Disruption and Violence Driven by Radical Groups, Punishments or Rewards for Protestors, and More
Newsletter (June 9, 2024)
Let’s Start With Some Good News
According to the Times of Israel,
Four Israeli hostages were rescued alive by troops from Hamas captivity in a daring operation in the central Gaza Strip earlier today, the military announces.
The rescued hostages are named as Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv. All four had been abducted by Hamas terrorists on October 7 from the Supernova music festival near the southern community of Re’im.
Special forces had simultaneously raided two Hamas sites in central Gaza’s Nuseirat. At one location, Argamani was rescued, while Meir Jan, Kozlov, and Ziv were at the second location.
The rescued hostages are all in good condition, according to initial medical assessments. They were taken to Tel Hashomer Hospital for further evaluation.
Astonishingly, although not surprisingly, some use this heroic and successful operation to denounce Israel. Yes, not Hamas—but Israel.
More University Leaders Grilled By Congress
Another group of university presidents—this time from UCLA, Northwestern, and Rutgers—have been hauled before the Republican-led House Education Committee to explain their handling of the pro-Hamas demonstrations and the climate of antisemitism on their campuses in the wake of the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists and their supporters.
At least one university president, Michael Schill of Northwestern (who is Jewish), vowed to strengthen policies against antisemitism on campus, which he acknowledged had been inadequate. Schill vowed to revise their student code, enhance enforcement, increase security, and “reconstitute a task force that will benefit from the information from other task forces.” (We have our doubts about the effectiveness of that last one.)
Schill also testified, “We will do what we do best, teaching our students about the dangers of antisemitism.” Clearly, their best has not been good enough.
It is crucial for university presidents to make concrete plans now on how they will respond to antisemitic behavior from students, faculty, and outside agitators when students return in the fall. To help propel this process at USC, several members of the Circle prepared a report and list of recommendations for the administration. The report has now been shared with the president and the provost, and is published here.
Punishment for Protestors
According to CalMatters, at least 567 people have been arrested in connection with post-October 7 protests on the campuses of California universities. In addition, an unknown number of students—but at least 29 from USC—have received suspensions.
See the article for a detailed breakdown of punishments by campus.
Harvard Corporation Denies Graduation to 13 Protest Participants, Defying Faculty Decision
As reported by Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True, Harvard University’s governing board, the Harvard Corporation, has taken an unprecedented step, overruling a faculty decision to grant degrees to 29 students who were on suspension or academic probation for their roles in pro-Palestinian protests. The Corporation reaffirmed that the university cannot confer degrees on students while they are not in good academic standing.
Students Taking Part in Illegal Demonstrations Require Real Punishment, Not Writing Assignments
As Jerry Coyne reports, the University of Chicago required students who violated university rules by participating in a sit-in to write an essay on their actions. Presumably, the point was to have students reflect on the consequences of those actions. But, unsurprisingly, they only used the opportunity to condemn the university for disciplining them. See excerpts of the essays here.
NYU did something even more ridiculous, Jerry reports. They required students to complete a training. Judging by the effect of mandatory DEI training, this supposed exercise in re-education likely backfired.
Yes, students who violate university rules or the law need to be taught a lesson—not by a literal lesson, but by real punishment—suspension or legal prosecution.
From Violent Words to Violent Actions
As reported by numerous news outlets, an anonymous anti-Israeli group has taken responsibility for planting an incendiary device on a parked Berkeley police car. As reported by Campus Reform (“Anti-Israel Protesters Burn UC Berkeley Police Vehicle with 'Incendiary Device' in 'Retaliation' for Arrests,” June 3, 2024):
The anonymous group wrote that they torched the police cruiser because of “their attack on students yesterday on a different campus and to retaliate against the University of California for its support for the zionist israel settler colony. More specifically – this attempt to torch a police car in front of the university was in solidarity with our Palestinian siblings assaulted by the zionist state in Rafah. It came from a place of love for Palestine, and love for revolution and liberation of all oppressed people.”
Meanwhile at USC: Rabbi Dov and Runya Wagner’s house, which serves as USC’s Chabad House, was vandalized on June 4—see video on Instagram:
Two thugs just smashed the glass on our front door and ran off. Hoping @uscedu DPS can track them.
According to the Daily Voice of Hamas Trojan, “Vandalism of USC Chabad House Not Hate Crime, Early Evidence Suggests.” Of course it is not a hate crime! It is an act of liberation and solidarity with the oppressed!
UC Strike Continues
In their article “UC Worker Strikes Are Familiar and New in Fervor,” the L.A. Times reports that the union representing UC’s students is alleging:
Their free speech rights to speak out about their workplaces were violated when UC leaders called in police to remove pro-Palestinian encampments at several campuses, resulting in arrests and suspensions,
while simultaneously alleging:
The university violated their rights as workers by failing to protect them when a violent mob attacked protesters at UCLA, including union members, and police took hours to intervene.
Apparently, there is a precise time, place, and manner in which police must respond to protest activity that violates university regulations governing the time, place, and manner of protests.
And get this:
The union also says universities unilaterally changed their job conditions when classes were moved online amid protests instead of bargaining over those work-related decisions.
More on Antisemitism in Unions
On the topic of antisemitic unions, which we recently discussed, The Free Press reports:
Lawmakers take action on union activism: Virginia Foxx, chair of the Education and Workforce Committee, proposed legislation in Congress on Tuesday that would require labor unions to inform their members “of their free speech rights.” Under the proposed law, union members would also be reminded that they have “the right not to pay dues or fees to the union” if the union conflicts with a member’s religious identity or if it engages in “nonrepresentational activity,” such as political activism.
The legislation comes in the wake of the committee’s investigation, which cited The Free Press’s reporting, into the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys. The ALAA is a union of public interest attorneys and advocates in the New York City area which passed a hotly disputed resolution for a cease-fire in Gaza back in December.
In March, The Free Press exposed the hostility directed toward Jewish members after the resolution passed. Hundreds of internal messages showed people calling their fellow members “fascist,” “deranged,” and “mentally disturbed,” among other insults, for supporting Israel. At least four Jewish members of the union who spoke to The Free Press said they contemplated quitting their jobs as a result, with one stating that they felt “scared when we walk in the door at work.”
David Smiley, a public defender and member of ALAA, told The Free Press that he was not fully informed of his rights to withhold dues to his union—and said he was excited to learn about the religious exemptions being proposed because “I don’t want my union dues going toward anti-Israel demonstrations.”
“I do like that Congress is taking note of the fact that unions are using their members’ funds to put toward causes that are contrary to their religious beliefs,” he said. “Seeking some form of relief for union members in that context, I think, is great.” —Francesca Block
More on the topic (also from The Free Press, TGIF, June 7 ):
→ Oh, I love the NYT union: The very well-paid leaders of the New York Times’ union are doing what they do best: posting their hatred of Jews and Israelis, insulting reporters, saying the paper is trash and they hate it.
Here’s a beloved New York Times union leader, Nastaran Mohit, referring to “Zionists”—“All these Zionist butchers know how to kill. Children. Families. The next generation. Depraved monsters who will meet their fate one day.” Interesting read there. Reminder that if you believe in a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, then you are a Zionist to Ms. Mohit and the rest of the movement. She called the newspaper a “decrepit institution” and said it was “utterly reprehensible” that the paper received an award for its coverage of the war. Go to her with all your HR issues, y’all. I’m sure she’ll be great at reviewing a Jewish NYT employee’s harassment allegation. Good luck!
We wrote about the how unions are involved in anti-Israeli causes and how they align themselves with terror-supporting groups in our May 24 newsletter. The reasons go to the ultimate goal of “organized labor,” namely, the destruction of capitalism and a restructuring of the social order. Soviet propagandists viewed unions as instruments to destabilize the West and vehicles to hasten the word revolution. Their financial support of labor unions in the West and their leaders were documented in memoranda of the Communist Party Central Committee published by the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky (see our April 27 newsletter).
The former KGB officer Yuri Bezmenov, who was tasked with the subversion of foreign countries, recorded an eye-opening talk, “Psychological Warfare, Subversion, and the Control of Society” on Soviet techniques of subversion.
For a deep dive into the topic of ideological subversion, we recommend the recent essay by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, “We Have Been Subverted,” in The Free Press.
Universities Are Making Shameful Deals With Protestors
Jerry Coyne recaps an article from the anti-BDS website Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, which summarized the capitulations universities across the country have made to pro-Palestinian protesters. The most substantive of these include the following:
The University of Washington agreed to demands from the United Front for Palestinian Liberation including student representation on a divestment committee, free tuition for 20 Gazan students, a faculty committee to examine academic boycotts, and a “Center for Scholarship of Palestine.”
Within the University of California system, the Berkeley administration agreed to a divestment task force, and the chancellor called for a “permanent ceasefire.” The Riverside administration agreed to similar terms and also terminated a variety of overseas programs including some in Israel, which had been the target of long-term pressure.
Trinity University announced “divestment from equity investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN Blacklist in this regard.” It will also bring in Gazan students and faculty and review student exchange programs….
The most extreme example of concessions to students came at Sonoma State University where the president, Mike Lee, agreed to fully divest from Israel, permit an SJP “advisory council” to oversee the agreement with protestors, introduce “Palestine”and a “Palestine Studies” program, and to ban all Israel programs.
At least in the Sonoma State case, there was pushback. Cal State system administrators forced a retraction from Lee and then forced him to retire from the presidency.
USC “Divest from Death Coalition” Demands End to Study Abroad in Israel
The so-called USC Divest from Death Coalition is circulating an online petition demanding that USC permanently cease all student exchange programs with Israeli universities, including its current programs with Hebrew University and Reichman University. Grounds for this, they claim, is that “to enroll, or participate in any way, in a Study Abroad program at an Israeli institution means ignoring, and thus perpetuating the ongoing violation of the academic– and, indeed, human–freedoms of Palestinians.”
The USC Divest from Death Coalition ls Linked to National Students for Justice in Palestine
Declaring on Instagram “WE ARE ALL SJP,” the USC Divest from Death Coalition declared the establishment of the “Popular University for Gaza on the USC campus” (i.e., the encampment). Initiated by National Students for Justice in Palestine, the Popular University for Gaza encampments are “a coordinated pressure campaign against university administrations and trustees to immediately divest from the israeli [sic] state.”
The homepage of National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) states that they are supporting Popular University for Gaza solidarity encampments of “over 350 Palestine solidarity organizations across occupied Turtle Island (‘North America’).” The screenshot below, taken from the NSJP homepage, shows that they are supporting the encampment at USC—the one that the USC Divest from Death Coalition declared they established as the “Popular University for Gaza at USC.”
Thus the USC Divest from Death Coalition has outed itself as the de facto USC branch of National Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization that allegedly receives funding from Hamas-linked organizations.
Emeritus Professor Condemns Academic Senate Censure of Folt
Writing for Minding the Campus, USC Emeritus Professor James E. Moore, II condemns the May 8 Academic Senate kangaroo censure of President Folt and Provost Guzman. “There are multiple reasons the University of Southern California (USC) Academic Senate might act to censure USC President Carol Folt,” he writes,
However, her responses to the pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, anti-Zionist encampments on the USC campus this spring are not grounds for the censure she and USC Provost Andrew Guzman received from USC’s Academic Senate on May 8th. Further, removing these encampments is one of the few steps she has taken during her tenure as USC President that seems intended not to alienate USC’s rabidly loyal alums. However, her steps certainly annoyed many of USC’s progressive faculty.
Citing many mistakes Folt has made, Moore concludes,
Folt got matters very right concerning USC’s protest encampments. The campus belongs to the University of Southern California, a California private, public-benefit nonprofit corporation. USC has the right to exclude others from its property, a contractual duty to perform services for its students, and a business need to satisfy its students’ parents. The protesters stepped between the institution and its obligations to suppress and sometimes preclude the university’s performance.
Institutional Neutrality (sort of) at Harvard
According to the New York Times and Why Evolution Is True, Harvard will adopt a policy of institutional neutrality. Unfortunately, instead of adopting the gold standard institutional neutrality statement—the Kalven report—they wrote their own. A New York Times op-ed explains Harvard’s motivation—and it comes off as weak, petty, and arrogant. Jerry Coyne has written a thoughtful critique.
As Steve McGuire pointed out on X, the New York Times op-ed makes it sound like Harvard is looking for an excuse not to condemn terrorist attacks on civilians while reserving the right to make politically motivated decisions on investments:
I’m marveling at the fact that Harvard adopted part of institutional neutrality because it couldn’t condemn a terrorist attack on Israel, but not all of it because it still can’t foreclose the possibility of divesting from Israel.
Just incredible.
While Harvard’s motivation may be suspect, the move is still a positive development, and we hope more universities—perhaps even USC—will follow suit. As we wrote in our May 1st newsletter, USC has some Kalven-like policies, such as prohibiting departments from making political statements on behalf of their constituents; however, departments frequently violate the policy and the university has no clear mechanism to enforce it. (This was one of the issues included in the Report on Campus Climate and Call for Action published on June 8.)
Radical Faculty Promoting Radical Agenda
Writing for the blog Unsafe Science, Lee Jussim tears apart one of the recent open letters by radical academics. In two posts, “Propaganda Promoting Professors” and “I Have Questions” he exposes multiple falacies and outright lies (such as fake quotes) in a letter signed by 213 social and personality psychologists (including two USC professors):
In this essay, I expose a recent open letter by 213 social and personality psychologists (hence, The 213 or The Letter of the 213) who posture as experts (which they are indeed by the standards of academia), as filled with egregious propaganda, up to and including (but not restricted to) quoting a nonexistent quote from the International Court of Justice supposedly about Israeli genocide. I want to say “concocted” or “fabricated” but maybe it is a mere error, making it merely professionally irresponsible. If it was just that one falsehood, I would not have written this essay. I can’t debunk all of it, it would render this essay too long, but I debunk enough here to give a flavor for how high and deep The Letter of the 213 piled it.
Lee lists numerous “alternative facts” from the letter: a fake quote, a fake reference to police brutality, false claims that protests were “mostly peaceful,” denial of the vandalism and disruptive and intermittently aggressive nature of the protests, and so on. He describes the letter as propaganda. Referring to his recent article with Nate Honeycutt, titled “Psychology as Science and as Propaganda,” he writes:
Scholarly propaganda involves the manipulation of information, including facts, evidence, citations, arguments, logical fallacies (such as ad hominem attacks and leaping to conclusions), partial truths (via omitting relevant scholarship), and distortions to influence others’ behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes. It includes but is not restricted to politics. It can involve appeals to emotions designed to prevent deep and critical thinking.
We have seen such propaganda, too—for example, an an open letter from journalism professors (including 13 USC signatories) that attempted to discredit reports of sexual violence on October 7 (we wrote about it in our May 1st newsletter).
Useful Resources
Communicated to the Circle by Hagit Arieli Chai:
I’d like to share a website with you: the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy. The website below offers many resources that are valuable for teaching so please share with your colleagues: https://isgap.org/follow-the-money/
They publish valuable research and policies that can educate us, our students, friends, and others.
ISGAP’s Follow The Money project previous reports have laid out the following:
Qatar is the largest foreign donor to U.S. universities;
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology is intertwined with the State and furthermore the links that Qatar has with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian Chapter—Hamas;
The fact that money coming from foreign states such as Qatar is having a direct effect on increasing antisemitism and anti-democratic vies/activity.
This report lays out the way that Qatar is operating a war-chest with between $500 Billion—$1 Trillion USD of assets and growing, to affect soft power in the west—including the U.S.’ prestigious universities".
Whoever is interested—ISGAP offers a summer institute for two weeks in Oxford, England: https://isgap.org/summer-institute/
For more information about foreign gifts to USC, check out this website. Amounts from Qatar and Saudi Arabia are listed.
From the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFRG) at UCLA
Consider joining UCLA’s Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFRG), known on Instagram as @jfrgatucla. We highlighted this group, whose goals are very similar to ours, here. Recently, they hosted a panel discussion on antisemitism at the UCLA medical school. Highlight of the event: the audience breaks into great applause when Dr. Vivien Burt says that the most important thing that UCLA can do immediately to fight antisemitism is to abolish DEI!
Jewish Students Speak Up About Their Campus Experiences
From Tablet, May 22, 2024, “The End of a School Year Like No Other.”
For Jewish American college students, last fall began with optimism: finding old friends on campus, new books stacked on dorm-room desks, curiosity about the semester to come.
But what followed the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7 crushed that optimistic spirit: Zionists are not welcome. Go back to Poland. Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists. Jewish students across the country were targeted and vilified; they lost friends; in some cases they were told by administrators that their safety could not be ensured.
The editorial provides a heart-breaking collection of students’ testimonials. We covered stories from USC here and also in the Report on Campus Climate and Call for Action.
From Spain With Love
We wrote this issue of the newsletter during a trip to Spain, where we enjoyed great wine, great tapas, blue skies, and friendly people, while trying not to pay too much attention to antisemitic graffiti (an example which we reproduce above for your enjoyment).
It was more difficult to ignore that Spain, along with Ireland and Norway, just recognized a “Palestinian State.” But it turns out recognizing it is one thing; getting diplomats to move there is quite another. According to The Free Press:
→ Ambassadors don’t want to go where the embassy is: In a show of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, Spain announced a new embassy would form in Ramallah. But it’s running into trouble right off the bat. Because the Spanish diplomats based in Israel are refusing to move there. The Spaniards cited “safety and quality of life” concerns, according to Spanish news site Okdiario. All the Spanish ambassadors got so comfortable saying Israel should be abolished, they never considered having to live in another area of the Middle East. Now the hot Spanish embassy workers, accustomed to Tel Aviv, are being told they have to wake up in Ramallah? There’s no gay bar here, Señor!
Great summary!