As anti-Israel protests and encampments spread to campuses across the country, a statement is allegedly being circulated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offering Jewish students and faculty opportunities at a top Israeli university.
The Technion, Israel’s leading technological university, released a statement offering spots to faculty, post-doctoral researchers, graduate students, undergraduate students, and visiting research students who don’t feel safe at their current school, as hostile rhetoric has taken over campus demonstrations.
The Israeli school is “troubled by the growing prevalence of anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric” on campuses around the world, according to the statement from Senior Executive Vice President Oded Rabinovitch.
MIT graduate student and president of the school’s Israel Alliance Talia Kahn posted the statement being circulated at her university on X and said, “People will certainly take them up on the offer.”
“There is a Jewish brain drain going on [at] elite US universities,” she wrote. “We should all be concerned about the future of technological innovation in this country when some of our greatest minds are being pushed off campus for being Jews.”
The statement was released by the Technion on Nov. 11, 2023, and is being recirculated online with a new date of Apr. 26, 2024. As there is no statement dated Apr. 26 on the Technion’s website, the Washington Examiner confirmed its authenticity with the head of the office of the school’s president, Luna van Voskuilen-Yohay.
Shortly after the statement was released, Technion President Uri Sivan explained the decision to offer opportunities to non-Israeli Jewish students and faculty.
“Unfortunately, faculty members from many universities in the West joined this wave” of antisemitic protests, he said. “Given the feeble responses of quite a few presidents of leading universities in North America, Europe and Australia, many Jewish and Israeli students and researchers currently face physical and verbal threats that cause them to think twice about everything they do and prevent them from participating in academic activities in those institutions.”
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In 2021, a poll found that 65% of students in the leading American Jewish fraternity and sorority felt unsafe on campus, with 50% going as far as hiding their Jewish identity out of fear. Following the terrorist attack on Oct. 7, 2023, 73% of Jewish students feel even less safe, coinciding with an ADL report of a 400% uptick in antisemitic incidents.
“Right now, we’re at a DEFCON 1 when it comes to antisemitism,” First Amendment lawyer and civil litigator Jeffrey Robbins previously told the Washington Examiner.