In response to viral anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations at Columbia University in New York City, coupled with the lack of action by college presidents and other administrators, alumni have started an online effort to shame their alma maters’ failed responses. That effort has now spread to other schools.
The “Flip Your Diploma” campaign calls on graduates who oppose their schools’ inadequate responses to the rise in campus antisemitism to take a photo of themselves with their diploma turned upside-down.
The organizers of the effort urge others to “express your opprobrium of the institutional inversion of values and lack of moral clarity with a black-and-white photo showing our upside-down diploma.”
The campaign is sponsored by the Columbia Alumni Association and the SAFE Columbia chapter of SAFE CAMPUS.
A video about the campaign shows photos of those who have joined in, as well as video of protests on the Columbia campus featuring large crowds marching and chanting “intifada” and “from the river to the sea.”
Victor Muslin, a promoter of the campaign, told JNS the campaign began with Asaf Eyal at Columbia, “but has been joined by alumni from more than a dozen major universities in the U.S. and at least one university abroad so far.”
Muslin said to JNS that he was surprised how “alumni from different schools have picked up the campaign, even though it started as a purely Columbia initiative. Of course, now that it happened organically, we encourage it.”
He said many people had told them privately that they wanted to participate and agreed with the message, but “are afraid of retaliation.” Muslin replied that it “surprised me because the campaign is so innocuous and non-confrontational. For me, this is a sad comment on the current illiberal cultural climate.”
Participating schools include American University, Brandeis University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, Ohio State University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others.
