Concerns Regarding Campus Climate
Concerns Regarding Campus Climate
From a Jewish student's parent's perspective
The following is a statement from a parent of a USC student. The author wishes to remain anonymous to protect privacy of her child.
My remarks have less to do with “Valedictoriangate” and more with the general campus climate I have witnessed over the past six month. The comments are presented as a letter to Provost Guzman that I wrote back in January, when I already saw significant and very concerning escalation on USC’s campus. I never sent out the email because I felt discouraged about not receiving any responses to my previous attempts to communicate with his and President Folt’s offices. I was also hoping that administration would be wise enough to be alarmed and pivot on their own, without my input.
Dear Provost Guzman,
I called your office back in February, left a message and then wrote this letter, but in the hopes of course correction coming from your office never sent it out. However, in the light of continued escalation in hostile antisemitic rhetoric on the USC campus, I will express my concerns here, especially since all the requests from parents to have a meeting with USC’s leadership were ignored. So here it goes.
I apologize in advance for the emotional tone but I hope you understand that this is written from a perspective of a Jewish student’s parent who has had enough. I will not bore you with the long and heartbreaking details of my personal family history. It is filled with brutality and discrimination as it is for most Jews who came from Eastern Europe in the late 20th century. This family history and my extensive first-hand experience with antisemitism throughout my childhood make me more attuned to it than those of my ethnicity and faith who grew up in what was, until now, a relatively antisemitism-free environment of the United States. I am also familiar from my childhood with the “this is anti-Zionism not antisemitism” sham rhetoric of the official propaganda, which originated in the Soviet Union decades before being widely adopted on the American college campuses. Therefore, I feel that I have as much right as anyone else in the Trojan family—be it the safety officers, team at the office of threat assessment, or Holocaust researchers at Dornsife—to express the grave concerns I have about my child’s and other Jewish students’ safety on your campus. If things on campus continue as they are, with
• activist professors holding one-sided “teach-ins” and rallies that focus on demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and vilifying Jews;
• students who doctor and distribute falsified videos slandering a Jewish USC professor—with USC investigating the slandered professor, not the students committing the defamation of his name and character;
• dangerous events led by professional off-campus agitators;
• incessant barrage of outright lies and carefully selected biased libels against Israel and its people;
• unhinged screams calling for Intifada and abolishment of the Jewish homeland “from the river to the sea” heard while students are taking their exams and just trying to get to their classes.
I do not feel any confidence for my child’s safety on your campus.
More proactive steps are needed by your administration to bring down tensions, punish the perpetrators who blatantly violate campus rules, and facilitate a respectful, fact-based dialogue for those capable of it for the benefit of the wider student body. I can’t find much evidence that you are taking what is happening in and around your campus seriously enough and investing time and money into planning and carrying out preventative measures. The information listed in your “addressing antisemitism” webpage is vague and general, and clearly not up to the task of dealing with this tsunami of antisemitism sweeping your campus.
Since the attacks of October 7th in Israel and the subsequent protests, hate speech, and acts of violence perpetrated on Jewish citizens across the United States, I, like the thousands of Jewish parents of current college students have followed the same routine. Wake up in the morning (if you slept that night, which many of us have not been doing), look through the news and social media sites describing which antisemitic events took place across the country, desperately hoping that the school that our child is attending is not in the news for some new antisemitic act or protest. Even if we don’t find any unpleasant news associated with our child’s university on a particular day, the amount of hate, vitriol, and hostile acts we see happening against Jewish students on other campuses still make us worried and angry. Jews make up less than 0.2% of world’s population and 7% of LA County’s population. Can you think of any other minority group of parents in our day and age who have to experience the same worries about their children’s safety on American university campuses?
After examining the events unfolding at USC since October, I am sorry to report that despite the school’s efforts and small steps in the right directions, the picture is grim. Many of the incidents that I witnessed are serious. Most of the Jewish parents I speak to feel that the same way—that the level of hostility, hateful incidents, and malicious verbal attacks would not be permitted to be directed against any other minority group, and if they were, there would be immediate and drastic consequences against the perpetrators.
I reviewed the university’s information on protected speech and description of Leonard’s Law and understand the importance of protecting free speech in a democratic society. However, I also feel that USC can do more to facilitate a balanced dialogue on campus. For example, holding panels sponsored by the university that include panelists of different opinions and backgrounds who are able to demonstrate genuine willingness to listen to each other can be a valuable education for your students who will be future leaders of this country. Reviewing the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Jewish Life from August of 2022, I also noted some areas that are worth revisiting as it appears that most recommendations have not been implemented to date. The committee highlighted areas of focus that would “make USC more equitable and inclusive for Jewish individuals and communities on campus.” However, since 2022 when the committee presented its report, the life for the Jewish community on USC’s campus has become filled with more threats, intimidation, and libelous attacks.
Active planning and training to prevent any disruptions to classes or bullying that targets Jewish and Israeli students and faculty is an important step as well. Firm enforcement of consequences for those who violate university rules is the only way to give this enforcement some credibility. USC must do more to address the rise of misinformation and hate on campus and to prevent further incidents as the Middle East conflicts continue, escalate, or start anew at some point in the future.
It is my understanding that this is your first year as Provost at USC and this is not the type of crisis you were planning to deal with. However, neither did I expect my child’s college experience to turn out the way it has and the many sleepless nights this situation has caused me. I hope that we can work together to make this University less bleak for its Jewish students and set an example that productive dialogue can help people understand each other and make us all proud to call ourselves members of the USC community.
Editors’ note: This letter was written before the illegal encampments and accompanying spree of vandalism and lawlessness paralyzed our campus for more than a week.
Supporting Information
October 7th denialists among USC faculty: USC professors among signatories of Palestine/Israel Scholars Open Letter to US Media. Editors’ note: See also Newsletter (May 1st, 2024) about a letter to NYT signed by 13 USC faculty in which they criticize NYT for publishing an article about sexual violence of October 7.
Anti-Israeli “Teach-Ins” organized by Interdisciplinary Palestine Justice Faculty Group at USC:
More about Interdisciplinary Palestine Justice Faculty Group at USC:
See also: Qatar's Back Door to Higher Education [incl. Laurie Brand, Hamid Dabashi] by Micthell Bard.
Intimidation of pro-Israeli students on USC campus. From “He covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on campus. Then the protesters rebuked him” (Forward, 01/25/2024):
Jacob Wheeler, a journalism student at University of Southern California, expected to take some flack for reporting on the Israel-Hamas war, but he never thought it would get so personal.
A pro-Palestinian march stopped in front of USC’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism last fall and a masked protester called Wheeler out by name into a megaphone, accusing him of pro-Israel bias. Wheeler, who is 21, said he stopped reporting for Annenberg after the Oct. 31 incident, both because he was disappointed in the school’s response and out of concerns for his safety.
Editors’ note: We wrote about Jacob Wheeler in our Newsletter (April 29, 2024).
Images taken at the USC campus following valedictoriangate:
Viewpoint bias. Workshop with the university’s general counsel organized by Trojans for Palestine (among others) a group that is not approved by the university. No such workshop was offered to Jewish students.
Professor John Strauss’ case:
A Jewish professor at USC confronted pro-Palestinian students. He’s now barred from campus, LA Times (11/26/2023)
USC professor barred from campus is teaching remotely following dispute with pro-Palestinian protestors, Forward (11/17/2023)
University of Southern California relegates professor to remote teaching for expressing anti-Hamas sentiments, FIRE (11/20/2023)