Speech from Tammi Rossman-Benjamin will Highlight Campus Anti-Semitism

On June 30th, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin will deliver a talk at the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, California. Entitled “Campus and the New Anti-Semitism”, the talk will focus on “the hostile, anti-Israel climate which university students across the country are facing and the challenges of addressing campus anti-Semitism.” Rossman-Benjamin, a Brandeis Center Academic Advisory Board Member, is also the founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit group that aims “to investigate, document, educate about, and combat anti-Semitic behavior on college and university campuses in America and the institutional structures that legitimize it and allow it to flourish.”

In the summer of 2010, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Brandeis Center president Kenneth L. Marcus moderated and organized a two-week long workshop series entitled “Contemporary Anti-Semitism in Higher Education”. The scholarly workshops were held at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies in Washington, DC and brought together leading experts on combatting anti-Semitism, united by the belief in the importance of preserving college campuses as pillars of free expression.

More recently, Rossman-Benjamin has been the victim of a character assassination campaign at UC Santa Cruz, where she is a lecturer. In 2009, Rossman-Benjamin filed a Title VI complaint with the Office of Civil Rights alleging anti-Semitic harassment on the UCSC campus. In her complaint, she implicated two student groups as playing a part in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. Last year, Rossman-Benjamin gave a speech in which she described anti-Semitic incidents that were occurring on UC Santa Cruz’ campus and attributed some of them to those two organizations, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association. As a result, in March 2013, Associated Students at the University of California (ASUC) at Berkeley adopted a resolution that called on outgoing UC President Mark Yudof to condemn Rossman-Benjamin’s remarks. This is tangible proof of one of the Top Ten Surprises about Campus Anti-Semitism, that advocates for the Jewish people and those who speak out against anti-Semitism are sometimes unfairly abused for their beliefs and opinions.

In response to this condemnation campaign, The Brandeis Center and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East released a Joint Statement defending Rossman-Benjamin, saying:

“We find the accusations against Rossman-Benjamin to be false, scurrilous, and unjustifiable. Over the years, Rossman-Benjamin has tirelessly campaigned against anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli harassment. Perversely, Rossman-Benjamin is now being branded a purveyor of hate speech and Islamophobia precisely because she attempted to expose hate speech which her accusers would prefer to shield from scrutiny.”

Furthermore, in a new development, the UC Berkeley student who authored the resolution condemning Tammi Rossman-Benjamin was named as the student regent designate for 2014 – 2015. Considering this student’s actions, it is surprising that a committee of 5 Regents selected her for a position on a board that makes decisions for the entire UC system.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center deserves to be commended for standing by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin during this time and showing their courage in refusing to cave to unfair pressures or bow in the face of anti-Semitism.