David Myers and Andrew Koss on Whether Jewish Studies Has Turned against the Jews

In “A College Guide for the Perplexed,” our feature essay this month at Mosaic, our focus is on higher-education reform, the future and fate of the humanities, and helping parents of Jewish students figure out the best places to pursue university studies. This is not the first time that Mosaic has dealt with these and related issues. In May 2024, my Mosaic colleague Andrew Koss wrote a searching, provocative essay in which he looked specifically at the field of Jewish studies. In the spring of that year, when campuses had exploded in pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish activism, how did professors of Jewish studies react? How should they have reacted? Andrew probes the history and sociology of this academic discipline in his blockbuster essay “Jewish Studies against the Jews.”