On Wednesday, February 15, the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) Berkeley Senate met to deliberate on adopting SR-027, a bill proposed by Senator Shay Cohen. The bill calls for the ASUC to formally adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition...
UC Berkeley Should Stand Up for Jewish Students Like Me
Last November, two lawyers filed a civil rights inquiry against Berkeley School of Law with the federal government. This controversy began on August 23rd, 2022, when student group Law Students for Justice in Palestine urged other clubs within the Law School to adopt an amendment to bylaws stating that they...
Statement: A Response to Berkeley School of Law Dean Chemerinsky
Berkeley Law Dean Chemerinsky claims that there are no “Jewish-free zones” at the university because the majority of student groups have not changed their bylaws to exclude Zionist speakers. If the Berkeley Law administration considers the fact that “only” some student organizations currently have a policy of excluding Jews as...
Anti-Zionist faculty in US colleges are responsible for hostile environments towards Jewish students
In recent years, we have seen how anti-Israel hostility has sprouted in hundreds of universities across the country. Under the disguise of academic freedom, institutions of higher learning have become fertile grounds for extremism. While Jewish studies departments and organizations such as Chabad and Hillel sustain a vibrant Jewish life...
A Berkeley student group celebrates anti-Semitic violence
Bears for Palestine, a UC Berkeley student organization, hosted their fifth annual gala this past semester. The gala was “in honor of the unity intifada” — the latest in a series of violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel. Honoring an intifada disregards the violent history of past intifadas, downplays the trauma...
Clearing up Title VI Confusion
U.S. Representative Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.) is one of the latest politicians to weigh in on the debate surrounding universities’ use of federal funds. This time, University of California-Berkeley’s (UCB) Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) is in the limelight. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, Lamborn chiefly urges...
Taking “Never Again” Seriously on Campus and Beyond
“Never again.” Ever since the final concentration camp was shut down in 1945, the world has clung to this mantra, and with good reason. Yet, in a mere 75 years those words have become hollow — co-opted by those engaging in the same antisemitic rhetoric employed during Hitler’s rise to...
ASUC Should Condemn Bears for Palestine’s Display
Pittsburgh. Poway. Jersey City. Monsey. The list of cities afflicted by deadly antisemitic attacks is growing far too quickly. We can continue to cite facts and statistics (the near daily attacks on Jewish communities in New York, how 60% of all religious hate crimes in 2018 were classified as anti-Jewish, etc.), but the bottom...