Published 1/31/24 in Washington Examiner. Story by Peter Cordi. A pro-Palestinian University of Pennsylvania faculty group blocked the main entrance to the school’s College Hall during a “die-in” protest to mourn those who have died in Gaza after Israel’s response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Approximately 86 school faculty participated in or spectated the protest held by the Ivy League school’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter, according to the Daily Pennsylvanian, a student-run nonprofit group at the university. UPenn Jewish student leader Eyal Yakoby, who witnessed the die-in, told the Washington Examiner that about 20 faculty members blocked the College Hall entrance as part of the demonstration. “I believe all the tactics used are very intentionally to intimidate and harass other people,” Yakoby said. “We’re seeing this on and off campus across the country. What’s happening isn’t unique to Penn.” “We’ve seen antisemitic events in the past, but we’ve never seen such a high concentration, in a three-month period, of open antisemitism,” he added. As part of the demonstration, faculty simulated being dead by lying on the ground and displaying signs accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians. Yakoby said this made it impossible for some students to get to class. The protest included a 140-foot-long scroll featuring the names of 6,700 Palestinians the group says were “murdered” by Israel, which was walked over to Simone Leigh’s “Brick House” sculpture where the demonstration ended. Bassil Kublaoui, associate professor of clinical pediatrics at Penn Medicine and UPenn FJP spokesman, said that the intention for the die-in was to draw attention to “the inaction of the university towards the Palestinian community and the racist, hate speech directed towards faculty, staff, and students calling for Palestinian justice,” according to the student-run nonprofit group. “Universities need to ask themselves, are our professors meant to be activists or are they meant to be educators?” Yakoby offered instead. The University of Pennsylvania faced controversy in late 2023 after former university president Liz Magill refused to say whether calls for genocide against Jewish people violated school policy in House testimony, resulting in her Dec. 9 resignation. Yakoby spoke at a Republican House leadership press conference ahead of the House testimony, detailing what he described as a “serious” antisemitism problem at the University of Pennsylvania. He told the Washington Examiner, “I thought Magill resigning would give someone new with a better perspective to understand how far the community has gotten from norms and reality. But it seems like maybe as a result of the leniency of the university, people still feel as though they can violate policies and just get away with it.” According to the school’s free speech policy, “you cannot block buildings, or use amplification in a way that disrupts class, regardless of what you say” at the University of Pennsylvania. “What’s happened is that individuals keep toeing the line of what is and isn’t allowed because of such leniency of the university; they feel emboldened to do whatever they want. And we’ve just seen utter pandemonium at times, with people sleeping in buildings for weeks on end. It’s unbelievable,” Yakoby continued. Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) shared his concerns over the demonstration with the Washington Examiner, noting that he has been “a staunch advocate of the U.S.-Israel alliance” throughout his career, whether as mayor of Miami-Dade County or as a member of Congress. “Since the genocidal Hamas terrorists launched their murderous slaughter against Israel on Oct. 7, Jewish American students have faced a nearly 400% increase in hate crimes on campus,” he said. “Antisemitism has NO PLACE ANYWHERE — especially not on college campuses receiving federal funding,” Gimenez added. “I’m working to ensure colleges that fail to protect students from hateful pro-Hamas activities have their federal funding eligibility immediately reviewed.” “Make no mistake, there is no nuance between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. It’s the same old hate, reinvented for the purpose of ostracizing and relegating the Jewish community,” he continued. Kenneth Marcus, founder and head of the Brandeis Center, shared a similar sentiment. “21st century anti-Zionism is essentially antisemitism,” Marcus told the Washington Examiner, describing the origins of the current anti-Zionist movement. “Historically, there were people who opposed the establishment of a Jewish state based on certain ultra-orthodox Jewish messianic views or based on other historical considerations that simply aren’t applicable today,” he explained. “Nowadays, the attack on Israel is a descendant of historical antisemitic movements as opposed to a descendant to other forms of anti-Zionism that have nothing to do with antisemitism.” Yakoby revealed that from his experience on campus, antisemitism and anti-Zionism are “interchangeable,” and said, “I don’t think all anti-Zionists are directly antisemites, but all antisemites are anti-Zionist.” “The fact that this is a faculty activity is especially outrageous,” Marcus stressed. “There is no issue of freedom of speech here since these professors appear to be violating clearly established content-neutral rules of the university and doing so apparently while they’re on the clock.” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, told the Washington Examiner, “Students take their cues from faculty. And so when faculty are doing this, why should we be surprised if we see students engage in peer-on-peer harassment, and certainly anti-Israel activity and even antisemitism from student groups? And so we’re concerned by these new faculty for Justice in Palestine groups that are forming across the country.” Marcus, who served as assistant U.S. secretary of education for civil rights in the Trump administration, said that the faculty who participated in this demonstration “send a signal to Jewish and Israeli students that these faculty members simply are not available to them” because they are espousing views that are antithetical to the Jewish-Israeli identity. “This is not just a matter of them expressing their views, but of breaking university rules in a way that signals to Jewish and Israeli students that they are not welcome,” he continued. He said that the school is sending a message that “they have learned nothing” from former president Magill’s controversial resignation in allowing the violation of university rules, namely blocking the entrance to a school building, to go unchallenged. “This protest shows that any serious campus reform needs to address not only administrative programs like DEI but also the deeply entrenched problems that we have with the university faculty,” Marcus said. “We’re a faculty-facing organization,” Elman said of AEN, which she says is concerned with the rise of “harassment, isolation, and ostracism of Jewish Zionist students on campus” in the last few months. “The role of faculty is to model respectful and civil discourse and engagement, to heal the community, bring students together across differences, show how that can be done, and not to violate the campus and make the situation worse,” she said. “If this is what they’re doing in the quad, what are they doing in the classroom?” Elman pondered. Elman stressed what she calls “the height of hypocrisy” in the same faculty who participated in the die-in protest “waxing eloquent on free speech and academic freedom, and yet they’ve hitched themselves to this initiative that undermines those ideas” in supporting academic boycotts. She said the participating faculty ignored the “lived experiences” of Jewish students in staging the demonstration and that she couldn’t see “how Jewish and Israeli students can feel supported by faculty” in the wake of the protest. Elman condemned the group, “Thank you very much, Faculty for Justice in Palestine. You’re not doing your job. Your job is to educate.” The Washington Examiner reached out to the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine for comment.