Resisting the 'Academic Intifada': Author Gil Troy Strikes a Blow for Israel, the West, Hope

JERUSALEM, Israel – A liberal education used to be about the exploration of ideas by teachers and students coming from different perspectives. According to Jerusalem Post columnist and author Gil Troy, that approach has been replaced by more dogmatic thinking.

CBN News spoke recently with Troy about his new book, To Resist the Academic Intifada, on the demonization of Israel, America, and the West, not only in the Middle East but on campuses throughout the supposedly enlightened Western nations.

To watch the interview, click on the video above.

The text of our conversation is below.

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PAUL STRAND:  We're speaking with Professor Gil Troy, author of the new book, To Resist the Academic Intifada. Gill, your new book shows many professors and students these days aren't just demonizing Israel, but America and Europe as well. What's the root and the reason behind all this?

GIL TROY:  If you notice, at every anti-Israel demonstration they burn the American flag or the Canadian flag, or the British flag. The messaging is very clear, why we're missing it is the shocker. And the root of it is, I'm sorry to say, Karl Marx. It really goes down to the Karl Marx approach, which is, the world is divided into oppressed and oppressor. And so you use words like 'settler colonialism' to basically say, 'ah the Americans, the Jews, the Zionists, the Europeans, are oppressors'. How do you learn if you can't appreciate some of the good? How do you learn if you say, okay, we've sometimes made mistakes historically, but I'm not stuck in the 1800s. I'm not stuck in 1943, I'm here in 2025, doing my best and learning.

PS:  Do you think there's a reason that this has caught on so much on campuses specifically?

GT:  Look, it's a story that's been building for many years. In the 1970s they started with identity politics, and all of a sudden, rather than judging people -as Martin Luther King said - by the content of our character, we were judged -  as the racists did - by the color of our skin, and by our what they call gender. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union, -nd so you no longer had the traditional socialism and Marxism holding the left together. What became the new glue?, "Palestinian-ism". And at the core of Palestinianism is an ideology that hates democracy, hates liberalism, hates Americanism, and hates Zionism, and hates Western civilization. And so it became the core ideology of so many people, especially, I'm sorry to say, in my world of the humanists, of sociology, of history, of anthropology. And think of parents, paying $86,400 a year in some of the fanciest universities in the world, to send their kids to be propagandized against the very skills that those kids need in order to get back and raise their kids so that they can go to those same universities. It's insane.

PS:  What's the ultimate danger if this anti-Western campaign just keeps growing and growing?

GT: If you keep on following their words, their books, who gets tenured? You'd say, it's time for us to just, sort of, close up shop. How do we continue to grow, how do we continue to progress? I always say I don't understand. I grew up in a world where progressives believed in progress and conservatives, conservative institutions. Progressives who say, oh no, we're stuck, who don't tell the story of Martin Luther King when they talk about race, they don't tell the story of Betty Friedan when they talk about feminism. who pretend that we're still stuck in the era of slavery, who pivot the story of America..not around 1776, with all those high ideals.. but around 1619, the arrival of the first slave ship. What they're doing is they're telling our students (to) "be depressed".  And by the way, that's one of the reasons why I wrote this book, because I'm a child of hope, you're a child of hope. America is about hope. And to feel the despair on campuses, on these beautiful green campuses, to feel the despair in our most elegant and elaborate and wealthy corners of America said to me, there's a problem here. Despair doesn't help. Hope solves.

PS:  You know, you say that on today's woke campuses, you'd for sure be canceled and fired. Why is that? Why you?

GT: I made a mistake. I grew up believing in America, believing the American dream. Believing in Israel, believing in Zionism. Believing in Judaism, believing in the Judeo-Christian ethic. Believing in the West. And even 23 years ago, when I first made another mistake and stood up and said, this is unacceptable because I couldn't really see it then. And I stood up for Israel and Zionism when they were blowing up buses in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, I started becoming a pariah.  In those days they just, kind of, kept their distance from you. These days, they literally can't see you on social media. And more recently, people have been physically attacked, harassed, threatened, on a campus! We're supposed to be about ideas and we're supposed to say, wait a minute. If I disagree with you, can I learn from you rather than canceling you?  It's an assault on the values of academia and the values of America.

PS:  Well, I'm glad you haven't been fired. We've been speaking with Gil Troy, author of the new book, "To Resist the Academic Intifada". Thanks, Gil.

GT:  Thank you.