The Washington Post ~ Opinion by Kenneth L. Marcus (September 30, 2021 at 3:22 p.m. EDT) Johns Hopkins University recently extended the record-breaking tenure of its longest-serving president, Ronald J. Daniels. Under Daniels, Johns Hopkins has prospered, buoyed by the landmark $1.8 billion gift from alumnus Mike Bloomberg. As important, under Daniels, the university has hued to high ideals, recognizing its obligation to address equity. Now the question is whether the university, under Daniels’s extended leadership, will live up to those ideals. Last year, recognizing “a moment of national reckoning,” Daniels announced that Johns Hopkins is “faced with both an imperative and an opportunity to act” when confronted with discrimination. Bold and righteous words. They were brought to a test just a few months later when a Hopkins teaching assistant, Rasha Anayah, conducted a survey about her chemistry students. Anayah tweeted this question, which she called an “ethical dilemma”: “if you have to grade a zionist students [sic] exam, do you still give them all their points even though they support your ethnic cleansing[?]” She gave two options: “yes rasha be a good ta” or “free palestine! fail them!” In case anyone failed to grasp the correct answer, she placed the latter response in boldface. Nearly 80 percent of respondents urged her to fail the Zionist students. Emboldened, Anayah continued to tweet additional antisemitic rants, including “[w]e had an undergrad in lab who had been on [B]irthright [a program that sends young Jewish people to Israel] and had one of the street signs to tel aviv on her laptop … [I]f [I] had been paired with one of them or one of these conceited white boys [I] would have lost it.” In response to this effort to turn the university community against its Jewish students, Hopkins neglected what might be called, to borrow from Daniels, the “imperative and an opportunity to act.” Though Daniels has boldly responded to other acts of hate, the university kept silent when its teaching assistant expressed contempt for her Jewish students, threatened to grade them unfairly and fomented hatred of their commitment to Israel. Indeed, more than six months after Anayah’s question and with students now returning to classrooms, the university has yet to condemn publicly any of the conduct, citing privacy laws. Though it may be appropriate to maintain privacy of certain personnel investigations, this does not excuse the university from condemning antisemitism just as “unequivocally and in the strongest possible terms” as Daniels has used for other forms of bigotry. Johns Hopkins’s failure reflects a national trend. Earlier this month, a Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law/Cohen Research Group poll showed that two-thirds of Jewish fraternity students had felt unsafe on their campuses last semester, even before the Gaza conflict spurred increased anti-Jewish harassment. Since the Gaza conflict, antisemitism has flared worldwide, with numerous horrifying and violent acts right here on U.S. soil. In only one week during that period, the Anti-Defamation League identified 17,000 tweets which used variations of the phrase “Hitler was right.” That same month, a group waving a Palestinian flag assaulted diners seated outside a Los Angeles restaurant after asking if they were Jewish. Two days later, in New York, a gang of assailants punched, kicked and pepper-sprayed a young man wearing a skullcap. And a rabbi was stabbed in Boston on the steps of a Jewish school. This might feel like a new phenomenon for the U.S. streets, but U.S. college campuses have long played host to some of the most pervasive antisemitism. Unfortunately, university administrators are often reluctant to address antisemitism explicitly. At Rutgers, the chancellor responded to the egging of a Jewish fraternity house with a tepid statement opposing antisemitism along with other forms of prejudice. When pro-Palestinian activists complained, the chancellor apologized and removed the statement from the university’s website. The problem has spread beyond the campus. Recently, the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) published a condemnation of antisemitism: “The SCBWI unequivocally recognizes that the world’s 14.7 million Jewish people (less than 0.018% of the population) have the right to life, safety, and freedom from scapegoating and fear.” That proved so controversial the society’s executive director apologized “to everyone in the Palestinian community” for the statement. The society’s diversity chief, a black Jewish woman, had to resign, but not before delivering her own apology. This is madness. When bigotry is public, the consequences must be public — and unapologetic. By remaining silent, Johns Hopkins University allows a hostile environment to fester. Worse, it fails to ensure that such conduct does not recur. For institutions to turn the corner, they must exercise prompt and effective leadership. This means condemning antisemitism and every form of bigotry. Leaders might take a lesson from President Biden, for example, who has boldly excoriated the rise of antisemitism, saying, “These attacks are despicable, unconscionable, un-American, and they must stop.” As students return to campuses across the country this fall, Daniel and all leaders must also be bold and specific in condemning antisemitism and taking public steps to prevent its recurrence. Though it may be too late for Daniels to be prompt, it is not too late to be effective. Daniels is now gathering comments on a set of draft recommendations that will lay the foundation for the university’s next “road map” on diversity and inclusion. At a minimum, the road map should explicitly address antisemitism, providing definitions, standards, and policies. Kenneth L. Marcus is founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law. He was assistant U.S. Secretary of Education for civil rights from 2018 to 2020 and is the author of “The Definition of Anti-Semitism.”