I recently and unexpectedly found myself walking by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As I was passing by, I glanced at the entry plaza, froze, and then wept. A monumental sculpture by Joel Shapiro, titled “Loss & Regeneration,” in front of the Museum stopped me in my tracks for this breathtaking work conveys intense emotion, in line with Shapiro’s larger body of work.

So much of Shapiro’s art involves taking simple rectangular shapes of various materials and producing human-like figures. The Pace Gallery notes that Shapiro’s work “creates abstract geometric sculpture that elicits a sense of movement and engages viewers’ physical and psychological relationships with space.” While the figures lack faces and many human details, they powerfully capture human emotions and so much of his work evokes a sense of human triumph, euphoria, and possibility.

I had no idea I would find this Shapiro work at the Museum. Caught in a state of complete surprise, the sculpture’s effect was magnified and I started to break down. As opposed to capturing positive human potential, what I saw was a broken human; a person in a state of despair and had collapsed.

This destruction of the human spirit is exactly what happened to so many during the Holocaust and was entirely the intention of the Nazi regime—to break and dehumanize outsiders. The concentration camps were just one part of the terror, so much of the world forgot the many years of propaganda and hate that led up to the “final solution” and the millions of deaths. The recent uptick in hatred of and violence toward Jews in both the United States and abroad seems eerily similar to Germany in the 1930s and Shapiro’s piece powerfully reminded me of the dark places humanity can go when hate and incivility becomes so intense.

Shapiro’s piece capturing a broken soul was incredibly moving and, for me, served as a needed, potent reminder that the illiberal forces which drove the Nazi regime to commit unspeakable actions are not only still alive around the globe and, notably, on the very collegiate campuses on which I teach but also thriving and growing. The Wall Street Journal just published a disturbing piece showing that nearly half of adults worldwide hold anti-Semitic views and noted that these ideas are more prevalent among young people:

Some 50 percent of the respondents younger than 35 hold anti-Semitic views, and only 39 percent recognize the Holocaust as historically accurate, compared with 48 percent among all respondents. In comparison, only 37 percent of respondents over 50 reported anti-Semitic beliefs.

Shapiro’s sculpture was a needed wakeup call that we can never again permit dangerous, illiberal ideologies to thrive as they did when Hitler took office. We can never again allow conditions to develop like that of the Third Reich which then tried to eradicate groups of people based on their faith and heritage.

In the early weeks of 2025, what is very clear is that most of the messaging and approaches taken to combat anti-Semitism have failed over the past year. As a country, we must step up our resolve to combat these troubling impulses and dangerous beliefs. President Trump’s staunch commitment to Israel and its right to self-defense—including his assistance in brokering a cease-fire agreement—is appreciated but our society must rise to the moment and respond to the rampant anti-Semitism.

This means that the American people collectively must accept and promote the idea that anti-Semitism is anti-American and counter the narratives that Israel is committing its own Holocaust and genocide in Gaza and with the so-called “Nakba;” these words must be used carefully and correctly. This is not just a problem for Jewish and non-Jewish Zionists and members of the Jewish community; this is a cultural problem now in the United States writ large. We can no longer hope this goes away or that anti-Semitism is someone else’s problem to solve. We as a people must stand up for our American values including the rule of law, an appreciation of diversity and multiculturalism, the promotion of opportunity and freedom for all including—in the words of FDR—the freedom of worship and the freedom from fear.

When protestors shut down mass transit systems, riot and prevent use of public spaces, threaten others who are minding their own business and striving for their version of the American Dream, or deface a Jewish center—such as the Chabad House at Indiana University just last week—entire communities should come out and call out this nonsense and hold accountable those who seek to destroy our shared American values and ideals. America can absolutely do this and proudly proclaim and live its historic virtues and values. Hopefully, the new President and the GOP majority in Congress will set this critically important tone too.