On Friday, the UC Irvine Office of Student Conduct announced that it had concluded a three-month investigation into an aggressive and disruptive incident on the UCI campus last May. The incident involved an anti-Israel mob that disrupted a small event held by a Jewish student group on campus. The angry mob of about 50 students blocked the entrances and exits while loudly chanting angry, anti-Israel, anti-police, and pro-Palestinian sentiments that promoted violence, anti-Semitism, and hate. One Jewish student, Eliana Kopley, attempted to get away, but was chased and hounded by members of the angry mob, forcing her to hide in a kitchen while a UCI staff member protected her. According to yesterday’s announcement, the student group Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) is responsible for violation of the UCI Code of Conduct’s provision prohibiting “Obstruction or disruption of teaching, research, administration, disciplinary procedures, or other University activities.” As for sanctions, SJP was issued a written warning, effective immediately and continuing until March 29, 2017. SJP must also host an educational program by November 18, 2016. LDB President and General Counsel Kenneth L. Marcus expressed his concerns about the university’s announcement, stating, “I am disappointed in the outcome, which fails to hold SJP accountable for the harassment and physical intimidation of Eliana Kopley – or to even acknowledge that anything happened to her that night.” Indeed, the statement yesterday makes no reference to any student being chased, followed, or needing to hide from attendees of SJP’s “protest” gone wrong. Marcus further stated, “I do believe that it is a step forward for UC Irvine to finally acknowledge that SJP’s disruptive behavior violates university polices. We are pleased that the university has implicitly rejected the spurious claims by the National Lawyers’ Guild and Palestine Legal that such disruptive behavior is protected by the First Amendment, when it clearly is a violation of the freedom of speech. We are also glad that the Office of Student Affairs has – at a minimum – issued SJP a warning, and we hope that administrators will closely monitor SJP’s activities over the coming year and respond quickly to any further crimes, infractions or violations that they commit.” However, Marcus described the weak sanctions as “a slap on the wrist for SJP, and a slap in the face to the Jewish community.” Ms. Kopley agreed, stating, “I feel like their punishment is not enough to keep the pro-Israel and Jewish students on campus safe. It isn’t guaranteeing our safety. What happened that night does not warrant just a ‘warning’. There should be a real, visible action by the school to ensure safety to all students on our campus.” (more…)
On Monday, June 22, the AMCHA initiative launched a new webpage filled with testimonies from Jewish students who have been subject to anti-Semitic acts on college campuses across the country. An article in The Algemeiner states that “students at 47 colleges and universities in 20 states” recounted these incidents for the webpage. The testimonies detail truly horrific acts, including both physical and verbal abuse. A number of students were attacked for wearing the Star of David or wearing shirts with the word “Israel” or Hebrew lettering on them, while others received racist remarks about the Holocaust, Nazis, and the nation of Israel. The article states that all the testimonies posted on the website were “stated publicly at student government meetings or have been quoted by the press.” The AMCHA initiative is a non-profit watchdog organization that seeks to fight anti-Semitism on college campuses in the United States. The Brandeis Center works with AMCHA frequently, including recently joining to write a letter to University of California President, Janet Napolitano, about an anti-Israel class at UC Riverside, and urging President Napolitano to adopt the State Department definition of anti-Semitism, which she has since publicly supported. The testimonies of these Jewish students come as another sober reminder that campus anti-Semitism is on the rise in America.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center joins the AMCHA initiative and 25 other groups in writing a letter to University of California President Napolitano and Provost Dorr about an anti-Israeli class taught at UC Riverside by a SJP member Dear President Napolitano and Provost Dorr, Last Fall, after several of our organizations wrote to you expressing our concern about instructors on UC campuses who promote anti-Israel propaganda and boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaigns in their classrooms, you sent us assurances that the Regents Policy on Course Content, which prohibits misuse of the classroom for political indoctrination, applies to both graduate student instructors and faculty, and you called on UC Chancellors to enforce this important policy. However, we are gravely concerned about a course being given at UC Riverside this academic quarter, which we believe is being used for political indoctrination rather than education. Even more troubling is that when our organizations and members of the public have expressed their legitimate concerns to UCR administrators, they have been unwilling to acknowledge these clear violations of UC policy, let alone address them. The one-credit course, entitled “Palestine & Israel: Settler-Colonialism and Apartheid,” is being taught at UCR by Tina Matar, an undergraduate student who is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Matar was an author and proponent of the extremely contentious anti-Israel divestment resolution passed by the UCR student senate last April, as well as the leader of a very recent SJP campaign to have an Israeli product, Sabra humus, removed from campus cafeterias. Matar’s class syllabus, reproduced below, strongly suggests that her affiliation with the anti-Zionist SJP group formed the ideological basis for her course curriculum, which was developed under the mentorship of the SJP’s faculty advisor, UCR English Professor David Lloyd, who is also a BDS leader and founder of the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. In addition, a preliminary analysis of Matar’s syllabus by Verity Educate a non-partisan, non-profit organization that provides scholarly analysis of the factual accuracy and objectivity of educational material, demonstrated that “the core academic and educational values of knowledge acquisition and critical thinking have been hijacked by a particular strain of political action, and specifically by a particular politically oriented activist organization.” Verity Educate’s analysis includes the following: (more…)
University of California at Berkeley Earlier today, fifteen national organizations urged Chancellor Dirks of the University of California at Berkeley to monitor the behavior of Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP) and other student organizations involved in the so-called September 23 “Day of Action.” The 15 organizations, representing hundreds of thousands of members and supporters nationwide, expressed deep concern about the safety and well-being of Jewish students around these events. In the wake of the Israel-Gaza conflict, global antisemitism has reached levels not seen since the Holocaust. Jews throughout the world are being targeted for threats, physical assaults and murder, and Jewish property for desecration and destruction. The groups emphasize that they fully support academic freedom and students’ freedom of expression, but nevertheless caution that “these types of demonstrations can result in antisemitic rhetoric and violent behavior, creating a hostile and unsafe environment for Jewish students.” Just days ago, the groups observed, a Jewish student at Temple University was punched in the face and called “baby-killer, racist, Zionist pig” and “kike” as he stood next to a table run by the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The groups’ letter is as follows: Dear Chancellor Dirks, We represent 15 organizations with hundreds of thousands of members and supporters nationwide, who are deeply concerned for the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses across the country, particularly in light of the current unrest in the Middle East. We would like to bring to your attention a matter that directly affects Jewish students at UC Berkeley. Dr. Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley lecturer in Near Eastern Studies, has posted to his Facebook page an announcement of an “International Day of Action on College Campuses: Free Palestine and End the Siege on Gaza,” which is to take place on September 23. The posting includes the following message: A call for activists and organizations on campuses across the world to organize massive protests on every college and university campus. Make Free Palestine and Ending the Siege on Gaza part of campus education by holding teach-ins, rallies, sit-ins, civil disobedience, and push for BDS activities. (more…)
DePaul University On Friday, pro-Israel students at DePaul University stood up against divestment campaigns by the anti-Israel student group, Students for Justice in Palestine. By a referendum passage by a difference of only 242 votes, pro-Israel students came out in large numbers with the intent of rejecting the referendum. Said StandWithUs National Campus Program Director Brett Cohen, “The close results of the vote show that the #DePaulDivest campaign is divisive, and a large number of students saw through its hypocrisy and double standards.” Many say that divestment techniques don’t necessarily stand strong on most college campuses because, according to StandWithUs CEO Roz Rothstein, “it presented allegations against Israel as settled facts when they are actually false or contested claims.”
Re-posted from Camera on Campus. Anti-Israel demonstration in New York. (Tablet Magazine). As the US Air Force C-17 left Afghan airspace, I allowed myself to relax for a brief moment. My year-long tour in Kabul, Afghanistan was over. Returning home, I thought of those fellow soldiers, including my Command Sergeant Major, who had not been so fortunate. In their service to the United States, they had been killed by the Taliban. In remembering them, I thought of the oath that we had all taken: to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Now, as a former US Army Captain and a third-year law student, I have had the opportunity to further study the Constitution and the cases that have expanded and narrowed its original amendments. Particularly with the First Amendment, I have wrestled with whether there should be limits on what can be said. The battles that I am currently fighting are no longer with bullets in Kabul, but with ideas in the classroom. Since entering law school, I have witnessed the vitriol directed at pro-Israel and Zionist students. At my law school, only one side of the story is told. To challenge the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) agenda is to be ostracized amongst the general student body. In becoming the Chair of the Alliance for Israel (AFI) club, I have put myself at the center of these debates over free speech. I have fought their hate, and what I believe to be virulent anti-Semitism, by hosting pro-Israel and Zionist speakers at the law school. These collective experiences of serving in the military and being a law student have made me a free speech absolutist. I despise the hateful rhetoric that SJP spews about Israel. I believe, however, that they have a right to voice their opinions, no matter how ignorant. This is because I know that when I bring pro-Israel speakers to campus, these groups would want nothing more than for my events to be shut down. Free speech is a double-edged sword. I am, therefore, fearful of the undefined label of “hate speech” and its infinite ramifications. Such labels can be redirected to causes that I support. Despite my beliefs regarding freedom of speech, there are, nevertheless, limits to what the First Amendment will protect. In the seminal United States Supreme Court case of Brandenburg v. Ohio, the Court overturned the lower courts’ rulings that had found the defendant, an Ohio KKK chapter leader, guilty of violating the Ohio Criminal Syndicalism Act (OCSA). The defendant had been arrested after he gave a speech that degraded Jews and blacks. The Supreme Court held that: “[T]he constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action (emphasis added).” “Imminent” is the operative word. I do not call for UCLA to disinvite the 2018 National SJP Conference to be held on UCLA’s campus from November 16-18. Rather, it is imperative that UCLA and SJP understand the standard articulated in Brandenburg and put the appropriate protections in place to prevent any possibility of physical violence from occurring. This means that UCLA administrators and SJP National Conference organizers need to educate themselves on the past violence that has occurred after SJP rallies. There are numerous cases of anti-Semitic incidents that resulted in physical violence. Many of these include documentation of SJP members physically assaulting pro-Israel and Zionist students. For example, on April 27, 2018, an SJP protest against a pro-Israel event at New York University (NYU) turned violent when an SJP member “stole an Israel[i] flag [from pro-Israel students] and brought it to the [SJP] protesters. [The flag] was ripped, stomped on, defaced with pink chalk and then burned.” Also at the event, an SJP member “sneaked in during the singing of Hatikva, forcefully and hurtfully grabbed the microphone from the [pro-Israel student] who had been holding it, and shouted, ‘Free Palestine!’” The “SJP’s president explained the behavior of the protesters to Washington Square News saying, ‘We’re not going to let them stand by and support Zionism. Our point is to make being Zionist uncomfortable on the NYU campus.’” Anti-Israel demonstrator becoming physically violent at pro-Israel event at NYU (Realize Israel). This incident is only one in a series of documented physical assaults against pro-Israel and Zionist students. In opening its campus to the 2018 SJP National Conference, UCLA becomes an inviting location for such physical violence to occur. In viewing the Brandenburg standard, one can debate the imminence of such violence. What is more likely than not, however, is that in the wake of such SJP rallies, violence is more likely to occur. In hosting this event, UCLA and the 2018 National SJP Conference should be held accountable for any physical violence that their conference attendees commit. Preparing for the worst, UCLA should have ample campus security in place to prevent SJP attendees from engaging in violent acts. UCLA should have designated protest areas. They should also have a zero-tolerance policy for any physical violence or destruction of property that occurs during the conference. In addition, the 2018 National SJP Conference organizers need to understand that, yes, they can lie all they want about Israel and Zionism, but direct, immediate calls for physical violence are not legally protected. They should be held liable for any physical violence to Jewish, pro-Israel, or Zionist students and structures during and immediately following the 2018 National SJP Conference at UCLA. Once the line is crossed between hateful rhetoric, which is protected, and physical violence, which is not, campus authorities should react appropriately and arrest those physically violent offenders. Contributed by Micah Q. Jones, a third-year law student at Northeastern University School of Law (NUSL). Before law school, Micah served over five years in the US Army. Micah is currently the chair of NUSL’s Alliance for Israel (AFI) club. Originally published at JNS.org.