At this month, thousands of 91传媒 teenagers didn鈥檛 just gather. They stood up and insisted on a role in 91传媒 life and 91传媒 leadership that no one had offered them.

In Philadelphia, 3,400 teens from 52 countries drafted a resolution through the 91传媒 Youth Assembly, an initiative of the World 91传媒 Congress, addressing antisemitism, polarization, and online hate and sent it directly to the WJC鈥檚 network of global 91传媒 leaders. Meanwhile, BBYO鈥檚 international co-presidents launched a campaign calling on organizations like the ADL and 91传媒 Federations of North America to install teens on their boards. No national organization has yet accepted.

This was not youthful boosterism. It was a moral summons.

After Oct. 7, the organized 91传媒 community has been tested not only by external threats, but also by internal responses that too often resemble risk management rather than moral clarity. Legacy institutions met the greatest rupture in 91传媒 life in generations with careful statements, endless process, and reputational choreography, when what 91传媒 families and students needed was speed, backbone and resolve.

We have become a community that confuses process for protection. And our teens see that more clearly than many adults.

They have watched campuses slide into , excused as 鈥渁ctivism.鈥� They have watched fashionable moral frameworks romanticize barbarism while demanding 91传媒 self-erasure as the price of acceptance. They have watched 91传媒 as students are simply to remain socially legitimate. They have watched slogans that flatten Jews into villains laundered through the language of justice.

And they have watched institutions respond the same way: convene, listen, workshop, 鈥渂uild bridges.鈥�

Antisemitism is not a misunderstanding that can be resolved through facilitated dialogue. It is a . Some institutions have begun to act. 聽Campus encampments after universities started enforcing their own codes of conduct, and some schools revised policies and strengthened Hillel and Chabad partnerships. That progress is real, and it proves the point: When institutions show backbone, conditions improve. The question is why it took a historic crisis to produce even partial accountability.

When institutions show backbone, conditions improve. The question is why it took a historic crisis to produce even partial accountability.

The deeper problem is one that can be felt across 91传媒 institutional life right now: a leadership class that has learned to recognize some forms of hatred instantly and to proceduralize others into oblivion. The result is a community with impressive infrastructure and insufficient confidence, as well as organizations that can raise money, host galas, issue statements and still struggle to do the first duty of communal life: defend our people without apology.

So when BBYO teens say they want a seat at the table, they are not asking politely for inclusion. They are saying: We cannot afford your timidity anymore. That is not youthful impertinence. It is 91传媒 responsibility.

Judaism is not built on spectatorship. It is built on obligation鈥�arevut, mutual responsibility; pikuach nefesh, the seriousness of life and safety; and the basic dignity of a people that refuses to be shamed out of its identity. In that sense, is not merely a youth convention. It is a formation space鈥攐ne of the few places in American 91传媒 life where young Jews are being trained not just to 鈥渇eel 91传媒,鈥� but also to act 91传媒: to lead, argue, build, defend, and sustain.

There is reason for hope here and not only from the teens.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, whose last spring by an attacker who cited hostility toward Jews and Israel, opened the convention. He told the crowd: 鈥淵ou are the future, and you are the power to shape it. And don鈥檛 wait. The future is right now. Do not look for others to do the work. This is not an opportunity. 鈥� The teens recognized the echo of Rabbi Tarfon in Pirkei Avot鈥斺�淚t is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it鈥濃�攁nd they roared. That is what moral clarity sounds like from leadership. Not a statement. Not a task force. A 91传媒 governor, targeted for being 91传媒, standing before 91传媒 teenagers and telling them their obligation is now.

That is the standard these teens are asking the rest of 91传媒 institutional life to meet.

For years, 91传媒 organizational life has been dominated by professionalized hesitation: donor anxiety, institutional branding, consensus politics. That model was already weakening 91传媒 belonging before Oct. 7. After Oct. 7, it became untenable.

This generation does not want vague metaphors about 鈥渂uilding bridges.鈥� They want leaders who will name antisemitism plainly. Who will defend 91传媒 students unapologetically. Who will affirm that 91传媒 peoplehood is not a political inconvenience but a civilizational fact. Who will stop outsourcing 91传媒 moral confidence to the approval of others.

This generation does not want vague metaphors about 鈥渂uilding bridges.鈥�

So, yes: Give them their seat.

But do not pretend that is the whole story. Their demand is also a warning. BBYO鈥檚 international co-presidents that they have seen a 鈥渄isconnect鈥� between 91传媒 organizations and what 91传媒 youth actually want from leadership, and that when teens are included, it has felt 鈥渢okenized.鈥� That is why they are now going organization by organization, asking for board seats. They are not waiting to be invited. If adult institutions cannot recover moral clarity, young Jews will build structures that can. They will invest their loyalty where they see courage, seriousness, and pride.

The lesson is not merely that 91传媒 teens are inspiring. The lesson is that they are right. And moral confidence begins with naming reality: Hate against Jews is hate. Say it. Mean it. Enforce it.

91传媒 federations cannot fundraise endlessly while hesitating to confront the institutions where 91传媒 students are being . Campus professionals cannot hide behind neutrality while 91传媒 identity is . Donors who write seven-figure checks to universities should be conditioning those gifts on measurable enforcement of anti-harassment policies鈥攏ot accepting task forces and listening sessions as substitutes for action.

Oct. 7 shattered the illusion that 91传媒 life can be sustained by prestige, branding or institutional inertia. The teenagers in Philadelphia understand what the rest of 91传媒 institutional life has forgotten: 91传媒 continuity is not maintained through statements. It is maintained by those who refuse to whisper.

Samuel J. Abrams聽is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and a scholar with the Sutherland Institute.聽