University of Wisconsin-Madison Calls Jewish Students's Fear "Exaggerated"

Two years ago the university raised $50k in private donations to remove a racist rock.

Monday I shared how pro-Hamas protesters staged aggressive demonstrations outside of the Hillel at the University of Wisconsin-Madison which caused Jewish students to fear for their safety. In a terrifying new trend across the country Jewish students are being targeted: they’ve been barricaded into libraries, targeted on campus, are battling antisemitism, and feel unsafe.

I shared with permission one unaltered (except to crop out student’s name) screenshot.

Other students also posted to their own social media accounts and included video, which I did not share, because the students felt unsafe. Police were called. The university admitted that tensions were at the point where police had to be called.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison responded by basically calling the students liars and their experiences “significantly exaggerated:”

Instead of condemning antisemitism is the University of Wisconsin-Madison instead calling its Jewish students liars? The ones that the university admits had to call the police because pro-Hamas protestors in front of Hillel made the students feel unsafe? If the students are “exaggerating” then why did police respond? Does the university feel that its similarly “exaggerated” to increase patrols on and near campus?

The university could have just strongly and unequivocally condemned antisemitism and not insulted its students. Instead it’s gone into damage control mode:

The university has the students in a difficult spot. The students have to live there. The university needs the controversy to blow over. The students are not in a position of power here — but the university better think again before downplaying these very real fears or attempting to accuse people of misrepresenting, by merely reposting, the students’s verbatim experiences of a very public event.

The university and its surrogates are at least aware of how heinous it would look were they to call the students liars outright, so instead they try to make an issue of the credibility of those who shared it, as a safer alternative:

The only way for these denials to be true are for the students to be liars. The students are not liars. Considering that the students were posting images and video (and who knows what they recorded that wasn’t shared) that seems wildly unlikely.

This is the same university that two years ago spent $50k to remove a rock that the university said was racist. Today, if Jewish students experience antisemitism, they are “significantly exaggerating” and making “false claims.”

Shame on the university and these people who want throw students under the bus in an effort to spare the adults running the university from a public relations storm.

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