A New Tool to Measure the Extent of Faculty Anti-Zionism on Campus
And lots more news.
The Anti-Zionist Faculty Barometer by AMCHA
Previously, we covered AMCHA’s report about radical antisemitic faculty groups on the US campuses. Not surprisingly, the presence of groups such as Faculty of Justice in Palestine is a good predictor of antisemitic incidents on campus. Now, as part of a national campaign to combat faculty antisemitism, the AMCHA Initiative unveiled its Anti-Zionist Faculty (AZF) Barometer, a research-based tool it developed to help university stakeholders evaluate the extent of faculty anti-Zionism at hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities. From AMCHA’s newsletter:
Based on our research, we isolated four objective measures of the pervasiveness of anti-Zionist faculty: 1) the number of faculty who have expressed public support for an academic boycott of Israel; 2) whether any academic departments have issued or endorsed anti-Zionist statements; 3) whether an FJP chapter was established at the school; and 4) the number of the FJP chapter's events and statements.
We combined each of these measures to create a single ranking between 0 (Negligible) and 5 (Extreme) for over 700 colleges and universities.
The AMCHA barometer rates UCLA extreme and USC comes as severe:
You can search for any school’s score using the AMCHA’s barometer. For each rated school, a link is provided that allows you to see the underlying data for the school and even a listing of which faculty members of the school have participated in anti-Israel boycotts. If you are unfamiliar with FJP, we can recommend AMCHA’s video.
‘Death to Jews’: Inside the Home of 2 SJP Leaders at George Mason University, Police Find Guns, Ammo, and Terrorist Flags (Collin Anderson, The Washington Beacon, December 13, 2024)
Here we have a concrete illustration of what SJP and FJP are about. The case also illustrates the bias of the mainstream media in covering antisemitic incidents and the continuing bad-faith claims of “islamophobia” made by various pro-Islamist organizations.
When police searched the home of two Students for Justice in Palestine leaders, a pair of sisters at George Mason University, their allies painted a sympathetic picture.
The students were targeted, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), for engaging in “anti-genocide events on campus.” The Intercept reported that police found “antique firearms” registered to the students’ brother and brought gun-related charges as a result of his family’s “pro-Palestine activism.”
Excluded from those descriptions was the crime the sisters are suspected of committing. A group of student radicals defaced George Mason’s student center in August, spray painting messages that warned of a “student intifada.” In its coverage of the incident, the Washington Post wrote that “activists spray-painted words on Wilkins Plaza outside the university’s Johnson Center.”
Those activists caused thousands of dollars in damage, a felony in the state of Virginia, and police suspect the SJP leaders, sisters Jena and Noor Chanaa, led the group of vandals. Weeks after the incident, in November, a county judge granted a warrant—which is under seal until February, according to a Fairfax County court representative—allowing police to seize electronics from the Chanaa family home.
When officers entered the Chanaa family home, they found firearms—modern weapons, not antiques—as well as scores of ammunition and foreign passports, all of which sat in plain view, according to court documents obtained by the Free Beacon and sources familiar with the investigation.
They also found pro-terror materials, including Hamas and Hezbollah flags and signs that read “death to America” and “death to Jews,” according to court documents and sources familiar….
The Chanaa family attorney, Abdel-Rahman Hamed, did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement provided to the Washington Post, Hamed said the case marks “yet another example of the police state targeting American Muslims without cause.” An “about” section on his LinkedIn page states, “I deny, defy, and defeat Zionists, antisemites, and White Supremacists.”
Under Jena and Noor’s leadership, George Mason’s chapter of SJP has endorsed Hamas and its “martyrs.” In a statement issued two days after the Oct. 7 attack, the group lauded the “liberation of the Palestinian people” and endorsed “the right to resist for Palestinians living under the zionist occupation.” It said “Palestinian resistance fighters” mobilized “into surrounding occupied areas” on Oct. 7, “reclaiming land and settlements considered illegal” in the name of “decolonization.”
“Decolonization entails the struggle for liberation of a colonized people from the grasp of their colonizers,” the statement read. “This struggle for the much-sought after liberation from the colonizer is not meant to be metaphysical—but material.”
“Every Palestinian is a civilian even if they hold arms. A settler is an aggressor, a soldier, and an occupier even if they are lounging on our occupied beaches.”
Soviet Ghosts and Campus Antisemitism (Ilya Shapiro, Washington Examiner, December 6, 2024)
The ideological foundation of modern antisemitism was laid down by the Soviets and propagated through the world by the massive propaganda machine of the USSR. The close connection between woke antisemitism, whose adherents insist that anti-Zionism and calls for the destruction of Israel do not constitute antisemitism, and the communists’ hatred of Jews and Israel, is obscure to many westerners. We have written on this topic, referring to multiple exhibits, here and here. Today we are pleased to share an excellent essay by law scholar Ilya Shapiro.
The root of America’s collegiate ills, such as the reemergence of the “oldest hatred,” lies in the ideological capture of students and faculty. It’s high time to tear down those ideological walls and return universities to their original missions, with a focus on scholarship and education rather than activism and indoctrination.
Antisemitism has long been a feature of ideologically closed societies. Most notable is the 1930-1945 Nazi regime that produced the horrors of the Holocaust. A horror in which 6 million innocent Jews were murdered simply because they were Jews. However, antisemitism was also a major element of the 20th century’s other great totalitarian regime: the Soviet Union.
Indeed, many modern talking points on anti-Zionism, which are used as a cloak for antisemitism, are derived from Soviet propaganda. The KGB even supervised the Anti-Zionist Committee of the Soviet Republic, which issued brochures such as the “Criminal Alliance of Zionism and Nazism.” Modern supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah and their useful-idiot fellow travelers on college campuses are reinvoking these same tropes in their accusations against the only Jewish state.
Speaking from his own experience as a scholar subjected to cancellation, Shapiro emphasizes the role that DEI commissars play in stifling conversation on difficult topics—such as the Middle East—leading to indoctrination in the classroom. There is nothing new under the sum—today’s DEI apparatchiks are using the same techniques as their Soviet or Maoist predecessors:
Another parallel between our current campus climate and that of communist regimes is public shaming— a key feature of Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s and Mao’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Forced public confessions for ideological offenses were central to the elimination of political opposition. At America’s universities, the expurgation of dissidents shows how narrow the Overton window of acceptable discourse is in places where even small speaker events are shut down over perceived slights and manufactured outrage.
MIT Bans Distribution of Student-Run Pro-Palestine Zine (Inside Higher Ed, Johanna Alonso, December 3, 2024)
A group of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched a pro-Palestine magazine in the spring of 2024 for “revolutionary thought on campus.” Soon after the October 2024 issue of the magazine came out, however, administrators in the Division of Student Life emailed the publication’s editorial team, demanding that they stop distributing the magazine on campus. If they did not comply, they could face disciplinary action. The controversy arose over an essay critiquing pacifism, which administrators said made some students concerned for their “safety and well-being….”
[A]dministrators took issue with an article in the October edition that Iyengar wrote himself. Iyengar, a second-year Ph.D. student, had been penalized for his participation in a pro-Palestinian demonstration last spring, and his disciplinary case was ongoing when the October issue was published. Titled “On Pacifism,” his article critiques pacifist movements, arguing that the pro-Palestinian movement must “begin wreaking havoc.”
“The article makes several troubling statements that could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT,” the administrators wrote. “Numerous community members have expressed concern for their safety and well-being after learning of your article.”
They also noted that some of the images accompanying the article depict symbols of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the United States has designated as a terrorist organization. “The inclusion of symbolism from a U.S. designated terrorist organization containing violent imagery in a publication by an MIT-recognized student group is deeply concerning,” they wrote.
This case raises important campus policy questions. The student’s right to create and distribute such content is protected by the First Amendment. But does a university has a right to limit the distribution of such materials on campus? As a gedanken experiment, one can ask whether the university should or should not limit the distribution of KKK pamphlets on campus.
Another Pro-Israeli Speaker at the Oxford Union, This Time with the Audience Uncensored (Jerry Coyne, Why Evolution Is True, December 9, 2024)
Following up on the recent Oxford Union debate (“This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide”) that turned into a Nazi-style antisemitic rally, Jerry Coyne posted an uncensored video featuring Jonathan Sacerdoti, the son of a Holocaust survivor, who spoke against the motion. Jerry writes:
I wanted to put this speech up now because it is uncensored, showing the abuse to which the pro-Israel speakers were subject, an abuse not evident in what was apparently a censored clip of Natasha Hausdorff’s speech the other day. I think it likely that this clip will be taken down, for it makes the Oxford Union look really really bad.
This video, complete with unceasing shouts and attacks on the speaker, shows how shameful the audience really was, a shame that also devolves upon the Union’s moderators, who were clearly on the side of the proposition although they are supposed to be neutral. They do very little to quell the audience’s despicable treatment of the speakers. Should not repeated abusers be ejected?
The Explosion of Jew-Hate in Trudeau’s Canada (Terry Glavin, The Free Press, December 11, 2024)
This Free Press essay documents the extent of antisemitism in today’s Canada. As in the US, the most disturbing incidents occur on university campuses and are driven by radical faculty and students. A few examples below:
York’s student unions issued a declaration just after the attack calling the barbarism of October 7 a “justified and necessary” act of resistance against settler colonialism, genocide, and apartheid. The student groups found widespread support among York’s professors—some of whom Rugheimer considered friends.
A politics department faculty committee demanded the university enforce a definition of “anti-Palestinian racism” that encompassed any expression of sympathy for the right of Israelis to exist within their own state: “Zionism is a settler colonial project and ethno-religious ideology in service of a system of Western imperialism that upholds global white supremacy.”
She was shocked by the declarations, and the defaced posters, and the swastikas. But for Rugheimer there was something worse. “The denial is what’s painful,” Rugheimer said. The denial of the rapes and savagery of October 7, 2023. The denial of the pervasive antisemitism in “anti-Zionist” polemics. The denial of Jewish history itself. “Reasonable people can disagree about what to do in an intractable conflict, but the denying of what should be uncontroversial facts makes it impossible to have hope.”
Here at USC we can easily match these examples—we have our own October 7 denialists as well as our share of radical faculty. (Oh, and speaking of denialism—did you know that the UN failed to recognize the Holocaust as genocide—see below.)
That Canada and the US—and, as we learned recently, Australia and the Netherlands—are full of raging antisemites is neither news nor possibly the biggest concern. What is perhaps most worrisome is the complicity of our governments, the indifference of our leadership to virulent exhibits of Jew-hatred, and the lack of plain law enforcement:
On November 22 in Montreal, at the 70th annual session of the NATO parliamentary assembly, rioters organized by the organizations Divest for Palestine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles wreaked havoc on the city. They ignited smoke bombs, threw metal barriers into the street, and smashed windows of businesses and the convention center where the NATO delegates were meeting. The rioters torched cars. They also burned an effigy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
While Montreal burned, Trudeau was dancing and handing out friendship bracelets at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto. It took 24 hours for him to weigh in with a single tweet.
The essay reminds us about how the antisemitic protests, disruption, vandalism, and attacks on Jewish students on university campuses were handled. It reminds us that tepid responses and failure to hold miscreants accountable lead to escalation of lawlessness and violence. Here is how it is now in Canada, explains Glavin:
Last month, a report by Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism found a 670 percent increase in antisemitic incidents in Canada since October 7, 2023, including “violent attacks such as shootings targeting Jewish institutions and arson attacks targeting schools, synagogues, and other community institutions.” There are about 40 million Canadians and roughly 350,000 of them are Jewish—representing less than 1 percent of the country’s population….
Since last October 7, there have been several drive-by shootings at Jewish schools in Montreal and Toronto. A coordinated bomb threat targeted more than 100 Jewish institutions from Halifax to Victoria. Synagogues in British Columbia and Quebec have been firebombed. One synagogue in Toronto, Kehillat Shaarei Torah, has been vandalized seven times since April—its doors and windows smashed; rocks thrown through the windows. The most recent attack happened just last week.
The essay is extensive and covers much more than we highlighted above. It touches upon such important topics as the consequences of lax immigration policies, mechanisms of radicalization, the role of DEI in promulgating antisemitism, the hijacking of K–12 education by radicals, the corruption of progressive politicians, attacks and cancellations of those who challenge pro-Hamas narratives, etc. We recommend to read it in full.
Holocaust Left Out of UN’s Genocide Commemoration (World Jewish Congress, December 12, 2024)
The United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention on Monday hosted an event commemorating the International Day for the Prevention of Genocide. The program avoided any mention of the Holocaust and omitted references to Israel or Jews, while emphasizing the anniversaries of the Rwanda and Srebrenica genocides. Notably, during the commemoration, Rafael Lemkin, who drafted the Genocide Convention, was described only as a Polish lawyer—disregarding his Jewish background and the fact that he was also a Holocaust survivor. Additionally, at no point in the event was the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz mentioned, while the anniversaries of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide and Bosnia’s 1995 Srebrenica massacre were highlighted.
University of Michigan Fires Diversity Administrator Who Said Jews Are ‘Wealthy and Privileged’ (Mathilda Heller, Jerusalem Post, December 13, 2024)
The University of Michigan has fired an administrator after she was accused of saying that Jewish students should not benefit from diversity programs as they are “wealthy and privileged,” according to documents obtained by the New York Times on Thursday.
The administrator, Rachel Dawson, formerly worked as director of UoM’s office of academic multicultural initiatives.
According to the documents and her lawyer, the firing comes on the back of alleged comments made at a conference in March, in which she claimed the university was “controlled by wealthy Jews.”
Dawson also said that “Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,” according to the documents, which formed part of a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League of Michigan.
This is good news—but hardly sufficient. To quash antisemitism on campuses we need to root out the entire DEI apparat, not just one apparatchik! Modern anti-Semitism, of the Woke type, is an integral part of the DEI ideology, as exemplified by the case of Tabia Lee, a DEI director who was fired from her job because she argued for Jewish inclusion. If we want to restore a civil and productive environment, conducive to the flourishing of scholarship and education, DEI must go. No compromises!
The Free Palestine cult are domestic terrorists.
Bravo to AMCHA. To them and to Anny Krylov and Adam Tanzman, Happy Chanukkah'