If today’s college students wish to develop independent thought, they might begin by doing the opposite of what many of their professors tell them — especially on sociopolitical matters. For much of what masquerades as education is, in fact, a calculated orchestration of division, crafted by intellectual elites who exploit youthful idealism to fracture the nation for their ideological ends.
But beyond the walls of academia lies a different America — one grounded in shared values, everyday decency and real human experience. Reclaiming that America begins when students stop performing theory and start engaging with the world as it actually is.
What follows is not merely an opinion but the distillation of years spent listening in silence within the walls of academia. My suggestion is simple: We should allow students to ask themselves one unsettling question: Why is this professor asking me to pick sides in a conflict halfway across the world when I’m just trying to make sense of my life here in Illinois?
Every two weeks, I find myself in a small Middle Eastern barbershop in Chicago — a place where, despite the barbers’ support for Palestine, I’m met not with suspicion or animosity but with warmth, hospitality and a glass of tea. The Star of David around my neck never becomes a barrier. We exchange in no political arguments, only gestures of respect.
Our ideological and cultural chasms remain intact but are momentarily irrelevant in that space. The intractable conflicts of the Middle East recede, not because we share values or arrive at common ground, but because we engage in something quintessentially American: the dignity of coexistence through work, commerce and mutual presence — where shared humanity is not forged through agreement, but through the act of simply showing up and refusing to be enemies.
This interaction captures the best of America: a nation where people from vastly different backgrounds don’t need to agree to coexist. These barbers, immigrants from the Middle East, contribute meaningfully to the economy — running a lawful, tax-paying business, offering a service in exchange for payment, no ideology required. This quiet transaction embodies merit, opportunity and the chance to flourish in a country that rewards those who show up and follow the rules.
Unfortunately, on today’s campuses, encounters like mine are treated not as possible, but as risky. I used to wonder why. Now, I understand that many — though not all — professors and administrators aren’t merely tolerating division. They’re actively encouraging it. By promoting oppressor-versus-oppressed narratives, they leave no room for nuance that would most likely make students more sympathetic to Israel.
On the surface, this technique may seem systematically geared toward anti-Israel perspectives. But at a deeper level, what’s really unfolding is a psychological redirection: students are being conditioned to turn inward, to distrust one another and, ultimately, to cast American Jews as the symbolic enemy. It’s not just political — it’s deeply personal and dangerously effective, instilling the belief in students that coexistence is a betrayal to one side and that disagreement renders dialogue futile.
What’s rarely discussed, though, is that this calculated division doesn’t harm me, the Jew. It harms the Palestinian barbers, who have seen their business suffer since Oct. 7. And this is precisely the outcome the administrators seek. Their opposition to Israel is driven by a broader ideological agenda that capitalizes on the perceived suffering of those identifying with the Palestinian cause, particularly those who have successfully embraced the principles of the American Dream.
Many college professors are helping to build a world where I might no longer be able to sit for a haircut in a Palestinian barbershop simply because I am Jewish. In my professional opinion, what we are witnessing is less about geopolitics and more about projection. Certain professors, perhaps unconsciously, direct their resentment toward Jewish students, not because of anything those students have done, but because of what they represent.
I have spent the past five years researching antisemitism on college campuses, and I have observed that the most outspoken critics of Israel are often professors who also speak candidly about growing up in poverty. As both a researcher and a psychologist, I don’t believe this is a coincidence.
For some faculty, the Jewish student becomes more than just a pupil — they become a symbolic mirror, reflecting unspoken frustrations and unfulfilled ambitions. A low-SES upbringing, a sparse CV, a lack of meaningful publications, or the slow erosion of academic prestige in an age dominated by platforms and public influence they neither understand nor control — all of this can create a simmering resentment.
My theory is that Jewish students, by virtue of embodying both historical vulnerability and contemporary resilience, unintentionally provoke this response. They complicate the moral binaries on which much of today’s campus ideology depends.
Their academic excellence, cultural confidence and connection to a global Jewish identity — often including support for Israel — confront certain faculty with a dissonance they are unequipped to process. Rather than interrogate that discomfort, some project it outward, transforming the Jewish student into a stand-in for everything they feel excluded from: institutional relevance, intellectual authority and the future itself.
It is not antisemitism in its most overt form but a subtler, more insidious displacement of personal insecurity onto a historically resilient identity. Their aim is not necessarily for the Jew to be hated, but for the Jew to feel out of place in a society they have spent generations helping to build.
Now that the nature of the problem is precise, the question becomes: how do we respond? As someone who studies ideological formation and social cognition at the highest level, my opinion is that we should treat this moment not as a crisis — but as an opportunity.
Use the campus climate as a controlled experiment, a rehearsal for the real world where ideological diversity is inevitable and necessary. Seek out someone whose views challenge your own and make it your explicit aim to reach a mutual understanding — not agreement, but understanding.
Engaging with ideological opposition isn’t just intellectually enriching but psychologically essential. Human development depends on friction and testing the boundaries of belief through dialogue. If a professor demands ideological allegiance, it is not education but indoctrination. And while I say this with a degree of irony, consider documenting and challenging that behavior through every available institutional channel, even political ones. Silence, after all, is complicity.
My experience every two weeks at the barbershop embodies the potential for America when we prioritize connection over division. If students want to reclaim that possibility, they must free themselves from the narratives that keep them apart.
Kevin Waldman is a student at The Graduate School. He can be contacted at kevinwaldman2026@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
