By Lea Wolf, JNS
The new film Nuremberg isn't just historically disturbing; it's a wake-up call.
Based on real conversations between U.S. Army psychiatrist Dr. Douglas Kelley, a psychiatrist serving in the U.S. Army, and Hermann Gering, supreme commander of the German Air Force and one of the most powerful members of the Nazi Party, it captures Goering's chilling mindset: "People can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked."
The film exposes how psychological warfare bends individuals into obedience and rationalizes genocidal acts. That machinery has been repackaged and franchised across our educational system.
Goering and fellow Nazi architects understood how easily people could be coerced into submission through authority, fear and the illusion of certainty. Their formula was simple:
This algorithm now permeates academic departments, administrative suites, DEI offices and professional associations, propagating lies as "truth" based on distorted "evidence", while exploiting the vulnerabilities of their stakeholders.
Within 24 hours of the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7, campuses across America were glorifying terrorist murder, rape, torture and mutilation, while calling for the genocide of Jews. Instead of leading with moral courage and clarity, university presidents legitimized this hostility under the banner of "free speech."
This perverse conduct was not organic. It has been orchestrated through unified slogans, petitions, syllabi, conferences, programming, and professional networks that mobilize students into hate movements. When antisemitic incidents are reported, administrators invoke "academic freedom" and "free speech" as catch-all shields to protect perpetrators and evade accountability.
We have swallowed academia's lies that this is "just speech." Our institutions are running the very propaganda algorithm Goering described, draped in academic robes instead of military insignia.
Within the halls of academia, the professor-student relationship is not casual speech; it is regulated professional conduct. Teaching, grading, controlling classroom climate and hosting programs are services delivered under institutional authority, contractual obligations and a duty of care.
These concerns are not abstract to me. As the co-founder of GWU-JPULSE and CAPE-Ed, and as a plaintiff in the 170-page federal civil-rights lawsuit against George Washington University, the case alleges a sustained pattern of institutional and professional misconduct.
In an incident this past March, it is alleged that an anti-Zionist student berated guest lecturer Laura Brown, a Jewish, lesbian feminist scholar, for nearly 20 minutes, calling her a "Nazi", rapist and "murderer" after she affirmed her Zionism. Two GW professors were present: DeSilva, director of clinical training, who later praised the protester, and Helen DeVinney, who told students that Brown should not have been invited. The message to students is unmistakable: those who openly identify as Zionists risk becoming targets for shaming, sanctions, and sustained intimidation.
When educational programming is used to target, shame, exclude or retaliate against Zionists, educators engage in coercion, character assassination, manipulation of the classroom climate and cultural erasure. When protection, perks or privileges are granted to one group while denied to another, they breach core principles of equal access to education. And when educators misappropriate terminology to label Israel an “apartheid” state, a “settler-colonial” project or a “genocidal” nation, they misrepresent the underlying facts, deploy distorted narratives and mislead students under the guise of academic authority.
Raphael Lemkin coined the term “genocide” to describe how a people can be destroyed long before mass killing—through assaults on their institutions, culture, language and identity. When universities allow faculty to shun, censor and distort Jewish history, they are engaging in “speech” that is regulated conduct, governed by Title VI and other civil-rights laws, contracts, ethics codes, scholarship policies and accreditation standards.
Such conduct may constitute professional malpractice and institutional misconduct, collectively termed by Roger Scruton as “institutionalized fraudulence.”
We already know what institutions do when left to govern themselves. The #MeToo movement exposed educational institutions’ covert playbook that protected sexual predators and silenced victims for decades. These perverted practices are described by Jennifer Freyd as DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender. Antisemitism on campus is simply another form of institutional misconduct and cover-up. Different victims, same tactics.
The 2008 financial crisis revealed the same pathology. Enron’s “smartest guys in the room” exploited weak oversight, falsified reports for profit, bankrupted families and corporations and devastated the global economy. They believed that they were too big to fail.
Today, academia is following the same script. They function as judge, jury and executioner, insulated by corporate veil, general counsel, lobbyists, PR teams, federal funding and insurance payouts. The result is moral bankruptcy, democratic erosion and an emerging national-security risk.
Academic fraud will only subside when professionals face severe personal liability. To disrupt this pattern, we must hold institutions to their own rules—carefully documenting and exposing violations of academic integrity, research-misconduct safeguards and scholarship standards.
As we argued in a previous JNS article, we need the equivalent of a Sarbanes-Oxley framework for education. Under SOX, corporate executives must certify the accuracy of financial reporting and can face criminal liability for false or irregular filings. In the same way, Congress should adopt an Educational Accountability Framework that requires presidents, administrators, deans and faculty to certify the accuracy of scholarship, research, curriculum, educational programming, misconduct reports and major decisions. When professionals violate codes or conceal misconduct, they should face consequences ranging from restorative measures to punitive sanctions.
For this to work, complaints, investigations and outcomes must be tracked and accessible in real time, and case assignments must be conflict-free through random selection.
Educational institutions that receive public funding should be evaluated by how they uphold evidence-based scholarships, foster intellectual rigor, cultivate moral clarity, enforce their codes, reduce misconduct and meet clear standards of civil-rights compliance.
At the film’s center, Kelley turns to Triest, the U.S. Army interpreter and asks: “How could this have happened?”
Triest’s answer is brutally simple: “People let it happen.”
So the question now is equally simple: What will you do to not let it happen?
