Occupying a Generation

Written by Max Shmookler

The Questionable Rebirth of Campus Anti-Semitism
In early April, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) released its findings and recommendations regarding the threat of campus anti-Semitism. According to the USCCR, anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, were “serious problem[s]” that called for a congressional amendment to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA), a public education campaign, and the imperative for college administrators to act as what it called a “moral example[s].”

Proponents of the commission’s findings, both in the national offices of Jewish organizations like the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and in leadership positions on campuses such as University of California, Irvine (UCI), say that anti-Israel rhetoric all too often slips into standard anti-Semitism.

Others disagree, arguing that hysteria about campus anti-Semitism far outpaces the actual threat to Jewish students. They raise concerns about the commission’s sources, the political motivations behind the recommendations, and the influence of national Jewish and governmental bodies in shaping campus life.

This debate about anti-Semitism is played out in detail at UCI, where Jewish student leaders, professors, and administrators struggle to square the commission’s findings and the ZOA’s aggressive approach with their own experiences of Jewish life, Israel/Palestine politics, and anti-Semitism – or the lack thereof.

Findings and Recommendations

As evidence of what it calls the “serious problem” on college campuses, the commission cited “alleged patterns of threatening or intimidating behavior, derogatory remarks, vandalism, and use of swastikas and other symbols of hatred or bigotry.”

The report found that anti-Israel propaganda draws on anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as the medieval blood libel and conspiracies about Jewish media and governmental power. Additionally, the report asserts that Middle East Studies departments “provide one-sided, highly polemical academic presentations and some may repress legitimate debate concerning Israel.”

Based on these findings, the commission called on the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) to “vigorously enforce” Title VI of the CRA, on the basis of denying an equal opportunity to Jewish students. When campus anti-Zionism slips into anti-Semitism, the commission said, it “could engender a hostile environment” leading to “discriminatory harassment.” Ultimately, the USCCR encouraged Congress to consider an amendment to Title VI clarifying that discrimination based on “Jewish heritage constitutes prohibited national origin discrimination.”

Some of those who gave testimony at the original commission hearings last November were pleased with the findings and recommendations. Attorney Susan Tuchman, the director of the Center for Law and Justice at the ZOA, said she was “more than satisfied.”

“The commission sent a very strong message to the public, to college administrations, and to the Office of Civil Rights as to the commission’s interpretation of Title VI,” she said in a phone interview.

“The findings,” she stressed, “indicate a recognition that there is a serious problem of anti-Semitism on campuses and that anti-Semitism encompasses not just derogatory remarks, vandalism, ethnic slurs, and so on, but that anti-Zionist speech and conduct can also be a manifestation of anti-Semitism. We cannot agree more.”

Ken Stern, the program specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism at the American Jewish Committee (AJC), praised the commission’s definition of anti-Semitism in terms of “discriminatory conduct,” despite noting that the key issue is how the recommendations are implemented. The emphasis on conduct, rather than on sanctioning controversial ideas, preserves what he called the “college culture” of critical thinking and academic freedom. “I don’t want us to take shortcuts. What we want to do is create an environment in which people are free to express ideas, but where bigotry is recognized for what is it,” he emphasized in a phone interview.

Some Jewish institutions, particularly those who oppose the Israeli occupation, question the objectivity of the commission’s sources.

Liat Weingart, Director of Campaigns and Programs for Jewish Voice for Peace, said the alleged bias of Middle East Studies departments was “highly questionable.”

“That accusation,” she pointed out in a phone interview, “is coming from groups like Campus Watch and Daniel Pipes, from people who are notoriously censorious on the issue of criticizing Israel in general.”

She was also “impressed” that the commission made a “clear split” between critiques of foreign policy and anti-Semitism. “Censoring legitimate criticism of Israel,” she explained, “has watered down the charge of anti-Semitism, because it confuses legitimate criticism of a sovereign government with bigotry.”

A Case in Point: Anti-Semitism at UCI

The difference of opinion at the national level is reflected on campuses such as UCI, which was an oft-cited example at last November’s commission hearing. Fueled by passions from all sides, Anteaters For Israel (AFI, named after the school mascot) has locked horns with the Muslim Student Union (MSU) and, to a lesser degree, the Society of Arab Students (SAS).

Nestled in the heart of conservative Orange County, UCI is not exactly a hotbed of radical Jewish politics. Yonatan Bryant, vice president of AFI, describes the Jewish community as “fairly centrist, with some center left and some center right.” He says most students support Kadima’s moderate path, and would prefer a negotiated withdraw from parts of the West Bank to a unilateral disengagement.

These days the Jewish community “tries to stick to proactive Israel education activities,” explained Hillel director Jeffery Rips in a phone interview. He says they highlight positive things Israel has done, organize Israeli art and culture events, and bring speakers, in addition to regular Shabbat services, community events, such as Tu B’Shvat tree-planting and social justice projects, including a recent alternative spring break trip to New Orleans.

Media-savvy and sensitive to the national debate about the Israel/Palestine conflict, the students interviewed for this article were armed with well-documented portfolios of alleged infractions and hate-speech stretching back to the beginning of the second intifada, although the majority of the incidents happened in 2003 and 2004.

Merav Ceren, a fourth-year International Studies major and past president of AFI, offered her take on campus events.

“When I arrived at UCI,” she explained in a phone interview, “I thought that anti-Semitism was dead.” It was only after having her own educational programming consistently shunned by the MSU that she began to believe they were not interested in dialogue.

She offered numerous examples of the MSU’s inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric, culminating in the annual springtime “Zionist Awareness Week.” While taking care to preface their remarks by saying that they are anti-Zionist, not anti-Jewish, MSU speakers have allegedly peddled conspiracy theories about Jewish control of the media and the government.

Ceren points to the presence of Amir Abdel Malik Ali, an imam at an Oakland mosque, who the MSU has repeatedly invited to campus. Ali, who one anonymous Jewish student described as “a full and unequivocal supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah,” has said of Hamas, “them’s my boys.” He believes that any form of Zionism is white supremacy, and uses “Jewish crackers” to refer to all Jewish Zionists, irrespective of their particular politics.

Another speaker, Dr. Hatem al Bazian, speaking at an MSU-sponsored event entitled “Apartheid Wall: Ethnic Cleansing Israeli Style,” allegedly singled out Jewish students in the audience as responsible for the current Iraq war.

Several students have complained of being followed by MSU members, and some admit they take circuitous routes to avoid Ring Road, where the group usually hosts their events, especially during Zionism Awareness Week. In addition, a number of students mentioned the “no dialogue” policy held by the MSU and SAS a few years ago. MSU members did not respond to multiple interview requests.

The problem, many Jewish students agree, is not the MSU’s criticism of Israel, but what they feel is an intimidating atmosphere on campus. Indeed, a number of Jewish students offered their own criticisms of the Jewish state.

“I don’t know anyone on UCI campus that doesn’t believe in a two-state solution, that doesn’t agree that the Palestinians need their own homeland, that they need more and have a right to more,” Ceren said of her peers.

Ceren’s sentiment was echoed by Economics professor Amihai Glazer. Regarding criticism of Israeli policy, he said in a phone interview, “it is perfectly reasonable to oppose Israeli actions in the West Bank, or whatever you want to call it; or to oppose the security fence or whatever other name you use, that’s reasonable. What the MSU did which is unreasonable, which is a problem, is to equate Zionism with Nazism.”

Glazer contrasted the MSU’s propaganda, such as Stars of David dripping with blood and equated with swastikas, to the tactics of the SAS. With the exception of one recent year, the SAS has voiced its “clear opposition” to Israeli policy in a way that is not, Glazer said, “anti-Semitic or intended to incite hatred.”

Ceren said that the atmosphere of harassment discourages Jews, even unaffiliated Jews, from participating in Jewish programming. She recounted a recent conversation with a third-year student who “never showed up to anything Hillel, because he was afraid that to be Jewish on campus, you would have to fight.” Making clear that this wasn’t about pro-Israel rallies, Ceren added, “Jewish students won’t join Hillel for a hockey game, because that means they have to fight.”

Questioning the Scope of the Threat

But many people at UCI don’t buy the USCCR’s findings. Some don’t trust the commission’s sources, others are skeptical about its intentions.
Mark LeVine, an associate professor of History at UCI, dismissed the findings as “wholly unmerited.”

“The whole thing is political,” he said in a phone interview from his Paris sabbatical. “It’s tied to the same dynamics behind David Horowitz’s academic freedom bill of rights and other attempts to silence criticism. It’s part of the same political agenda.”

He raised doubts about the empirical evidence behind the findings, and asked whether the alleged anti-Semitic incidents constituted “severe, persistent or pervasive” behavior of the type that would violate Title VI of the CRA. “Now, if the Korean Student Union and the gay and lesbian student group were saying things that could be qualified as anti-Jewish, then we might have a pervasively hostile environment,” he said.
LeVine was concerned that some Jewish student leaders, with the encouragement of outside groups such as the ZOA, were making “ungrounded” generalizations about the levels of anti-Jewish hostility on campus. “I won’t deny anyone their perceptions [of discrimination], but the question is, how do you evaluate that perception?” he asked.

As LeVine pointed out, Jews and Arab Muslims form a minority of UCI’s more than 20,000 students. The UCI Hillel estimates there are no more than 1,000 Jewish students, of whom perhaps 300-400 participate in Jewish programming. The “core group,” said Rips, is smaller yet, totaling between 70 to 100 students. Students agree that the MSU has an equally small core group, and that their outdoor events rarely attract more than 20 or 30 students.

Yonatan Bryant confirmed the general apathy toward the Israel/Palestine conflict. “We have a campus which, except for Hillel, AFI and the MSU, either doesn’t care or doesn’t know that much about Israel,” the AFI vice president said. “It’s one of the advantages of being 51 percent Asian.”

Bryant also said things have cooled down this year. “Now it is nowhere near as intimidating as the stories that I’ve heard from two years ago,” before he transferred to UCI. “All the stories that have been passed down aren’t that applicable anymore,” he added.

Rips agrees, and called concerns about pervasive and widespread anti-Semitism “completely inaccurate.” While he describes MSU events as “generally hostile,” he does not think they disrupt Jewish life or discourage Jewish students from participating in Hillel programming. “Nobody has ever stopped us from being Jewish on campus. In fact, today, there are more religious Jews on campus, visible, wearing yarmulkes.”

Through his work at the AJC, Stern arrived at a similar skepticism about the characterization of campus anti-Semitism. He described some of the “factual assertions” made at the USCCR hearing last November as “troubling,” and found testimony that depicted college campuses as “safe harbor(s)” for anti-Semitism hyperbolic and misleading. Some of the testimony, he added, failed to distinguish between criticism of Israel, anti-Zionism, and anti-Semitism.

Administration Under Fire

In the spring of 2004, the MSU’s tradition of wearing green graduation stoles inscribed with the Muslim declaration of faith, or shahada, flared into a national controversy. Jewish students and community leaders, on the defensive after the events of Zionism Awareness Week, accused the MSU of being Hamas sympathizers, based on the resemblance of the stoles to the Palestinian group’s flag.

The national attention prompted Jewish groups like the ZOA to contact campus leaders. In October, after consulting with AFI and Hillel students, the ZOA filed a formal complaint against the UCI administration under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

“Jewish students at UCI have been subjected to longstanding and pervasive hostility and intimidation on campus,” the grievance asserted, and charged that the administration has “remained silent” and even been “complicit in the [anti-Semitic] conduct.” In light of such allegations, the ZOA demanded that the government “take all steps necessary” to ensure UCI’s compliance with Title VI, or lose federal funding.

This complaint came after months of dead-end discussions between administrators and Jewish student leaders. As Tuchman said, “Students made numerous efforts to resolve complaints with senior administrators, and those efforts were not successful. The students were very frustrated.”

When asked if bringing charges against the university had polarized the situation, she said, “Jewish students already felt very marginalized. I don’t think the complaint brought that about. In fact, some students told me that the complaint has made the university sit up and listen better.”

Jim Cohen, the director of media relations for UCI, declined to comment on the pending suit during a phone interview, except to say that the university “vehemently dispute[s] ZOA’s allegations” regarding anti-Semitic discrimination. He expressed disappointment that the ZOA unilaterally terminated mediation under the auspices of the OCR. The university, he added, has hosted The Daniel Pearl Dialogue and created the Difficult Dialogues program to “educate our community about all forms of intolerance including anti-Semitism.”

Some students attribute a calmer campus and a more responsive administration to the ZOA’s pending lawsuit, but many are doubtful.

Professor LeVine attributes much of the tension, both real and perceived, to “outside influences” such as the ZOA, and the ambiguous off-campus advisors to the MSU. He said that these groups “have institutional goals to stir up trouble,” explaining, “you don’t gain visibility or raise money when things are good.”

Alex Chazen, the current student president of both AFI and Hillel, criticized the ZOA’s involvement as unrepresentative. “They mostly interviewed people [for their complaint] who they heard had experienced anti-Semitism. They didn’t gather a full range of what students were thinking about,” he said in a phone interview. After publishing an op-ed in the school paper likening the ZOA’s outside intervention with his mother’s patronizing attempts to clean his room, Chazen received numerous letters and emails from other students who felt similarly frustrated, reinforcing his belief that the majority of Jewish students on campus felt alienated from the ZOA’s aggressive approach.

He added that things are looking up, that this year the MSU has kept its anti-Semitic speakers “behind closed doors,” that meetings with SAShave been “civil,” and that new tactics have enabled AFI to take control of the debate about Israel on campus.

“Really,” he said, “the ZOA has been put in an awkward position, where the administration knows that the Jewish students are looking forward, not backward.”

This proactive, community-generated approach is exactly what other national Jewish institutions like to see, and why they were relieved that the USCCR did not recommend measures to sanction hate speech, despite the advice of some Jewish leaders.

Speaking in general terms, Stern was pleased the commission did not adopt recommendations to sanction speech – even hateful speech – on campus. The anti-Semitism expert explained that sanctions or other legal measures can “backfire,” creating a false choice between academic freedom and standing up to bigotry. The result, he said, was a campus where faculty and students “line up behind the worst bigot because that bigot is protecting [their] academic freedom.”

Despite the polarization on campus and the intervention of outside institutions like the ZOA and the USCCR, some students are able to independently bridge the gaps.

Merav Ceren, who has been raising concerns about anti-Semitism for years, was comfortable criticizing Israel. “You’re not meant to take things blindly,” she said. “If you’re not critical of Israel, how is it supposed to improve? Being Jewish means being critical...Israel, as a political and a democratic entity, is not going to be perfect. We need to fight for minority rights, for a just solution to the conflict.” After a second’s pause, she added, “That’s democracy.”

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Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved.