Dr. Stacy Gallin joins Brittany Lewis on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss protests and encampments at universities nationwide, the rise in antisemitism on college campuses and what it means for the future of ethical leadership.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hi, everybody. I'm Brittany Lewis with Forbes Breaking News. Joining me now is Dr. Stacey
00:07Gallin, founding director of the France Institute for Ethics, Human Rights and the Holocaust.
00:12Dr. Gallin, thank you so much for joining me. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited
00:16to speak with you today. A really important topic. You joined my colleague Ali Jackson Jolly
00:21about six months ago, right after October 7th. Now you're here today. And when you joined my
00:27colleague back then, you talked about a lack of ethical leadership and how your institute's goal
00:32is to remember the past and protect the future. So before we dive into the conversation,
00:37can you talk about how that relates to the moment we're in now?
00:40Yes, it's really important to understand that history plays an important role in our current
00:46events. When we talk about as an institute, remembering the past to protect the future,
00:52we're talking about understanding the importance of the role that history has played historically.
00:57In where we are right now. Today is Yom HaShoah, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day. And it's
01:02important on this day, more so I would say than other days, to really understand that everything
01:08is connected. So what we're experiencing right now, the unprecedented rates of anti-Semitism.
01:15The last time that we saw something like that was in the 1930s and the 1940s. It started with
01:21words. It didn't start with the killing of six million Jews. It started with many of the same
01:26things that we're seeing now. And of course you want to be cautious and not overuse the Nazi
01:30analogy. You don't automatically want to say that what's happening today is the same as what
01:34happened then. It's not. Intent is different. You have different climate. You have different
01:40culture. And one of the main things that we have is people are standing together today and saying,
01:45no, we're not going to let this happen again. Our goal as an institute is to create ethical
01:52leaders, to create people that will stand up and speak out when they see injustice,
01:56when they see hatred, when they see anti-Semitism or identity-based hate of any kind. We need to
02:02make sure that what happened in the past does not happen again. And today, of all days,
02:07it's important to have conversations like this. And so then today where we are, we are almost at
02:12the seven month mark from October 7th. And you've recently posed this question for the Times of
02:17Israel, can academia regain its moral compass? So talk about how you think it was lost in the
02:23first place, because I'm sure you're not going to say it was lost October 7th. No, I don't think
02:29that it's ever easy to say there was one moment in time when anything started, right? It's always
02:35part of a story. There's always a beginning, a middle and an end, which is part of what I talk
02:40about in that post. But I think that October 7th was a turning point because I do think that there
02:47inflection points that we can look at. And I think that October 7th was an inflection point
02:53within the history of academia where there was an opportunity and it was a missed opportunity.
03:00There was a chance for the leaders of academia to stand up and condemn terrorism, because that's
03:07what it was. October 7th was a blatant act of terrorism. You have a terrorist group. This group
03:13was designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization back in October of 1997.
03:19They went in and they murdered 1,200 innocent Israelis whose only crime was that they were
03:26Jewish. Some of this happened at a music festival. Imagine if a music festival like Coachella here,
03:32an innocent festival where young people are going just to celebrate, to enjoy a peaceful
03:37music concert. They went in, they raped, murdered, tortured and abducted innocent
03:45civilians. There is no way that that should not have been condemned. Now, if you have leaders
03:51of an academic institution where the goal is to educate the next generation, we talk about
03:58educating them. Obviously, we want to raise a generation of ethical people. So to not be able
04:06to condemn this act is questionable. It makes you think, why? Why the hesitancy? And I think
04:13that really, to me, became the big question. And so then what did we see come the past few weeks?
04:22We saw rises in encampments across the country, rises in protests across the country. What do
04:28you think should have been done between October 7th and now then? I think that there was another
04:33major inflection point and another major, honestly, to me, another major failure. And I think that was
04:40at the beginning of December when we had these congressional hearings and the question was
04:44asked point blank, when you have calls for genocide, the genocide of the Jewish people
04:50on your campuses, does that violate your campus's code of conduct? And it was, again, another
04:56opportunity for the leaders of these academic institutions to stand up and say, yes, calls for
05:03genocide obviously violate our code of conduct. But they didn't. Again, there was hesitation. Again,
05:11there was an inability to say, that is wrong. So again, it leads you to ask the question, why?
05:18Why is there this hesitancy? Why is there this inability to say, clearly, this is morally wrong?
05:26And once you kind of start, you know, saying to yourself, huh, what's happening here? Why the
05:33lack of moral leadership? Why the inability to criticize things that are so obvious and so
05:39egregiously wrong? What is happening? And that sets a precedent. Those two events for me were
05:45really, as I said, the turning points. Those two events, when you look back and you see from where
05:51we are right now, and you say to yourself, those two points, they were the turning points. And they
05:57were, in many ways, what allowed us to get to the point where we are now. So let's talk about
06:02Columbia, because that was really what happened there, a triggering point that triggered encampments
06:08and protests all throughout the country. The president there, Shafiq, has been criticized on both
06:13ends for her reaction and her response. On one end, that she let the encampments go on too long. On the
06:18other end, she called the police on the students and the protesters. How do you think she could
06:23have responded? What would have been that ethical leadership that you're looking for?
06:28So again, I think it comes down to the idea of the double standard. Natan Sharansky,
06:36he came up with this list when he's talking about what, when you look at Israel, and you talk about,
06:41can you criticize Israel? There's the 3D list. It's delegitimization, demonization,
06:47and double standard. If October 7th had happened anywhere else, would these leaders of colleges
06:53have stood up and said, that was terrorism, and we denounce it, and we condemn it?
07:01If it was another group of people, would they have come out very strongly and said,
07:08we absolutely, calling for the genocide of any group of people violates our code of conduct?
07:14So I think when you look at it, there's a lot more that's tied up.
07:19And it takes away from what we're actually talking about, which is, you know, you have to protect the
07:24students on your campus. If you are the president of a university, your job, first and foremost,
07:29is to protect your students. You have to keep them safe. Your second job is to be able to educate
07:34them, but you can't educate them if you can't keep them safe. So I think, you know, to me,
07:38it comes down to, once you see that your students are not safe, once you start noticing these
07:44things, you have to act quickly, you have to act swiftly, to do whatever you can to keep those
07:50students safe. You can't, you can't respond to criticism. You can't let that influence you.
07:58You have to protect your students. And so if you say, well, I want to make sure that I'm protecting
08:03these students, you know, right to free speech, or these students right to protest, at what point
08:07does that impinge on the other students who are being physically or verbally harassed or beaten
08:14or stalked? There has to be a hierarchy of needs. And I think the hierarchy of needs, as I said,
08:20first and foremost, has to be keeping these students safe. And as soon as you see that these
08:24students are at risk of not being safe, at that point, you have to act to ensure that you are doing
08:30whatever you can to keep them safe. Let's dive a little deeper in there, because there has been a
08:35rise in anti-Semitism all throughout college universities, full stop since October 7th.
08:40Also, some Jewish students have said, I feel unsafe on my campus. Protesters and supporters
08:45of these protesters would say that they're demonstrating for peace for Gaza, they're being
08:49critical of Israel's policies, and that doesn't cross the line of being anti-Semitic. What do you
08:55say to that response? So I think that, again, peaceful protests, I would go back to the idea
09:01that I said before, which is it started with words. Words have power, and words lead to actions.
09:06So when you look at a lot of these signs that are being used at these protests,
09:12if you see a sign that says something that is clearly inflammatory, I would say that it's
09:18going to make students feel uncomfortable if the signs are calling, again, for the genocide
09:24of the Jewish people. Is that truly a peaceful protest? I don't know that it is. I don't know
09:31that I would say that it is. I think that there, again, is a fine line between what you would
09:35consider a peaceful protest, and a lot of it comes down to definition. I think that that's the first
09:43thing. A college should be a place where you can have a respectful exchange of ideas. That's the
09:48idea behind higher education in the first place. Again, I would go back to the idea that it is the
09:52job of the administrators in higher education to create a safe climate where people from differing
10:00backgrounds can have an exchange of ideas, and that exchange of ideas should then lead to
10:07respectful disagreements. And peacefully, there should be a way that you can learn from other
10:14cultures, and you can gain an appreciation for other cultures. But we've seen that that is not
10:19actually what's happened. So I think that, you know, when you say kind of this idea about peaceful
10:25protest, I also think it's important to understand when did these protests start, right? The protests
10:31did not start until October 7th happened. And while I firmly believe in the right to, you know,
10:38respectfully disagree and peacefully protest, we can't forget what, again, was the beginning of this
10:46particular portion of the story, which is October 7th, when a terrorist organization
10:53brutally raped, murdered, killed, abducted 1,200 people and 240 hostages, many of whom
11:00are still in captivity. To your point, I think the context is important. And I talked to members of
11:08Congress on both sides of the aisle who visited the encampments. And they said, the protesters
11:14were not calling to hold Hamas accountable, not calling for the release of the hostages.
11:19So do you think, how do you think this conversation needs to be shifted here,
11:24and especially when it comes from leadership at the top?
11:27So again, I think that when it comes from leadership at the top,
11:33it really troubles me, in particular, that there was a hesitancy to call out what happened on
11:41October 7th. A double standard, if this had happened in any other country, if this had
11:45happened in any other place, would they have hesitated to say, no, this was terrorism,
11:52and we need to condemn it right now? And similarly, you know, the congressional
11:56hearings at the beginning of December. How can you not, if somebody asks you
12:02directly, a direct question, is calling for the genocide of the Jewish people a violation of the
12:09code of conduct? How can you answer that with anything other than, yes, calling for the genocide
12:14of the Jewish people is a direct violation? And if you are a Jewish student at that university,
12:19how can you feel safe after the president of a university says that?
12:24And let's talk about who these leaders are. They're presidents at elite universities in
12:29this country. Correct.
12:30So is there a leadership, I mean, clearly you're saying there's a leadership problem at these
12:36elite universities. Do you root that out by having, calling for their resignations?
12:40What does that look like? So I think that, you know,
12:43it goes back to the question, right? I don't think that necessarily this is coming from a
12:48personal place of anti-Semitism. I think that the problem is much bigger than that.
12:52I think that the problem is there's a fear. Obviously, as you said earlier, this didn't
12:57start with October 7th. There is a long standing political conflict in that region.
13:04And I think that these presidents of these universities are afraid. They're afraid of
13:10what that backlash might look like if they do anything that's perceived as taking the side
13:15of Israel. Is it going to impact them, their career? Is it going to impact them politically?
13:20Is it going to impact donations to their university? Are they going to have to deal
13:23with angry board members? To me, that's moral cowardice. And that is the exact opposite of
13:29what we need when we are in a time of crisis. We need leadership. We need moral leadership.
13:34Again, going back to, I believe it was your very first question.
13:38We need people who are going to stand up when they see injustice.
13:42Anyone. When they see injustice against anyone, anywhere, we need leaders who are going to stand
13:48up and say, no. No. Because when you don't have leaders like that, again, not to kind of
13:56over-rely on the Holocaust analogy, but that's how things like that happen. That's how genocide
14:02happens. That's how hatred happens. That is how things get to the point where we are now.
14:09If you want to be a leader, you need to lead by example and you need to understand what ethics
14:14looks like and what moral leadership looks like. You can't let external factors like, as I said,
14:21economics, politics, cultural, the way in which the culture is leaning at that particular moment
14:28in time affect what it is that you are saying. You need to have a moral compass and you need
14:33that moral compass to lead you. To your point, I actually pulled a quote from your article in
14:38the Times of Israel and I want you to expand on it for us. You wrote this, quote, the lack of moral
14:43courage demonstrated by the leaders of American academic institutions has predictably trickled
14:49down to the faculty and students, threatening not only the future of our educational system,
14:53but the core of our democracy and our society as a whole. Can you talk about that a little bit?
14:58Sure. I mean, you've got to lead by example, right? As you said, we're not talking about,
15:04you know, one little elementary school in one town somewhere, you know, that not a lot of people are
15:10familiar with. We're talking about supposedly the best of the best academic institutions,
15:16honestly, in the world. So if we can't look to these people to guide us, then where are we
15:23supposed to look to? These are the people that are leading the institutions that are going to shape
15:28the future of our society. If they're not willing to take a stand, if they're not willing to say,
15:36well, genocide against the Jews doesn't, maybe it doesn't, maybe there's context, maybe it doesn't
15:40violate our code of conduct, then how can you expect students who are protesting right now to,
15:50you know, be cautious in what they say and respectful in what they say? Because these
15:53students are also out there now in force, not just calling for the genocide of the Jewish people,
16:00but in certain cases, they are beating students and telling them, go back to Poland, or telling
16:07them, you know, we're going to finish what Hitler started. It comes down from the top. You have
16:12faculty who are saying certain things as well. I've seen it also, I've seen it in medical schools,
16:17I've seen it in graduate schools, I've seen it on every single level. The rise in anti-Semitism
16:23happens when nobody is willing to stand up and speak out. And why would you think, if there are
16:30no consequences, there are no, you know, if there are no consequences, when the president of an
16:35elite university says it, then why would you think there are going to be consequences for anybody
16:40who is less than the president of a university, so a faculty member or a student or anybody else?
16:48We, we, you can't, you have to lead by example, and if you're not leading by example, then you're
16:54letting the genie out of the bottle. Once you let the genie out of the bottle, it's very hard to put
16:58the genie back in the bottle. It's like when you're a parent and, you know, you, you tell your kid,
17:04I don't want you to use, you know, a certain word, and then your child hears you use that word.
17:10It's the same thing. To your genie in the bottle analogy, it does feel like this is very unresolved.
17:17There is a sort of genie out of the bottle right now. We're seeing still protests. There's not a
17:22resolution here. Just today, before you and I talked, Columbia did cancel its main graduation,
17:28and in your piece you wrote right now, we are in the middle of this story.
17:32What does the end look like?
17:36Honestly, I'm afraid. I'm afraid for what the end looks like. I'm a Jew who has relatives who
17:43died in the Holocaust. I'm also, I'm an activist. I'm somebody who believes in ethics. I'm somebody
17:53who believes in the good of humankind, and I'm somebody who believes in our ability as a society
17:58to learn from the past and protect the future. What we're seeing now scares me.
18:08It scares me for the future of my children. It scares me for the future of society,
18:16democracy, everything that I said in that article, because we need people who are going to
18:25stand up and speak out against the treatment of people as unequal.
18:34When you look back at the Holocaust, to me what stands out
18:39is that an entire society was able to turn against their neighbors.
18:45These are people who they had over for dinner. These are people who
18:50kids played with. They were friends. Families went out to dinner, and all of a sudden,
19:00they were the enemy. They were the other. College campuses, college is a place you go to,
19:06you meet friends for life. People that come from different backgrounds, people that came from
19:12different states or different countries, they're not like you. You didn't grow up with them.
19:18You didn't grow up with them, but something bonded you in college. You took a class together,
19:23or you had a night out together, something like that. That's the beauty of college.
19:27You sat together outside maybe on a nice day. You had a conversation.
19:36What's happening to that? What's happening to that? What is happening to our ability
19:42to look at each other and find the similarities that bring us together and unite us
19:49instead? It's not one place. It's not Columbia. It's not Harvard. It's not UPenn. It's not Yale.
19:57It seems like it's everywhere, and it seems like this hatred is spreading because it's
20:03not just anti-Semitism. When one hate rises, all hate rises. We see this rise in Islamophobia as
20:11well, and we see this rise in xenophobia. You wonder, where is it going to stop? When is it
20:16going to stop? Because, like I said, once the genie is out of the bottle, how do you put it back
20:22in? Where does it end? There don't seem to be consequences. There don't seem to be people who
20:31are saying enough. There doesn't seem to be a way that the administrators at these places,
20:39at these colleges and these universities, are able to bring people together.
20:46Canceling a commencement ceremony? I never thought we'd get to this place.
20:51I never thought we would. It is shocking to hear because commencement, everyone has fond
20:58memories that graduated from high school or college of their commencement ceremony. It's
21:01a celebration of all of your accomplishments, and not only that, but your parents and whoever
21:07helped you along the way. I guess, what do you think really the solution then is? What do people
21:16need to say? This continues to be my question because it's like, what do people say at the top
21:23that would satisfy and calm down this tension? I think that there are several things that could
21:30be done right now. The first thing is, I look at the analogy to a sports team.
21:38If you have a professional sports team and you have somebody who doesn't abide by their code
21:44of conduct, there are consequences. These are professional athletes, but if they do something
21:50that violates the team's code of conduct, they sit out. They're suspended from a game or multiple
21:55games. It doesn't matter how good they are. It doesn't matter if they're the star player. You
22:00violate the code of conduct, there are consequences. The same thing with a college or university. If
22:05you go to a college and you're caught cheating, there are consequences. I'm not sure why we're not
22:12holding people accountable in the same way here. If you go to a college or university
22:17and you're told multiple times that you need to vacate the encampment and you don't vacate the
22:23encampment, there should be consequences. If you break into an administrative building,
22:29a university administrative building, you barricade yourself in it and then you deface
22:35school property, there need to be consequences. It should be very simple. Nothing about this has
22:41wound up being simple, but we need to bring it back to just, again, the simple facts of what
22:47we're talking about. Again, there's no reason. How does that not violate the code of conduct?
22:55Administrators need to get some of their power back. I don't think, again, that it needs to be
23:02very complicated. I think the president of the University of Florida did a great job with his
23:06statement where he said, this isn't a daycare. We came to you multiple times and we gave you
23:13many chances. This is what we said. You didn't listen. And now there's going to be consequences.
23:17So I think that's the first thing. The second thing is, I think that all colleges and universities
23:23have to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism.
23:30If we don't have a standard definition of anti-Semitism, then it's very easy to say,
23:36well, this isn't anti-Semitism. This is a peaceful protest.
23:39Whereas if you have a standardized definition of anti-Semitism, you can say, well, no,
23:45that sign actually is anti-Semitic and therefore is likely to incite some type of violence or
23:53is likely to cause people to be upset, things like that. It shouldn't be up to
24:00one college or one university to say, this is what anti-Semitism is or no, this is what
24:04anti-Semitism is. We need a solid definition. We need to know what anti-Semitism is. We need
24:09to be able to call it out in the same way that we would call out any other form of identity-based
24:13hate. Once we have a definition of anti-Semitism, then again, to me, it goes back to a very
24:21simplistic answer, which is, if you see something, say something. If you see an example of anti-Semitism
24:28on campus, then there need to be consequences. And these consequences need to be clear. They
24:34need to be concise. They need to be actionable. They need to come from the top down. And they
24:39need to be stated up front ahead of time so everybody knows. To me, again, these are things
24:47that should not be that difficult. They shouldn't be that difficult. And they should be something
24:52that we are working on right at this moment so that when this current crisis passes,
24:59which I hope that it does. I hope that it does. Again, I'm a bit of an optimist. I believe that
25:04it will. We're ready. We're ready for whatever comes next because, unfortunately, there's always
25:13a next time, right? There's always something around the corner. And university presidents
25:20need to be prepared for that. That's their job. Again, keeping students safe, that's how you keep
25:24students safe. You said this earlier in the conversation that college, for a lot of students,
25:29is the first time you're confronted with people from all walks of life, all religions, all
25:33backgrounds, all different ways of thinking. So do you think there will ever be a point or how do we
25:38get to a point where students at college and people in this country can have a respectful
25:44dialogue about this conflict without the hate attached to it? I told you I was an optimist,
25:51but I'm also a realist. Look, I don't know if we're ever going to get to that point. To me,
25:57that would be like if I were writing a movie and I wanted to put in the best possible ending. That
26:03would be the best possible ending. I think you try. You try. You do your best. I think it would
26:09be great if we had some type of training, some type of course. I don't even know whether you
26:17want to call it DEI. I don't know what you want to call it. I think, honestly, the idea is teaching
26:21people how to disagree respectfully, teaching people how to be open-minded to people who
26:28weren't like them because that is the challenge of college, but that's also the beauty of college.
26:33So learning how to understand and appreciate that, it makes your college experience so much better
26:38and it makes your life so much better because nobody exists in a vacuum. Nobody exists in a
26:42bubble. The beauty of America, right, is that we're all different and we're stronger united
26:47than we are divided. So if we can find a way to somehow harness that power and harness our
26:53ability to appreciate our differences, appreciate the unique nature of each individual and respect
27:02that, respect everybody's human dignity, the sky's the limit for really how wonderful
27:09our nation could be and how wonderful if you could even take that past our nation.
27:13You know, the peace that we could achieve, again, if I was writing a movie, that would be the end of
27:20the movie for me. Whether or not we can achieve it is a different story. Well, Dr. Gallin, thank
27:24you so much for the conversation today. I really appreciate your insights and I hope you come back
27:29soon. Thank you very much for having me. It was a pleasure.