Cary Nelson, a member of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy and a former president of the American Association of University Professors, has devoted his recent scholarship to documenting how anti-Israel sentiment took hold at universities worldwide and brought underlying antisemitism to the surface. His new book, College Zionists Confront the Abyss: The Aftermath of October 7 in Higher Education and Its Consequences for Progressive Politics, extends that work.
Nelson describes how Zionist students returned to campus after the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, only to find that many classmates and professors viewed the massacre as something other than an atrocity. Many of these students had grown up seeing themselves as allies in broader struggles for justice. After October 7, however, they were told that their connection to Israel made them complicit in systemic oppression.
Nelson follows this experience closely, recounting vigils that became protests, encampments, equivocal statements from administrators, and the social isolation that followed. He argues that faculty did more than reflect student anger at perceived injustice. In fact, professors and administrators supplied much of the intellectual and institutional oxygen that made the anti-Zionist response appear both righteous and legitimate.
The most disturbing part of Nelson’s analysis is chapter five, “Transforming a Discipline: Lara Sheehi’s Love for Hamas and Her Effort to Remake Psychology to Serve Anti-Zionism.” The chapter details how Lara Sheehi, a George Washington University professor in Psychology, used her scholarship, institutional authority, and social media presence to delegitimize and dehumanize both the victims of October 7 and students who understood the attacks as something other than a righteous act. He also documents how the university shielded Sheehi from efforts by Jewish students to protect themselves from abuse. Sheehi ultimately left George Washington University for a position in Qatar.
Nelson concludes by proposing thirteen actions for the academy to consider in restoring academic freedom and civil debate. He warns that inaction could lead to incidents comparable to the murder of Sarah Lynn Milgrim by a 2018 University of Illinois graduate in English, which he describes as a “calculated mob execution, the repeated firing sending an unambiguous message of hate.”
College Zionists Confront the Abyss is an important record for educators, Hillel and Jewish communal professionals, university trustees, and parents of college-bound teenagers. It captures the profound disorientation of the post-October 7 era, and asks whether universities can once again become places where difficult disagreements persist without dehumanizing and endangering those involved.
