Startling Report Details How Pro-Hamas UC Faculty Incited Targeted Harassment of Jewish Students

The startling new report documenting how pro-Hamas University of California faculty incited the targeted harassment of Jewish students since 2023  has prompted demands from Jewish groups  and some conservative-minded professors that the Board of Regents enforce longstanding rules that prohibit faculty activism.

So far, the University of California system has officially promised to take the report “seriously.” However, the report is not on the agenda for the Board of Regents meeting that is scheduled for this Tuesday and Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the spokesman for one of the UC campuses named in the report called it spurious, drawing an acerbic reaction to the California Globe from the author.

The 153-page report issued by the AMCHA Initiative, which documents and fights  campus anti-Semitism, is titled “When Faculty Takes Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Anti-Semitism at the University of California.”

Faculty are the “perpetrators, public defenders or institutional enablers of the harassment, intimidation and exclusion of Jewish and Zionist students,” the report contends.

The report says the linchpin of the anti-Israel activism is the pro-Hamas Faculty for Justice in Palestine, as well as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS).  Faculty members repeatedly abused their authority by using official department platforms to endorse the BDS movement and also worked to improperly insert pro-Hamas stances in the classroom.

University departments employed “official websites and social media accounts to repost and amplify messaging from anti-Zionist student and faculty groups,” the report says.

The departments have “promoted boycott and anti-normalization campaigns, amplified claims portraying Israel as genocidal or apartheid, endorsed suspended or unregistered groups that targeted Jewish campus institutions and circulated attacks on mainstream Jewish organizations and Jewish campus institutions.”

AMCHA founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told the California Globe that all of the  pro-Hamas agitprop shows how politicized universities have become.

“We believe anti-Semitism, especially post 10-7 is a symptom rather than a problem,” she said in a telephone interview. “There really is systemic problem with faculty and the politicization of the academy.  The problem is about anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism and the consequences is harassment of Jewish students and faculty.

“The problem is when you don’t have boundaries with respect to what they can do as private citizens and what they are allowed to do as institutions.  If you don’t make a distinction you allow the institution to be captured.”

The report examined the Los Angeles, Berkeley and Santa Cruz campuses for academic years from 2023 to 2025.

It said that, “In the months following October 7, 2023, as at many campuses nationwide, UC Berkeley experienced a sharp escalation in incidents targeting Jewish members of the campus community, including harassment, intimidation, exclusion, vandalism, and other forms of coercive conduct. Between July 2021 and June 2023, 16 such incidents were documented in AMCHA Initiative’s database; between July 2023 and June 2025, that number jumped to 101 — a 520% increase. During the same period, incidents involving rhetoric glorifying violence or calling for the elimination of Israel rose from 4 to 89, a 2,125% increase. In both categories, over 40% of the incidents involved faculty in some way.”

At UC Berkeley between 2023 and 2025, 171 professors endorsed boycotting Israel. This included department chairs and heads of institutes. Additionally, 34 academic units, sponsored or co-sponsored events where speakers called Zionism racism, accused Israel of genocide and cast terrorism as justified “resistance.”

The report also says a Berkeley faculty group created a “toolkit” showing professors how to sneak anti-Israel content into the curriculum.

In an overview it says that, “The evidence compiled here indicates that faculty and departmental anti-Zionist activism has helped institutionalize and legitimize the rhetoric, programming, and protest dynamics that shape the hostile environment described in this case study. When academic units issue anti-Zionist political statements, sponsor one-sided events that valorize “resistance,” and lend departmental platforms to FSJP and aligned student groups that celebrate “martyrs” and “intifada,” they signal that hostility toward Zionism — and toward Jewish, Zionist and pro-Israel students — is legitimate and institutionally protected.”

But in a statement to the California Globe, Berkeley spokesman Dan Moguloff claimed–without offering specifics–that the report uses dubious sources, and that  everything is now awesome for Jews on campus.

“While we appreciate this organization’s dedication to confronting antisemitism, it is unfortunate that no apparent effort was made to seek information directly from the campus and/or confirm information that appears to have been gathered from unreliable sources. We believe there is a good reason that the Anti-Defamation League rated the quality of Jewish life on the Berkeley campus as being ‘Excellent’ and rated the university administration’s response to antisemitism as being “Above Expectations.” The ADL, in comparison to AMCHA, engaged in an extensive effort to gather and confirm comprehensive information from a wide variety of sources, including numerous campus administrators.”

Moguloff also defended the pro-Hamas agitprop of many professors as constitutionally protected free speech.

“Regarding the report itself, we can only note that much of what it describes is constitutionally protected expression occurring outside the classroom and/or refers to  extracurricular events that no student is required to attend. It must be noted that the university has a proven and long-standing commitment to enforcing UC-wide Regents Policy #2301, which prohibits the use of the classroom for political indoctrination or political advocacy of any sort. The campus is equally committed to enforcing the UC-wide Regents Policy #4408, which governs “Public and Discretionary Statements by Academic Units.” Contrary to claims in the report, we are aware of only a single instance in which  questions were raised about an academic unit’s compliance with that policy. Suffice it to say that, in this one instance, the administration responded immediately to ensure the necessary changes were made.”

Moguloff’s spin drew a blistering response  from AMCHA founder Tammi Rossman- Benjamin, who co-wrote the report.

“The UC Berkeley spokesman’s accusation that our report relies on ‘unreliable sources’ is entirely specious,” she emailed. “Our 158-page report contains more than 400 footnotes, and every one of the hundreds of incidents it documents is carefully sourced. Mr. Mogulof has been repeating this tired and false charge since the report’s release, yet he has not identified a single example of an unreliable source or a single factual error. Instead of engaging the report’s well-documented findings — that faculty, departments, and affiliated academic structures at UC Berkeley have repeatedly misused university authority, resources, and platforms to institutionalize anti-Israel advocacy, helping fuel the post-October 7 surge in anti-Jewish hostility — he has chosen to attack the messenger rather than confront the evidence.

“His invocation of ADL’s praise for Berkeley is also beside the point. Even if Berkeley has taken some commendable steps in other areas, that does not address the specific problem our report identifies: the role of faculty-and department-driven politicization in creating a hostile environment for Jewish and Zionist students. In fact, ADL’s own Campus Antisemitism Report Card flags UC Berkeley for a high “level of hostile anti-Zionist staff and faculty activity,” which is precisely the kind of problem our report documents in detail. ADL’s “report card” therefore does not rebut our findings; if anything, it reinforces the point that Berkeley has a serious faculty and staff problem it still needs to address. Berkeley cannot solve that problem if it refuses to acknowledge it exists and instead disparages those who have documented it.”

The report also paints a damning portrait of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

“UCSC academic departments have played a direct and ongoing role in advancing anti-Zionist programming through official academic channels, with this pattern especially pronounced in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) and allied units. Through departmental statements, symbolic actions, sponsored events, and digital amplification, these units have repeatedly used departmental authority and institutional platforms to endorse antiZionist campaigns and academic BDS frameworks in ways that stigmatize and marginalize Jewish and Zionist students. The conduct  [shows] a sustained pattern of departmental behavior — not isolated incidents — through which exclusionary anti-normalization expectations are presented as institutionally endorsed and academically sanctioned positions. “

It also says that University of California at Santa Cruz professors “helped legitimize and amplify a surge in antisemitic incidents on campus, from harassment, vandalism, and eliminationist slogans to sustained campaigns targeting Jewish institutions such as Hillel and Jewish Studies for exclusion and economic pressure. Faculty and departments did not merely tolerate student-led hostility; they modeled, promoted, and institutionalized it.”

The report paints a similar portrait of UCLA.

It says between 2023 and 2025, 115 UCLA professors called for boycotting Israel.

Additionally, 18 different departments held a slew of anti-Israel events where “speakers urged disruptive protest actions, dismissed reports of extensive sexual violence on Oct. 7 as propaganda and framed antisemitism allegations as baseless, while repeatedly casting Israel’s actions as genocidal.”

UCLA academics were also big supporters of the 2024 pro-Hamas encampments that terrorized Jewish students.  Even after school administrators finally disbanded the encampments, a whopping 36 different academic issued statements supporting the Hamasniks.

The report urges the Board of Regents to adopt a “clear systemwide” policy prohibiting academic departments and faculty acting in their “official capacity”  from endorsing boycotts.

It also says the Regents should prohibit academic departments from making official political pronouncements.

The University of California System communications said in a statement about the report that, “The University of California unequivocally condemns antisemitism and has taken numerous steps to address it and other expressions of hate and intolerance on our campuses. The University takes the findings in the AMCHA Initiative report seriously and is reviewing the incidents cited within it.

“Academic freedom and freedom of expression are core values at UC, and we take action to respond to and counter antisemitism and hate incidents when they occur. As part of those efforts, the UC Board of Regents recently approved amendments to faculty discipline policies and procedures to reduce the time to resolve cases and promote a more consistent application of discipline across our campuses.”

On February 26, hundreds of University of California faculty sent a letter to the Board of Regents urging them to adopt the recommendations in the report.

More than 400 faculty–most of them in STEM and the sciences–have now signed on to the letter.

The letter says that the Regents should “Enforce UC’s existing rules — and strengthen them where needed — to stop faculty and academic units from using UC authority, resources, and UC-branded platforms to advance political advocacy as institutional practice. The point is not to restrict anyone’s private speech. It is to restore a clear, enforceable boundary: UC academic units should educate and conduct research, not operate as political actors.

University of California chemistry professor Ilan Benjamin, one of the organizers of the letter, told the California Globe that, “We have to be optimistic otherwise we wouldn’t bother to send [the letter].  They are facing pressure from one group of faculty and also from left-wing faculty. They try to walk in between. They won’t do anything unless they are forced.”

Benjamin signed up to speak at the meeting tomorrow. He is being allotted one minute to speak.

He plans to say he represents more than 400 faculty members and urge the Regents to review the report to enforce regulations against politicization and add new ones.

Meanwhile,  the Regents on Monday faced more pressure to take the report seriously.

AMCHA released a petition signed by 4000 students, faculty members, alumni and California residents urging the Regents to “stop faculty and academic units from using UC authority, resources, classrooms and UC-branded platforms to advance political advocacy as institutional practice.”

“This is not about policing faculty speech,” the petition states. “It is about enforcing the crucial boundary between private speech and institutional advocacy.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin said she hopes the new petition and the letter sent to the Regents last week by 134 pro-Jewish organizations “will help the Regents see there is broad support within and beyond the CA Jewish community — on both an organizational and grassroots level — for the Regents to acknowledge the problem of faculty and departmental politicization and to take steps to address it.”