U Penn professor says colleges have 'failed' anti-Israel students: 'We are fearful of offending them'

A University of Pennsylvania professor declared that higher education has failed vehemently anti-Israel students in a recent op-ed.

"We have failed," Ezekiel Emanuel wrote in a New York Times op-ed published Tuesday after the Hamas terror attacks on Israel that has left at least 1,400 Israeli civilians and soldiers dead. 

"When a coalition of 34 student organizations at Harvard can say that they ‘hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence’ and students at other elite universities blame Israel alone for the attack Hamas carried out on Israelis on Oct. 7 or even praise the massacre, something is deeply wrong at America’s colleges and universities," the professor concluded. 

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Emanuel, who was a close advisor to former President Barack Obama and helped design the Affordable Care Act, placed blame for student radicalism on university professors and the entire system of higher education. 

"Those of us who are university leaders and faculty are at fault," he wrote. "We may graduate our students, confer degrees that certify their qualifications as the best and brightest. But we have clearly failed to educate them. We have failed to give them the ethical foundation and moral compass to recognize the basics of humanity."

He continued: "We in the academy need to look more deeply at how it is possible that so many undergraduates, graduate students, law students and faculty at our nation’s finest colleges and universities could have such moral blinders." 

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Emanuel, a trained bioethicist, called on universities to support "ethics classes" for students to inculcate values in students, though even that is not enough for youth to "develop a clear moral compass so that they can rise above ideological catchphrases." 

That kind of serious moral education, Emanuel argued, has not happened because of cowardice in the universities.

"At the same time, academia has become more hesitant," he wrote. "We often avoid challenging our students, avoid putting hard questions to them, avoid forcing them to articulate and justify their opinions. All opinions are equally valid, we argue. We are fearful of offending them."

The University of Pennsylvania has come under criticism from major donors as well. 

Former Utah Governor and University of Pennsylvania alumni Jon Huntsman Jr. called out his alma mater for remaining silent after Hamas, a terrorist group backed by Iran, carried out attacks in Israel. 

"To the outsider, it appears that Penn has become deeply adrift in ways that make it almost unrecognizable," Huntsman wrote in an email obtained by The Daily Pennsylvanian. "Moral relativism has fueled the university’s race to the bottom and sadly now has reached a point where remaining impartial is no longer an option."

The University of Pennsylvania did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital. 

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