CASEY RYAN: University Professors Have An Antisemitism Problem

Universities have notoriously had a problem with antisemitism since the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel with student-led protests and vandalism plaguing campuses. While this should be concerning, the root of the problem is often ignored.

Beneath the boisterous students deriding Israel and, in some cases, threatening their Jewish peers are faculty members who use their positions of authority and expertise to promote antisemitic sentiments to their students and beyond. This problem cannot be overlooked any longer.

In one of the worst instances of faculty promoting antisemitism at an institution of higher learning, a significant number of professors at the University of California, Berkeley joined together to officially condemn Israel.

Less than two weeks after Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,200 civilians, more than 170 UC Berkeley faculty signed onto a “Statement of Solidarity with Palestinians.” The faculty claimed in this letter that they stood “in solidarity with our fellow educators in occupied Palestine.”

University staff accused Israel of “systematic genocide” and “apartheid” in the letter. Signatories included professors in numerous departments, such as history, ethnic studies, English, sociology, and African American studies.

In at least one history curriculum that Defending Education exposed through a public records request at UC Berkeley, a professor taught students the so-called importance of “Decolonizing Palestine” with the idea that Israel is stolen territory.

The fact that professors are allowed to brazenly use their positions to promote sinister ideology like this is unacceptable and should be investigated by the Department of Education and Secretary Linda McMahon, but unfortunately, California is not alone. The same is happening throughout the country.

At Rutgers Law School in New Jersey, the Center for Security, Race and Rights hosted an “Online Teach-In on Gaza” where the speakers attacked Israel for fighting back against Hamas. Considering that this center within Rutgers Law School was openly established to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, its existence is already questionable.

Defending Education acquired numerous emails from Rutgers faculty attacking Israel, including one from a law professor who complained that “our own university administration in New Brunswick are addressing the war in Gaza exclusively through the perspective and experiences of Israelis, the Israeli government, and their supporters.” She blatantly accused Israel of “war crimes” in another email.

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Samuel Abrams is a politics professor at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and explained he has seen antisemitism from other faculty firsthand as someone who is “openly Jewish.” He said that he has had students come to him seeking assistance for classes where Israel was not even a topic of the course, but professors “would malign and negatively talk about Jews and Judaism.”

Abrams has dealt with swastikas being drawn on his office door and was even called a “white skinned Taliban” by another professor. In one incident last year, he explained how a professor sent out a college-wide email to faculty promoting her “Sarah Lawrence Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine” group. Her email promoted a protest in “Solidarity with Palestine, Solidarity with Our Brave Students” and encouraged other professors to join.

Antisemitism among college professors is a growing problem throughout America and is exacerbated when taking into consideration that many of these professors are protected by their tenure status. The Trump administration and Education Department have launched multiple investigations into universities over antisemitism and DEI, but we cannot minimize the role of individual faculty.

Students often adopt antisemitic views because of what their professors teach them. The AMCHA Initiative is a group created to combat antisemitism on campuses. The organization has a report ranking universities based on their “correlation between anti-Zionist faculty presence and the severity of campus antisemitism.”

Some of the worst institutions in this report are New York University, the University of Chicago, the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Antisemitism is a cancer that must be addressed at the source. While students acting in violation of university policy is a concern that must be addressed, state lawmakers and the Department of Education cannot ignore the disturbing and even violent ideas spewed by too many of our nation’s professors.

Casey Ryan is a writer and investigative reporter at Defending Education.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.