How anti-Semitism breeds on university campuses

It’s often said that anti-Semitism is a shape-shifter, seen best in the way that the right-wing have painted the Jews as rootless revolutionaries and the left-wing have portrayed them as rapacious capitalists. It’s also grimly notable that – unlike prejudice against many other ethnic groups – it’s been equally appealing to the young and the old, the over-privileged and the under-privileged, the educated and the uneducated. But we’re now at the weird point where the young, over-privileged, educated are the drivers of anti-Semitism on the campuses of this country.

Jew hatred in academia is nothing new. The first book burnings in Nazi Germany were organised in 1933 by students on university campuses all across the country. Quota systems – limiting the number of Jewish students allowed into universities – were widespread in European and North American countries during the 19th and even into the 20th century.