As antisemitism explodes across American college campuses, many American Jewish leaders have resorted to empty statements, bureaucratic hand-wringing, or calls for more DEI workshops, as if the very institutions enabling the hatred could somehow be trusted to fix it.
But not Randy Fine.
Congressman Fine, a proud Jewish American and a Freshman Congressman from Florida, is refusing to play by the broken rules of academia or the cowardly consensus of polite politics. He is doing something that too few Jewish leaders in the United States and, frankly, too few elected officials have had the courage to do: speak the truth, call out the rot, and go on offense.
At a time when the fringe elements of the American left have mainstreamed antisemitism under the cover of “anti-Zionism,” and when elite universities have become hotbeds of hate toward Israel and the Jewish people, Congressman Fine is holding the line, not just in words, but in action.
He has introduced legislation to defund universities that fail to protect Jewish students. He has directly called out university presidents who coddle Hamas-sympathizing mobs and allow antisemitic chants to echo through campus quads. And he has done it all with the kind of unapologetic moral clarity that the moment demands.
Let us be clear about what is happening on American campuses.
Since October 7, Jewish students across America have been harassed, spat on, assaulted, and forced to hide their identity in fear. At the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, and dozens more, radical activists have hijacked the language of human rights to justify violence against Jews. Worse, their allies among the faculty and administration have stood idly by or, worse, actively encouraged the poison.
This is not just a crisis of security. It is a moral indictment of higher education itself.
The institutions that once prided themselves on free inquiry and intellectual rigor have become echo chambers of hatred, groupthink, and political cowardice. University leaders will happily fire a professor for misgendering a student or remove a conservative speaker for violating “community values.” But let a student call for the annihilation of Israel, and suddenly, academic freedom becomes sacred.
That is why Congressman Randy Fine’s voice matters now more than ever before.
He is not fooled by the double standards. He is not impressed by flowery statements about dialogue and inclusion. And he is not willing to let taxpayer money flow to schools that are failing to meet the basic duty of protecting their students, especially their Jewish ones.
His recent response to the University of Pennsylvania’s handling of antisemitism was especially powerful. When a Penn-affiliated student tweeted that she came to Washington to fight for Palestine, Fine’s reply cut through the noise: “You came to Washington to make Jewish students feel unsafe. We’ve seen this story before. You’re not the resistance. You’re the problem.”
Those words should echo in every Jewish home and every Israeli heart.
For decades, Jewish donors and alumni have blindly written checks to elite institutions that have no love for the Jewish people. Many still cling to the illusion that these schools can be reformed from within. Congressman Fine knows better. He understands that real accountability begins when we stop funding the very institutions that fuel our enemies.
And this is not just an American Jewish issue. It is an Israeli one too.
The same ideological virus that infects American campuses eventually finds its way into foreign policy, UN resolutions, and the State Department. Today’s student activists become tomorrow’s policymakers like Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, lawyers, journalists, and NGO operatives. If they are trained to believe that Israel is a colonial oppressor and that Jews are the privileged villains of history, then we should not be surprised when they act accordingly.
Congressman Randy Fine is doing more than defending Jewish students. He is defending the truth, and in doing so, he is defending the Jewish people and the Jewish state.
We need more leaders like him, in America, in Israel, and everywhere the fight against antisemitism is being waged.
And we need to support them, loudly and unapologetically.
Watch Congressman Randy Fine in action:
Raphael Shore is the Executive Chairman of OpenDor Media, and author of “Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Jew: Learning to Love the Lessons of Jew-Hatred”