Mamdani mayoralty could herald a new era of Muslim-Jewish solidarity in the face of rising right-wing authoritarianism.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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Hadley Freeman often goes back and forth, in her head, about Israel and Palestine. One the one hand, Israel has killed more than 57,000 Gazans; on the other hand, can you trust those figures when they come from Hamas? But what other number can you trust, if Israel refuses to allow in international reporters? Then again, can you even trust outsider news media anyway, or are they blatantly biased?

And on, and on.

This internal dialogue formed the basis for a compelling new article she wrote in The Times in the U.K, entitled, "A conversation every Jew I know is having". In it, Freeman quickly unpacks the inherent nuance and historical lens that Jewish onlookers—especially in the Diaspora—bring to a conversation dominated by loud, reductive activists.

Freeman returns to The CJN Podcasts to discuss this piece, making the internal debates external, with Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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On Mar. 3, Ellie Avishai hopped on a call with a senior colleague from the University of Austin in Texas. She was shocked when the colleague informed her a recent LinkedIn post of hers—an anodyne post of maybe 100 words, mostly a quotation and congratulation, which she had not given much thought to previously—had gotten her into big trouble with a university funder. In her post, which dealt with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, she wrote that "we can have criticisms of DEI without wanting to tear down the whole concept of diversity and inclusion."

That ran contrary to some higher-ups at the university. They tore up their contract with Avishai's educational organization, the Mill Institute, severing ties with Avishai and her team the very day she got the call.

Avishai, who lives in Toronto, recently published an account of this in Quilette, which brought its own wave of flak online—did she not know the UATX, whose website says they "champion academic freedom," was right-wing coded? That she would have to toe a line that pleases its ideological backers? But as Avishai explains to The CJN's opinion editor, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, on The Jewish Angle, the idea of advocating a hardline political stance in a classroom is entirely antithetical to the Mill Institute's vision of education.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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• Subscribe to The Jewish Angle

The mainstream North American Jewish Diaspora is at a crossroads. Down one path lies U.S. President Donald Trump, American Evangelicals and legacy Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and American Israel Public Affairs Committee, staunchly defending Israel to the general public; down the other, small-L liberal Jews find themselves awkwardly situated between arguing for Israel's right to exist while not endorsing the government's actions, and lacking significant fundraising capabilities to plea their case more broadly.

In some ways, this schism is reminiscent of the early days of Zionism itself, where politics and money influence public opinion and government action—and each sends followers toward starkly different outcomes. Steering the dialogue are campus protesters, like those at Columbia University, and President Trump, who uses antisemitism as a veil for deportations and crackdowns against liberal higher-education. This divide threatens to reshape the political identity of the United States, undermining its long-held commitment to liberal democracy.

That's the takeaway of a recent article, "The Coming Jewish Civil War Over Donald Trump", published in The New Republic by Eric Alterman, a distinguished professor of English and journalism at the City University of New York. Alterman joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to discuss this pivotal political moment and what comes next.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump tried to revoke Harvard University's ability to enroll international students—a move that was soon blocked by a federal judge. So, instead, on May 26, Trump floated the idea of taking US$3 billion of grant money, earmarked for Harvard's scientific and engineering research deemed of national importance, and rerouting it to trade schools.

Nevermind the logistics—the Republican president has waged an all-out war on Ivy League education, and Jews are, once again, caught in the middle. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, has said the White House is "holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus."

But if you ask American Jewish academics, they'll tell you the "fighting antisemitism" argument is a smokescreen to advance a different political agenda. "I don't think the Trump administration's response to it is anything other than a fig leaf for its attempt to crack down on the university writ large," says David Schraub, an associate professor at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, on this week's episode of The Jewish Angle. "We see that because when antisemitism, for whatever reason, isn't available to them as a talking point on the given campus, they just switch to something else. The consistent point is the crackdown, and the justification comes and goes."

Listen to this week's episode for more on how Jews are finding themselves used as pawns in a wider political struggle on modern American campuses.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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Over the last year, odds are good that you've seen what's been dubbed "AI slop"—unhinged, nonsensical "art" generated by artificial intelligence tools. Maybe you've seen a bizarre cinematic animated mini-movie on Facebook, surreal pseudo-photographs on Instagram, or propagandistic images on what was once known as Twitter, now X. After seeing enough of this, a realization dawned on Jacob Silverman, a journalist in New York who covers technology and politics: if it's machines making this art, and bots who are showering them with likes, where do humans fit in?

The answer is that actual living people are being squeezed out of what Silverman has, in a recent Financial Times article, deemed the "hostile internet". Elon Musk's X will sell advertisements, and authority, to absolutely anyone; AI-powered chatbots are worryingly easy to manipulate; and it has never been easier for people suffering from mental illness to find positive reinforcement of their ideas, both from distant humans and AI. None of this is to the betterment of humanity.

Silverman joins Phoebe Maltz Bovy on The Jewish Angle to discuss these trends of digital devolution, and how we can navigate these murky waters on a sinking ship.

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

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Yoel Inbar rose to prominence in the fall of 2023, when he was in the process of getting hired at the University of California, Los Angeles. He didn't end up getting the job—and it was transparently about a podcast episode he'd recorded a year earlier, in which he criticized "diversity statements". The mandated letters have become part of the academic hiring process, page-long essays explaining how the candidate would contribute to campus diversity. Inbar wrote one for UCLA—and has been involved in hiring processes, finding them useful tools—but has been outspoken of the concept as a blanket rule, along with the broader scope of diversity, equtity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Now an associate professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, Inbar studies morality and judgments, particularly with respect to belief systems, political ideologies and social attitudes. While his flare-up with UCLA happened before Hamas's attack on Oct. 7, he has since followed closely how poorly designed DEI programs are for adhering to students with differing views on political and social issues—like the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Inbar sat down with Phoebe Maltz Bovy to share his story and discuss how the campus atmosphere has shifted for Jewish students and faculty in the last two years.

Related links

• Yoel Inbar's website and podcast, Two Psychologists Four Beers
• "Saskatchewan professor blogs his way through mandatory anti-racism 'boot camp'" (National Post)

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy
• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman
• Music: "Gypsy Waltz" by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective

Support our show

• Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
• Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
• Subscribe to The Jewish Angle