Antisemitism on Campus — Connecticut College and Nationwide: A Conversation with Robert Huebscher ‘76

I sat down with an alum of 49 years to discuss the issue of antisemitism on college campuses --- including our own.

Robert Huebscher ‘76

I recently came into contact with Robert Huebscher, an entrepreneur who graduated from Connecticut College in 1976. This was shortly after he published an article with The Times of Israel commenting on what he perceived to be an antisemitism problem on Conn’s campus. His article, Antisemitism and the Corruption of Liberal Arts, provides a fierce condemnation of the inaction of academic institutions, especially Connecticut College (being his alma mater), to deal with a disturbing rise of antisemitism and anti-Jewish rhetoric. Mr. Huebshcer would publish an abridged version of the article with The College Voice a couple weeks later.

A few weeks after his article was published by The Times of Israel, Mr. Huebscher and I exchanged emails, which led to me setting up an interview with him. I was eager to hear the perspective of not only an outsider attuned to the issue of campus antisemitism, but the opinion of a longtime Camel alumnus.

Mr. Huebscher has been a dedicated and passionate alumnus of the college and has helped the college in many ways in the almost 50 years since his graduation. Throughout our conversation, he continued to express his “great fondness for the college.”

“50 years ago,” he said, “we were taught unbiased facts, we were taught critical thinking.” This is, of course, what a liberal arts college should teach. However, in recent years, Mr. Huebscher has expressed concern about a disturbing shift in how facts, especially the history of a complex situation like the Israel-Palestine conflict is taught.

During my interview with him, he did not mention the student body once, as he believed that the problem lies with the faculty of the college.

On May 2, 2024, an open letter was published by The College Voice titled Faculty and Staff Statement of Solidarity with Student Protestors. This was one of the specific instances of antisemitism that Mr. Huebscher stressed when he talked about what finally prompted him to write the article for The Times of Israel.

The biggest problem with the letter was the use of the term “Jewish supremacy,” a term that has been used by some of modern history’s most notorious antisemites, such as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, and more recently, David Duke. And this letter did not use that term to condemn the use of it but condemn “Jewish supremacy” itself. Around one-third of the Connecticut College faculty signed this letter.

The letter, however, as concerning it may have been, was not what began Mr. Huebscher’s concerns. For him, the point where this began was when President Katherine Bergeron was forced to resign following a vote of no confidence by the faculty over a scandal involving her visiting the Everglades Club, a club in Florida with an alleged history of racism, for a fundraiser.

Bergeron was replaced by Les Wong — the former President of San Francisco State University who was the subject of his own controversy due to his tumultuous relationship with the Jewish student body during his time there.

Les Wong was the interim President on October 7, 2023, when Hamas, a US designated terrorist organization, committed many atrocities at the Nova Music Festival and nearby kibbutzim, killing around 1,200 Israelis and taking nearly 250 Israelis as hostages.

Two weeks later, President Wong put out a statement regarding the October 7 attacks. However, Mr. Huebscher, along with many others, were less than pleased with the contents of the statement.

Mr. Huebscher saw President Wong’s letter as a “very distressing choice of language” in the statement that was sent out to the entire Connecticut College community, including the alumni. In the letter, there was not only no direct mention of the attacks, or a condemnation of Hamas or the subsequent antisemitism that followed in the United States.

To Mr. Huebscher, President Wong’s signified the festering of anti-Jewish hatred and disinformation on the Connecticut College campus. It comes from the top, and it trickles down to the faculty, seeing that they have a free pass to teach whatever information they want without needing to double check the objectivity of what they are saying. This became clear with the introduction of the Israel-Palestine Educational Series later in October. The bulk of this series continued through the end of the 2023-2024 academic year, with different speakers being invited by the professors sponsoring the lectures.

The webinar series was sponsored by the Offices of the President and the Dean of Faculty. It was also promoted by the Student Government Association (SGA). It passed itself as an unbiased educational series. However, Mr. Huebscher, among others, argued that the Educational Series provided a very biased view of the conflict, painting Israel in a bad light, and even justifying aspects of October 7.

“On at least two occasions, the speakers transgressed from anti-Israel criticism to antisemitism.” Mr. Huebscher wrote for The Times of Israel, “ One speaker said that Israel’s actions against Hamas were the result of a racial bias prevalent among Israelis, and another held Israel to a double standard by accusing it of genocide while absolving the crimes of Hamas and Syria under Assad against civilian populations.”

It was the hypocrisy of the messages conveyed in the speaker series. The speakers offered a full, sweeping condemnation of Israel’s actions in Gaza, while seemingly exonerating Hamas for their actions killing, raping, and kidnapping civilians, which started the war.

What upset Mr. Huebscher was that there was no sense of accountability demonstrated by or towards the professors who organized it, considering that they promoted it strictly for educational purposes. Instead, it became a platform for unfettered anti-Jewish rhetoric.

“We’re looking for academic honesty,” Mr. Huebscher told me. “No one should be taught what to think.”

“I set a goal for myself,” Mr. Huebscher continued, saying that he wrote his piece to convey an important message: he wished to break the silence among alumni distraught by unfolding events at the college. He could not stand by and do nothing as he witnessed the academic institution he loved go down a dangerous path. And the three big points he highlighted, as to why he sees a major antisemitism problem at Conn, were the “Educational” Series, the email and subsequent inaction by President Wong, and the disturbing letter signed by a third of the faculty condemning “Jewish supremacy.”

What was also a part of his goal was to say that Connecticut College is not hopelessly lost in the abyss of contemporary-age antisemitism. If it wasn’t a fixable issue, Mr. Huebscher said, “I wouldn’t waste my time with it.”

“[This] is a situation that demands leadership,” Mr. Huesbcher proclaimed to me. It is a situation that is fixed from the top down, which means the new President of the College must take responsibility for the issue and act first before anything can be realistically resolved.

When I asked Mr. Huebscher if there was any specific action President Andrea Chapdelaine should take, there were a few things that he mentioned. First of all, Mr. Huebscher calls on President Chapdelaine to say in a statement that the faculty letter does not represent the values of the college. He also asks that the college pull funding for the Educational Series, which has been a series full of inaccuracies and hatred of Israel, which transgressed into hatred of Jews.

“[The President] sets the tone for what else needs to be done,” Mr. Huebscher said to me. He was very adamant about wanting President Chapdelaine to begin “correcting the errors of her predecessor.”

A new era is dawning on the horizon of Connecticut College. With President Chapdelaine recently inaugurated as the 12th President of Connecticut College, the time is now to stop hateful rhetoric, require academic honesty, and end a tumultuous few years on campus.

Perhaps it is high time that Connecticut College takes the advice of a dedicated alum of nearly 50 years — someone who loves the college so much that he continues to fight for the soul of our campus.