Congress Probing Berkeley Over Anti-Semitism

You can now add the University of California, Berkeley to the list of high profile, high powered universities that are being investigated by Congress over how they have reacted to the wave of antisemitism that has roiled campuses since the October 7 Hamas sneak attack on Israel.

Berkeley joins Harvard, Penn, MIT, and Columbia to become the fifth school under the microscope for allegedly tolerating antisemitic threats and actions at school

The House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) launched the series of probes shortly after the disastrous December Congressional testimony of three university presidents:  Claudine Gay of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, and M.I.T’s Sally Kornbluth.  

When asked by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY)  if “calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” Gay responded that, “The rules around bullying and harassment are quite specific and if the context in which that language is used amounts to bullying and harassment, then we take, we take action against it.”

It should be noted that Harvard University’s HR department offers a course on microaggression.

Maybe they should offer one on macroaggression, too.

While it would seem calling for genocide should be considered a macroaggression, Gay could see neither the moral depravity nor the pathetic, self-serving hypocrisy of her having adamantine rules about things like accidentally mispronouncing a name – microaggression – while being able to wishywash away the universal, terminal and transgenerational threat of wiping out Jews as needing “context.”

Magill and Kornbluth echoed Gay’s answer.

The presidents were called to testify because many campus “pro-Hamas” protests have led to very specific antisemitic incidents targeting Jewish students.

Foxx’s letter to Berkeley notes that:

 On February 26, 2024, an anti-Israel protest organized by the student group Bears for Palestine erupted into a violent riot in which anti-Israel activists assaulted Jewish students and shattered glass windows, forcing the cancellation of an Israeli speaker’s lecture. In recent weeks, anti-Israel students have occupied and blocked UC Berkeley’s landmark Sather Gate, a key entrance to the center of campus, and harassed Jewish passersby.

Even more specifically, Foxx is demanding answers to four instances of alleged antisemitism:

• The anti-Israel student group Bears for Palestine organized activists to disrupt a speech by an Israeli speaker at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse, sparking a violent riot and forcing the speech’s cancellation. At least two Jewish students were assaulted during the riot.

• On two separate occasions, UC Berkeley students holding Israeli flags were assaulted at anti-Israel rallies.

• Jewish UC Berkeley professor Steven Davidoff Solomon received an antisemitic e-mail at his university account with the subject line “You are a dirty Jew” and the message, “[i]f the Holocaust were happening right now, you’d be the first one to be gassed.”

• A Jewish student’s apartment was robbed, and an antisemitic note was left in it saying, “Fuck Jews. Free Palestine. From the River to the Sea.” While a campuswide email the following morning identified the event as a potential hate crime, it failed to identify it as antisemitic in nature, in contrast to university communications about hate crimes toward other groups.

Foxx’s committee is demanding of Berkeley much the same material and information as it has demanded of the other schools:

• All reports of antisemitic acts or incidents and related documents and communications since January 1, 2021, including but not limited to all reports of antisemitic acts, incidents, or discrimination at UC Berkeley.

• Documents sufficient to show UC Berkeley’s policies and procedures that ensure and preserve access to safe and uninterrupted learning environments and respond to and address reported violations, including through law enforcement, investigative, and disciplinary processes.

• All documents referring or relating to the findings and results of any disciplinary processes, changes in academic status, or personnel actions by UC Berkeley toward UC Berkeley students, faculty, staff, and other UC Berkeley affiliates related to conduct involving the targeting of Jews, Israelis, Israel, Zionists, or Zionism since January 1, 2021

In all, Foxx’s letter details at least 18 separate antisemitic instances, involving faculty and/or students, since the Hamas attack. (You can see the letter yourself if you wish – the link is at the bottom of the article.)

Interestingly, even with a new interim president – Gay resigned in disgrace earlier this year for having plagiarized a large amount of “scholarly” work she presented as her own –  has yet to adequately reply, forcing Foxx’s committee to issue a subpoena for the information 11 days ago.

A Berkeley spokesman said the university – the only public school to be targeted so far – has every intention of cooperating with the committee.

“We will provide a comprehensive response to the committee’s questions and concerns.  UC Berkeley has long been committed to confronting antisemitism, and to supporting the needs and interests of its Jewish students, faculty, and staff,” said Berkeley’s Dan Mogulof.  “That commitment was strengthened in 2015, when the university established the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life and Campus Climate, and again in 2019 when a groundbreaking Antisemitism Education Initiative was launched on the campus as the first program of its kind in the country, and as a resource for the Berkeley campus and other institutions of higher education.”

Mogulof noted that University Chancellor Carol Christ was honored in 2020 by the Jewish Community Relations Council for her “courageous leadership” and that Berkeley has “long been committed to confronting antisemitism. We backed up those words with deeds and resources.”

“There is a disturbing and disgusting rise in antisemitism throughout society, and while the university is not immune to disturbing societal trends, nor are we turning a blind eye to them.,” Mogulof added.  “That is why we launched our Antisemitism Education Initiative not last November, but in 2019.”

Berkeley’s deadline to reply is April, 2.

The letter:  https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/3.19.24_foxx_letter_to_uc_berkeley.pdf