View of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. (Photo: EQRoy, Shutterstock)
California’s Anti-Semitic Ethnic Studies Curriculum are a Manual for Future Left-Wing Activists
Designed to eliminate dissent, DEI and BDS set up the violence and hate we are seeing today
By Katy Grimes, December 9, 2023 11:31 am
At what point do constitutional free speech protections cease to be protected? Yelling “fire” in a crowded theater is one threshold – but isn’t “yelling fire” taking place all across the country, on college campuses, in state Capitols, and even attire lighting ceremonies, as students tear down posters of Israeli hostages, and at marches where Jews are threatened, harassed, and assaulted?
What is fueling this is terribly close to home.
In an op ed titled “The Cruelty of the Ivy League,” Karina Mariana addresses this:
“It turns out that now, the same priests of DEI morality, those who boast about inclusion and diversity, ask us to intersectionally contextualize before judging whether it is misconduct to celebrate a girl being raped with such violence that they manage to break her pelvis. The same people who called anyone who disagreed with progressive cultural hegemony a “Nazi” are incapable of calling those who burn a baby alive in an oven for being Jewish the same. Can Jews feel safe in the West if the highest levels of education encourage and cover up this epidemic of antisemitism? It is interesting to see how groups privileged by DEI norms and intersectionality opt to support a culture that, without the slightest doubt, would exterminate them. They hate the Jews more than they love their own safety.”
DEI curriculum fomented much of this hate
We’ve seen this creeping, social justice warrior, alt-left takeover of many of California public school districts and the curriculum, promoting so-called “unconscious bias” and “inclusivity” instruction, as well as intentionally anti-Caucasian, anti-male, anti-Christian, and anti-Jewish curriculum policies.
What has infiltrated California’s public school curriculum is DEI – Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – and Critical Race Theory which says objectivity and meritocracy are racist measures of people. Critical Race Theory developed from Communism, and DEI has its roots in Marxism.
In December 2022 – just one year ago – I wrote about University policies which fail to protect Jewish students from Antisemitism. One year ago:
Today on college campuses we see Berkeley Law for Palestine, the Center for Chicanx and Latinx Academic Student Success, Animal rights clubs, Environmental Justice clubs, Queer Alliance clubs, Comics and Video clubs… NYU offers more than 300 active student clubs on campus open to all students from the Cheese Club to the Superhero Club. And UC Berkeley offers Furries at Berkeley, Anthropomorphic Animal Appreciation Association, a subculture interested in anthropomorphic animals which hopes to serve and portray the furry population on campus positively (people who dress as animals).
AMCHA Initiative released a new report which reveals school policies fail to address the predominant vehicle for antisemitism on campuses today, leaving Jewish students vulnerable and endangered.
Attacks on Jewish student identity doubled this year on campuses across the country, according to a new report by AMCHA Initiative.
AMCHA Initiative’s annual campus antisemitism report unearthed an insidious and never-before-exposed phenomenon taking root on college campuses: a pervasive and relentless assault on Jewish identity.
The AMCHA study investigated the nature, scope and trajectory of the threats to Jewish student identity on U.S. campuses, and it found a staggering doubling of such threats at 60% of schools most popular with Jewish students – again, this was one year ago. The threats uncovered in the report include attempts to dissociate Zionism from Judaism, pit Zionism against progressive values, accuse Zionist Jews of undue privilege, power and control, and purge Zionism and Zionists from campus life.
The BDS movement, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, is a Palestinian-led movement promoting boycotts, divestments, and economic sanctions against Israel. BDS paints Israel as vicious and evil, and says it should be discarded from American investments. It even calls for universities to divest from companies associated with Israel, and has perpetuated the growing anti-Semitism movement lurking on California college campuses.
The BDS movement set up the violence and hate we are seeing today, as did the DEI curriculum which replaced actual educational disciplines in many cases.
In 2016, a bipartisan California bill to end taxpayer support for the discriminatory anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement was shelved, as less forceful measures were preferred by legislative leadership.
Assembly Bill 1552 by then-Assemblyman Travis Allen (R-Huntington Beach), would have prohibited state entities from contracting with parties that engage in commercial discrimination, and boycotts on the basis of national origin, and sought to end the practice of California supporting such discriminatory or anti-Semitic efforts.
“Rather than promoting peace, the BDS movement denies the right of the Jewish State to exist, regularly employing tactics designed to harm Israel,” said Allen in an exclusive interview.
Some Jewish scholars say the BDS movement is an outcome of the New Left’s dominance in American academia, especially Middle East Studies. “Many academic associations are moving ahead with efforts to impose full economic and academic boycotts of Israel, including barring their colleagues (who may not share their alacrity for anti-Zionism) from collaborating with Israeli scholars,” wrote A.J. Caschetta, a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.
“In California, considered ground zero for BDS anti-Semitism, state universities have the most episodes of anti-Semitism on American campuses. Some of the same college groups supporting a boycott of Israel refused to boycott ISIS,” I reported for Legal Insurrection. A few examples:
- California’s public employee pension systems, CalPERS and CalSTRS, have made deliberate investments in companies that boycott or engage in political or economic discrimination against Israel. Both retirement systems even buckled under activist pressure. Following a 2013 “Israel Divestment Campaign (IDC) petition presentation, CalPERS initiated a yearlong series of discussions with IDC and began its own policy-driven ‘engagement process’ with two of the five companies targeted by IDC: Elbit Systems Ltd. and Veolia Environnement.”
- Student governments at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and UC Irvine have endorsed divestment and sanctions of Israel.
- A Jewish student at UCLA was initially denied a student government position over concerns that she would be ‘unable to maintain an unbiased view’ because she was “a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community.”
- At a Stanford University ASSU Senate meeting just last week (2016), a Stanford senator running for reelection argued that it is not anti-Semitic to question whether Jewish people control the media and banks, the Stanford Review reported.
Allen’s bill was a response not only to the campus BDS actions, but also to the worldwide economic movement against Israel. However, his bill was hijacked and killed by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.
We are seeing the results of this vile movement today.
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It’s sad and troubling that the California Legislative Jewish Caucus helped stop Assembly Bill 1552 by then Republican Assemblyman Travis Allen that would have prohibited state entities from contracting with parties that engage in commercial discrimination, and boycotts on the basis of national origin, and sought to end the practice of California supporting such discriminatory or anti-Semitic efforts? As Michael Savage the Jewish radio host used to say on his talk show, liberalism is a mental disorder?
We can look back at the 1930’s and the fact that good people failed to stand up in the infancy of tyranny and ask why that generation cowered and failed to pushback until their “normal” society was consumed by the ugly minority. Back then that minority gained full control over societies which forced the majority into silence. I call this the tyranny of the minority and totalitarianism generally starts with the minority gaining control over the majority. As Katy’s article points out we are experiencing tyranny today from the minority and unless we continue to push back in mass, we will lose control of civil society and live in fear of the minority. We are racing towards a crossroads moment for the future of our civilized society. As a Christian my confidence is in the God that I serve in that He will continue to be faithful and that he will deliver us from the tyranny of the minority that is raising its ugly head in this generation. If you look back in Exodus in particular at the Red Sea moment the Jews experienced a great miracle while the Egyptians were crushed by the same miracle.
I recall in the early 90s UC Irvine having a guest speaker from Israel who got shouted down and the University Administration later apologized for the interruption and lack of respect and wagged a finger at the Middle East Studies students involved but that was it, 30 years later, here we are.
The problem is that these students are being taught that no matter who they are or what they do the appressed are always right and oppressors your are always wrong. If these demonstrations, to kill all Jews, were instead to kill all blacks the world would be in an absolute uproar. If Hamas was unleashed on collage campuses they would kill everyone the does not believe in their cause.