To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream

By telling his personal story, a Harvard-trained American historian encourages his struggling students and their parents to resist anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism by rediscovering and reviving Zionism, liberalism, and Americanism.

Since October 7, many students—and their parents—have been reeling. Hamas’s rampage through Israel unleashed waves of anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Americanism—which had been building for decades, especially on campus. In these letters to his students, Professor Gil Troy, American presidential historian and Zionist activist, pushes back against the growing despair regarding America and the assault on Zionism, Israel, and the Jews. 

Recounting the journey he and his family took as Eastern European Boat People, Troy tells the story of Generation Hope—when millions of Americans trusted that their lives would be better than their parents’ and grandparents’. His compelling trajectory from lower-middle-class Queens to Harvard, then to McGill, reinforced his faith in Americanism, liberalism, and Zionism. Alas, he confronted the hyper-politicization of academia two decades before the Academic Intifada’s eruption on October 7, 2023, when too many intellectuals, self-styled Progressives, and feminists cheered for terrorism, torture, kidnapping, and mass rape. Troy has long led this resistance to these snowflake revolutionaries, articulating an affirmative vision of proud Americanism and fearless Zionism. He now urges his students and peers to tell their Mayflower Tales—from Old World oppression and poverty to New World opportunities. 

In telling this true, textured, all-American yet deeply Jewish story of an ever-improving nation pursuing happiness, where progressives believe in progress, and conservatives conserve institutions, he also explains his vision of Identity Zionism, a liberal-democratic nationalism that is proud, affirming, and inspiring, confident enough to be self-critical when necessary but ready to mobilize, build, rebuild, and dream always.