When Christians and Jews United Outside Columbia’s Campus

Looking across the national landscape, one cannot help but wonder what happened to our shared national image. Gone are the times of old when Americans sought to expand our great experiment across the continent and gone are the days when people of faith led institutions.

With few exceptions, most institutions of higher education, entertainment, and government are led by a cadre of post-modernists who believe there is no essential truth or objective morality. Their modern sense of subjective moralism renders all previous generations immoral. This is part of why we see American universities beset with students and faculty who burn the American flag and cheer for the intersectional redemption that comes with the “anti-imperialist” revolution from “Palestine” to California.

However, there are some who are pushing back.

Last week, the Philos Project went to Columbia University to demonstrate solidarity with the Jewish students. The Philos Project’s mission is to “promote positive Christian engagement in the Near East by creating leaders, building community, and taking action in the spirit of the Hebraic Tradition.” Susanna Hoffman, 24, said, “We believe that as Christians, our roots are in Hebraic tradition. We are trying to restore the values that we are losing in the West as evidenced by everything that has been happening at Columbia University and the campuses across America.” When asked how she thinks we can restore Judeo-Christian values, she replied, “We believe it starts with Christians uniting with Jews because that is the bedrock of our civilization. We are trying to educate Christians to understand that foundation so they can speak out against the values proclaimed on these campuses.”

Those values are that all men are created in the image of G-d and, as such, are inherently blessed with rights — rights which no government can remove from the people — and that the government’s sole role is to help guide and order a society to allow it to flourish in a manner commensurate with G-d’s moral and ethical code. This heritage commands us to love our neighbor and look after the needy. It also instructs us on how to order our everyday lives.

Contrary to postmodernist thought, this enlightened tradition does not mean individuals should be selfish and abuse their freedoms with wanton abandon, but that freedom should be used to build a productive and just society. Unfortunately, the current political climate has misrepresented these beliefs as those held solely by conservatives, but this is far from the truth. It was JFK, a liberal president, who said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

As the President of Jewish Students for America, I work to ensure that a bipartisan group of students dedicated to combating anti-Semitism across our nation do so with these founding values at the center of our mission. To rebuild this nation, we must reconnect with our fellow man and recognize our shared heritage. Only by partnering can Jewish and Christian Americans rebuild our nation’s heritage because America’s heritage is the sum of our shared values.

I have personally seen many college campuses where the lack of moral clarity from the administration served as the primary cause of anti-Semitic incidents. What’s more, this lack of moral clarity from these institutions corrodes the next generation into a misguided worldview that abandons this rich tradition.

Our group advocates for more specific legal measures that will help combat some of the causes of anti-Semitism. For example, we lobby Congress to withhold federal funding from universities that don’t uniformly apply roles of conduct, adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, and enforce immigration laws. However, to succeed in the long run, our country needs a moral reckoning. Only then will our universities and other institutions recognize what is right and wrong.

America’s founders envisioned a republic founded on the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” They continuously emphasized the centrality of G-d and morality. Indeed, it was John Adams who declared that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

We must return these principles to our fellow citizens and institutions.

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