1100 Percent Increase Over Last Year in Anti-Zionist Activity by UC Faculty

March 21, 2024 - The Amcha Initiative, a nonprofit organization that combats antisemitism at institutes of higher education, warns Jewish students that the public University of California campuses "are not safe" for them. Amcha Initiative is not a pro-Israel advocacy group and does not take a position on anything that does not rise to the level of antisemitism as defined by IHRA and U.S. government criteria.

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"Testimony" arranged by Faculty for Justice in Palestine UC Santa Cruz for the city council meeting

A recent report by Amcha Initiative has discovered a whopping 1100 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity by faculty members at the UC campuses. The UC colleges receive public funds as well as tuition from students. Faculty and graduate students are prohibited from using their academic positions or university resources to engage in political indoctrination and activism of any sort.

Despite this prohibition, in comparing the period of October 17 to March 15 this year to the same period last year, Amcha Initiative discovered the number of anti-Zionist activities and advocacy carried out by faculty went from 8 to 94.

Anti-Zionist activity has become inseparable from simple antisemitism. Since October 7, and even before, many "pro-Palestinian" activities have included canards against Jews as a whole, personal attacks against students and faculty for the mere fact of being Jewish, and vandalism of synagogues and Jewish symbols, such as Hanukkah menorahs. Many of the recorded anti-Israel incidents were instigated by the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, a group formed after October 7 for the express purpose of supporting pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel student groups and to use their positions as faculty to attack Israel.

The incidents include cancelling classes to support anti-Israel protests, declaring that "the Israeli state must end" and that "zionism [sic] is not welcome on our campus," and organizing protests that resulted in Jewish students getting physically assaulted. At least one graduate student offered credit to students who would attend a protest, watch a documentary on Palestine, or call/email their local California representative to support Palestine. The use of the word "Palestine" to denote the region presumes there is no or should be no "Israel."

The Amcha Initiative researchers noted that, "While anti-Zionist students and groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine are responsible for many of the incidents targeting Jewish students for harm, anti-Zionist faculty have played a pivotal role in creating a hostile environment for Jewish members of the UC campus community." Faculty set an example for and provide material support to students who promote abolishing a Jewish state in Israel.

Specific examples of some of the faculty activities include the following, according to Amcha Initiative:

A UC Irvine professor cancelling an entire week of class and emailing her students: "In observance of the week-long global strike (Jan 21-28) to support the Palestinian people's call to end the genocide, I am canceling our Week 3 classes ... business as usual cannot continue under these conditions";

The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department at UC Santa Cruz shut down operations and cancelled classes to participate in SJP's "Shut It Down for Palestine" protest rally, which blocked the main entrance to campus for 6 hours. That day, CRES posted a message to their website urging their students and colleagues, "Skip school and work. Do not look away from the genocide. No business as usual!";

UCSC faculty also wrote "Let's make it clear – zionism is not welcome on our campus";

UC Berkeley Black Studies Graduate Students released a statement that read, "[We] state clearly that the Zionist Israeli state must end.";

During a UC San Diego protest rally, organized by UCSD Faculty for Justice in Palestine and others to promote an SJP-authored (and FJP supported) BDS resolution, protesters heckled a Jewish UCSD faculty member, a local rabbi and other members of the Jewish community, a protester dumped a bottle of water on the head of a community member and forcefully pushed a Jewish faculty member, hitting and fracturing the faculty member's ankle. Another protestor disrupted and harassed Jewish faculty observing the protest;

A UC Berkeley graduate student teacher offered "a field trip and/or extra credit opportunity" for students to "attend the national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza (info attached below) [or] watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative [in support of Palestine]," stating, "Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade.";

The Department of History and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (HCRES) at UC Merced posted to their website a statement, "Genocide in Gaza: Context and Conversation," which vilified Israel, rejected the characterization of the Hamas massacre as terrorism and called on the UC administration to "endorse the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions;" and

FJP groups at UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UCLA and UCSC co-authored and/or co-sponsored student BDS resolutions, in some cases with FJP's own support for BDS cited as justification for the resolution, which all passed in their student senates.

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FJPUCSC arranged a counter-march for a proposed Jewish Unity Walk by the school's Hillel to console beleaguered Jewish students. The Instagram caption reads "We say no to Jewish unity at the expense of Palestinian futurity."

In alignment with Amcha Initiative's findings, the Chairwoman of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce sent a letter yesterday to UC Berkeley leadership announcing an investigation into the university's failure to protect Jewish students. This same committee led an investigation into Ivy League colleges that resulted in the ouster of the presidents of University of Pennsylvania and Harvard.