03/25/2025
Post-Oct. 7, 2023, Campus Climate Discussed at Federation’s CRC Annual Meeting
Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and chairman of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, delivers the Sidney Z. Vincent Memorial Lecture at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland's 78th Community Relations Committee Annual Meeting on March 20 at Green Road Synagogue in Beachwood. CJN Photo / Abigail Preiszig
ABIGAIL PREISZIG
Article reprinted with permission from Cleveland Jewish News
College students that worked with The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in 2023 and 2024 said they “can’t unsee what they saw at their campuses” on Oct. 8, 2023.
According to Kenneth L. Marcus, founder and chairman of The Louis D. Brandeis Center, it was a “moment when we already had a fairly significant amount of information about the mass murders, torture, sexual assaults, desecration of corpses and certainly kidnappings” of the Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israel and students saw an “outbreak of celebration for the Hamas activities” before the Israel Defense Forces even entered Gaza.
“For many students, they would see that their own classmates were participating in this,” Marcus told more than 150 attendees gathered on March 20 at Green Road Synagogue in Beachwood for the Jewish Federation of Cleveland’s 78th annual Community Relations Committee Annual Meeting and Sidney Z. Vincent Memorial Lecture. “If not their friends, at least their acquaintances, people who are part of their community, people to whom they had significant goodwill, but they didn’t know how they could react anymore because no longer could they have the sense that they were part of the community in which they were fully welcome.”
His lecture, “The Campus Climate and the Washington Response: What Jewish Students Face on College Campuses and How the Government is Responding,” focused on the transition in government, Title VI investigations, congressional action, violations and lawsuits and the work of The Louis D. Brandeis Center, an independent, unaffiliated, nonprofit corporation established to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all in Washington, D.C.
It was followed by a panel of university representatives who shared their respective experiences on campus: Sarah Deitsch, program director at Schottenstein Chabad House at The Ohio State University in Columbus; Maira Ligo-Pineda, a senior at Kent State University and student board president of Hillel at Kent State University; and Rabbi Davey Rosen, CEO of Michigan Hillel in Ann Arbor.
Susan R. Borison, community relations committee chair, delivered the State of the Community Relations Committee address.
She shared her personal experience with the committee, the heart of its work and the changes it made after Oct. 7, 2023, including the creations of interfaith and intergroup subcommittees.
“CRC work has always been important, but Oct. 7 dramatically increased the volume of work and highlighted the value of strong community relationships,” Borison said. “In the midst of insurmountable needs, we took a step back to reimagine CRC.”
Aaron Evenchik, event co-chair, introduced Marcus and delivered the closing remarks while Anna Novik, event co-chair, paid tribute to Sidney Z. Vincent, former executive director of the Federation and former director of community relations.
Marcus began and ended his lecture referencing two statements made by Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, during a March 2025 interview with The New York Times: “Oct. 7 changed everything” and the year 1950 was “a golden age for Jews in America and would be for 50 years.”
He said the statements are true, but “mutually incompatible.”
“If the ‘golden age’ ended around the year 2000, how could everything change on Oct. 7, 2023? And I think that what changed is the world as we perceive it, the world as we experience it,” Marcus said. “… If it truly took 23 and a half years to realize that we were no longer in a ‘golden age,’ as Sen. Schumer’s two comments suggested, it might be that when we get into a golden age, it will take a little while to realize that as well.
“My point of view is that right now in a lot of ways things might look gloomy, things might look bad, but we do have a number of different areas in which we are making significant success. … There is every possibility that when we look back at the year 2025, we will say that was an ugly time, but it was a time when things turned around thanks to people who got together to make change.”
