See Something Say Something Substantive
Over the past few months, I have published a number of controversial articles, some of which have drawn fire for their stances. I know there are people on and off campus who speak unkindly about me — both behind my back and to my face — and who do not respect what I have to say. And yet I say it anyway.
The truth is that I am not courageous nor am I intrepid. The truth is, I am a coward who shields himself behind pen and paper. The truth is, I am fearful. I am fearful for the fate of my generation, fearful for the state of Modern Orthodoxy and fearful for the wellbeing of my friends and myself. These fears have only been exacerbated by recent events at YU. I write only to quench these fears and satisfy the conscience that berates me to “at least do something.”
My friend was assaulted.
A few weeks ago during the Wilf Campus Club Fair, two friends of mine on the board of the YU Pride Alliance (YUPA), Schneur Friedman (YC ‘25) and Tani Glaser (YC ‘26), arranged a table to encourage students to join their unrecognized club. “This is a perennial tradition, and we have never had any administrative issues,” Glaser told me. In the middle of the fair, a student on one of YU’s sport teams began photographing the table and the board members there.
“As I was packing up to go and walking towards the exit,” Glaser mentioned in his statement to YU security after the incident, “He took another picture of me… so I said ‘Excuse me, hi,’ then he immediately shoved me as hard he could into the table and people around me and yelled, ‘You f***ing f****t’ and continued to yell at me for being an ‘abomination,’ ‘filth,’ ‘not belonging here’ etc, and didn’t back off.”
After several minutes a few friends came to assist Glaser, and the assailant departed.
Tani is my friend. He is a biology major who is interested in pursuing pre-health. On the side, he enjoys cycling and woodworking and recently fashioned a wooden guitar. Students may know him from his performance in one of the YU bands where he dons an unmistakable green and gold dinosaur onesie. He also happens to be queer.
It is this last fact that earned him a slew of aggressive slurs at a public event on a campus allegedly dedicated to the Torah of “Infinite Human Worth.” Glaser was assaulted and peppered with hateful and vitriolic messages in front of tens of bystanding and subdued YU students. He was shamed publicly, a fate which the Talmud in Bava Metzia equates to death. To add insult to injury, the YU administration provided only the most feeble and insipid response.
In a recent article, Vice Provost for Values and Leadership Erica Brown and Dean Rebecca Cypess advocated for the vague aims of “collective vigilance” and “joint accountability.” They further underscored the Jewish focus on saving a drowning individual and provided tips for individuals witnessing harassment. While these are all laudable causes to advocate what was missing, what was the reason for this article? What could have prompted two administrators to craft an article calling for bystander intervention?
Readers picked up on the article’s ambiguous antecedent. As soon as the article came out, one friend texted me “What happened that led to this? The steps mentioned also just seem a little off in terms of actually doing anything.” I can’t be sure. There’s nothing in the article that tells us exactly what it was referring to. But a hint can be gleaned from the final paragraph, where Brown and Cypess admitted that “recent incidents on campus underscore the need for all of us to cultivate a community of mutual care and respect especially towards those unlike us.”
What readers can’t know from the article itself is that these “recent incidents” are not just nebulous acts of bullying, perhaps an unkind word on a group chat or an altercation between friends, but refer instead to an actual hate crime. This is a glaring omission. A student was harassed and assaulted for his sexual orientation by another student on campus at an official event. Instead of pointing this out and condemning it in clear terms, the administration released a vague boilerplate statement about looking out for others.
Ironically, in their call for “collective vigilance,” Brown and Cypess condemned YU’s own lack of vigilance in protecting queer students. Instead of writing against a culture of permissibility and homophobia, they skirted the issue entirely and failed to speak up for affected community members. While they called for “joint accountability” they did not accept any accountability on behalf of YU. They exchanged an opportunity to highlight a systemic issue for platitudes.
I also want to point out three choice words from Brown and Cypess’s statement: “to cultivate a community of mutual care and respect, especially towards those unlike us.” Who is the “us” that Cypess, Brown and the reader belong to that queer students don’t? By othering queer students, Cypess and Brown tacitly and unwittingly embolden treating queer students as if they don’t belong. While I’m sure this is not their intent, the phrase implies that even if we treat them kindly and respectfully, they will always be “unlike us.” In this way, their message parrots the assailant’s claim that queer students “don’t belong here.” In response to the article, Glaser emphatically stated, “I belong here. I should not be made to feel out of place.”
When YU students encounter noncommittal condemnations of violence against us, we rightly get upset. When Columbia University issues a statement that says “calls for violence have no place at Columbia,” but doesn’t specify that the violence they refer to was perpetrated against Jewish students because they were Jewish, we rightly get upset. A call against general violence is always welcome, but when it avoids specifying that that violence is targeted, it also avoids actually addressing the affected parties. YU has rightly condemned other universities for sterile and ambiguous condemnations of hatred, but then turns around and issues a similar statement of their own. A call against bullying on campus is always welcome, but when that call against bullying comes in the wake of an attack on a specific group and the statement neglects to mention that group, we should rightly get upset. We must hold ourselves to the standards we demand of other universities.
This is not the first homophobic incident that has occurred during one of YUPA’s rare public appearances for the semesterly club fair. Last semester, a student hollered “I hope Hashem judges you on Rosh Hashanah,” at Friedman, the board member sitting at the YUPA table. Friedman himself wrote an article about YU’s unspoken permission to treat queer students poorly:
Let’s not mince words; queerphobia is rampant at YU. Last year, a friend of mine was loudly called a slur just past the clicking turnstiles of the sweltering Furman caf line — perhaps the densest place on Wilf campus during lunch hour. As one finishes their lunch and begins their assignments, they can expect to hear ‘gay’ used comfortably, early and often by some students as a synonym for anything bad. This can happen in person or on chats of 30+ peers they hardly know…
Queer students — and even straight students who don’t exhibit stereotypical heterosexual attributes — have to fear being insulted and bullied in public conversations and group chats. Closeted students must sit idle while their peers casually use the ‘f’ slur.
Regardless of an individual’s opinion regarding the YUPA lawsuit, YU instituting a club for queer students or the halachic ramifications of homosexuality, we should all condemn harassment and assault. This is not just a duty YU has as an institution to protect its students, but one that all Jews have to each other.
And yet, YU’s administration seems extremely hesitant to say anything direct about the hostile environment for queer students on campus. They use metaphors about shoplifting, cheating on exams and bullying, but maintain a ‘don’t say gay’ policy and refuse to call it out by name. A student wasn’t just bullied. A queer student was bullied for being queer as part of an ongoing series of incidents where queer students are bullied for being queer. This is all happening while YU is being sued for discriminating against queer students for being queer. It takes a conscious effort to reframe this as a simple bullying problem. To repurpose the very Elie Wiesel quote that Cypess and Brown themselves used, “What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.”
To be clear, I do not intend to insinuate in any way that either Brown or Cypess support homophobia. In private conversations they have been very receptive and are honestly two of my favorite administrators at YU. I truly believe that Dean Cypess can and will tremendously improve both YC and Stern. I really admire Dr. Brown’s work with the Sacks-Herenstein Center and personally enjoy much of her writing. I do not believe that either of them has ever intended to neglect students. They are not our enemies here — on the contrary, they were the only administrators to speak up in a public forum at all. This is the closest thing to public allyship that queer students ever get from the administration, the rest of whom remain altogether silent. I admire their courage and initiative, and appreciate their effort. Nonetheless, this article is a tepid response where a more forceful one is necessary.
I call upon YU to prove me wrong, to prove that they are willing to unequivocally condemn homophobia on campus, particularly when it comes in the form of harassment and assault. I call upon YU to enforce repercussions on students who harass, intimidate or assault any student — regardless of sexual orientation. Lastly, I call upon YU to hold discussions with queer students on campus to learn how they can best ensure their safety and mental health given their unique struggles.
My heart audibly palpitates as I write this — my hands trembling as I gently press the final keystrokes; I once again take refuge behind my fear and cowardice.
Nadav Heller contributed to this article
Photo Caption: The YU Pride Alliance at the Wilf Club Fair
Photo Credit: Schneur Friedman
