Around the Circle: Concerns Regarding Campus Climate

A perspective from a USC professor

This series provides perspectives of our community members regarding the climate on the USC campus, with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Zionism. The first post in this series, Concerns Regarding Campus Climate, was a testimonial from a parent of a USC student. We now publish remarks by a USC professor from the Health Sciences campus shared with the Circle. The author wishes to remain anonymous.

Vasily Kandinsky, Around The Circle. Image source: Guggenheim Collection

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Thank you for your efforts against antisemitism on the USC campus [Editors’ note: see a comprehensive report on the subject]. The problem is, of course, much deeper than USC or college campuses in general. Anti-Zionism and antisemitism have become normalized and acceptable. Pro-Palestinian—really anti-Israel—demonstrations are typically aggressive and often display the kinds of blatant antisemitism that most of us thought were practically extinct, at least in the US. Without minimizing antisemitism from the far right, the anti-Israel gang has partnered with the hard left to demonize Israel and, by extension, any Jew who is not openly hostile to it.

That said, USC has done little to relieve this situation on the campus and, I would argue, has encouraged it in many ways. As you know, this group signed and submitted three letters [Editors’ note: see here, here, and here] long before 10/7/23 concerning incidents on the campus that have never been fully addressed. The first, the Rose Ritch case, involved a Jewish student who was bullied out of student government. The second was the case of the Department of Gender and Sexuality Studies, which publicly endorsed an anti-Israel statement. This is clearly against university policy, yet several years have gone by and even today the statement with their endorsement is still up on a website. The third was the USC student and DEI representative [Editors’ note: “DEI senator”] who tweeted about killing Zionists. While this may have seemed beyond the pale a few years ago, this kind of speech and worse is now common and normalized at anti-Israel rallies. USC did little beyond a mild reprimand for the student, something I doubt the university would even bother with at this point. Under the circumstances, I could hardly blame them if they ignored it.

If you are looking for antisemitism on the USC campus, however, look no further than the events of this past spring. USC chose as its valedictorian speaker a student who was obviously prone to give a politicized anti-Israel screed at graduation [Editors’ note: see posts here and here]. This has happened at several other universities—notably, CUNY—over the past few years [Editors’ note: see also a similar incident at the University of Manitoba]. She [Editors’ note: Tabassum] was chosen by a “committee” from a pool of at least 100 other qualified candidates and then signed off by administration.  Who was on this committee that made this obviously provocative choice? After all, they could have picked any of 100 other students who did not have links to a website advocating the destruction of Israel. It was a beauty contest, not an objective decision, so this committee chose to politicize their choice in a way sure to offend if not threaten most Jews on campus.

Recognizing the problem they created, administration tried to backtrack by clumsily canceling her speech, then canceling all speakers then canceling the whole thing. But by then, the damage was done. They singlehandedly created a celebrity victim who was invited to speak on the news media and achieve a much greater notoriety for herself and her cause than she could have hoped for at USC. So, I would like to know, who is responsible for this? I would say administration for creating this committee, allowing it to make such a decision and failing to vet their choice until too late.

The second rather obvious example of antisemitism was the “encampment” at USC [Editors’ note: see here, here, here, here, and here].  While it is no honor to say that things were handled even more poorly at UCLA, Columbia and elsewhere, this should not have been tolerated for even one day. The comments of a few anti-Israel Jews notwithstanding, these encampments were menacing to Jewish students and, I might add, all students at USC who just wanted to go about their business. The “protesters”—many of whom were not USC affiliated— were violating public spaces on a private university campus meant for students, faculty, staff and legitimate visitors. The university should have given them an hour to disperse, not negotiated in any way and threatened suspension or arrest if they failed to do so.

I could go further, but I am sure you are familiar with these events and already grasp their significance. For an institution that requires training every few years in “microaggressions” and threatens repercussions if we fail to avoid them, their tolerance of actual aggressive behavior is hypocritical at very least. For this I hold the university responsible, and particularly their Office of Diversity and Inclusion.  Without singling out any individual, if ever there was a bureau within a university that encouraged antisemitism, this is it. Obviously, I am not alone in this opinion—see, for example, “How DEI Inspires Jew Hatred” by Stanley Goldfarb in the City Journal. [Editors’ note: we strongly agree—see also here, here, and here].

If I had to make one recommendation on how to minimize antisemitism and other forms of bigotry and hatred on campus, it would be to stop emphasizing our differences. We do not need every month to celebrate a different ethnic, religious or other special interest group, especially when it is by default to the exclusion of others.  Our first allegiance while working or studying at USC should be to the university and, I would say, to America, not to our other identities, which can be celebrated in other ways. Protest is fair game, but not obstruction or intimidation on the campus, especially in classes. USC should consider adopting the University of Chicago model of neutrality [Editors’ note: we wrote about Kalven principle here and here] in issues that do not directly impact the university’s mission. Easy to articulate, harder to implement, but still a worthy goal.