(RNS) — As I watched the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7 unfold, many things went through my mind: anger, fear, paralyzing grief — and the realization that nothing would ever be the same.

But, I never expected that the events of Oct. 7 would provoke wars within American academia.

It started almost immediately after Oct. 7, amid Israel’s retaliation against Hamas and the battle to rescue our hostages. A professor at Cornell University said the attacks on Israel had “exhilarated” him. Over the next few weeks, on far too many college campuses, college students organized rallies that called for the destruction of Israel (“from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”) and for widespread violence against Jews (“globalize the intifada”), leading Jewish students to feel nothing less than threatened.

The result: a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses.

The universities in question: University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University and MIT — arguably among the most prestigious universities in America.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill whether calls for genocide against Jews would constitute harassment on Penn’s campus, according to the university’s code of conduct. She repeated the question to Harvard President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth. All three presidents said the answer to Stefanik’s question would depend on context.

The pushback was fast and viral, especially against President Magill. David Pottruck, the former CEO of Charles Schwab, for whom the university’s health and fitness center is named, engaged Penn alumni in a letter-writing campaign, in which they expressed no confidence in Magill. Ross Stevens, CEO of the financial services firm Stone Ridge Asset Management, rescinded a donation to Penn of about $100 million.

More than 70 members of Congress called for the trustees of Penn, Harvard and MIT to fire their presidents over their responses to antisemitism on campus.

As a result, Penn President Magill resigned her position as president of Penn.

Why did President Magill deserve to resign, and why should the other presidents in question also resign?

Because Jews should expect that colleges will protect them from calls for violence against them. Because Jews should enjoy the same kinds of protections against hate speech as any other group.

Or, let me put it to you this way. If the Jews are the only group that it is acceptable to verbally abuse and to violently threaten — out of all other identity groups you might find on a college campus — then we have a problem. As David Baddiel wrote in his book of the same name: Jews don’t count.

There is a term for that. It is Jew hatred. It is unacceptable.

Actually, the problem is even deeper than that. In the current fad ideology of the far left, Jews are seen as privileged and as oppressors.

Rabbi David Wolpe had been serving on the antisemitism advisory group at Harvard. No more. He resigned.

Wolpe said he believed “Claudine Gay [the president of Harvard] to be both a kind and thoughtful person,” that there are many good people at Harvard, and that the institution is “still a repository of extraordinary minds and important research.” However, he said there was an ideology shared by “far too many of the students and faculty” that is “evil” in that it views Jews as oppressors and “intrinsically evil.”

“Ignoring Jewish suffering is evil,” he said. “Denying Israel the self-determination as a Jewish nation accorded unthinkingly to others is endemic, and evil.”

But, there is another reason why these presidents should resign. It is not only that these college presidents have failed to protect Jewish students. It is not only that they have, perhaps even unwittingly, fallen prey to a malignant ideology that paints Jews as oppressors.

It is also because they have committed an intellectual blunder, which we can trace to one small word.

“Context.”

Here is my observation: The higher the tuition bill, the more likely it is that your kid will come back from college for winter break parroting such concepts as postmodernism, deconstructionism, colonialist theory, the “narrative” — and, yes, “context.”

In their own way, such concepts are often useful for understanding history, culture and, certainly, religious texts.

But, if you believe the condemnation of Jew hatred depends on its context — again, alone of all possible hatreds and “isms” that could be present on a college campus — then you are the victim of intellectual relativism. This relativism forbids both moral judgements and historical analysis.

On Oct. 8, the day after the massacres, I knew things had changed for American Jews, and for American Judaism. I write about how Oct. 7 changed American Judaism in my new book “Tikkun Ha’Am/ Repairing Our People: Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism.”

Those changes and re-evaluations I predicted? What it means for American Jews to feel connected to Israel. The increased primacy of Jewish peoplehood, even over religious practice. How we address the balance between particularism and universalism. The need for more rigorous Jewish education.

I never expected that Oct. 7 would force American Jews to re-think the role of the university.

Decades ago, the Israeli intellectual, Hillel Halkin, put it this way: “In the space of a few generations, the sons and daughters not only of rabbis and Talmudists, but of ordinary Jewish butchers, bakers, tailors, peddlers, lumber dealers, wagon drivers and bathhouse keepers would pour out of the ghetto to flood the universities of Europe and America.”

The university diploma, especially from the Ivy League, was the entry ticket into the American meritocracy.

But now, many American Jews are wondering aloud: Is an Ivy League education worth the possible danger to my children and to their Jewish identity (which, it turns out, was stronger than they might have imagined)?

It would be far too easy, and far too tempting, to allow this episode to become another attack on the “elites” and “elitism.”

It would be far too easy, and dangerous, for our justified critiques of intellectual shoddiness to become a rejection of intellectualism in its entirety. As historian Richard Hofstadter noted, there is a long tradition of anti-intellectualism in American life. It is not pretty, and it is not hospitable to Jews.

No. Jews must continue to be both consumers and critics of higher education.

Why? Because that is what Jews should do — to be part of the culture, and to stand apart from the culture. And to critique it.

I never expected Oct. 7 would go way beyond Israel and the Jews. I never expected it would become yet another battle in the culture wars and in the battle for the American mind.

When it comes to hatred — no, there is no such thing as “context.”