CAMERA welcomes the strengthened legal measures that will enable Jewish students to enjoy the same protections as others. It’s important to note that the legal effort against campus anti-Semitism began in 2004 with a “Dear colleague letter” from the Office of Civil Rights, and was underscored in 2010 with another such letter from the Obama administration. The rising incidence of harassment, intimidation, discrimination and defamation of Jewish students on campus makes clear that this effort needs to be strengthened, as the Trump administration’s new Executive Order will do. It seems obvious that federal funds should not be used to underwrite the mistreatment of Jewish students and clarifying this is a very positive move in efforts to roll back the surge of bigoted activity.

“On May 4, 2019 speaker’s panel, “Not Backing Down: Israel, Free Speech and the Battle for Palestinian Rights,” sponsored by eight UMass Amherst academic departments (including Sut Jhally’s Communications Department) Linda Sarsour declared that Israelis “got a lotta resource, but what they don’t have is morals. They don’t have principles.” As Marc Lamont Hill began a drawn-out tirade regarding the illegitimacy of the “occupation” and said that it was difficult for him to renounce Hamas, someone in the audience yelled that such talk was dehumanizing people. She was met with hoots of disdain from the crowd. When someone shouted out “Am Yisrael Chai” in protest, the crowd began a chant of “remove them!”

Sut Jhally’s second conference didn’t shy away from aggressive anti-Israel speech/bordering on antisemitic rhetoric, though a few noticeable items were present. Not one academic department sponsored Sut Jhally’s November panel entitled, “The Attack on BDS and pro-Palestinian Speech.” Thanks to CAMERA’s Christian Research Analyst Dexter Van Zile’s exposure of Sut Jally activism and manipulation in the classroom, UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy issued a strong letter against the most recent event stating that, “It is troubling that such a one-dimensional, polarizing event should take place on our campus.”

Most recently, Van Zile spoke in front of the UMASS Board of Trustees about Sut Jhally’s abuse of the classroom. 

CAMERA on Campus UK held their second annual Student Leadership Conference in London.  Students came to learn valuable skills to improve their campus environment on Israel, from learning how to tackle tough questions to best techniques and practices to use on social media. The students heard from high level speakers and experts in the field of activism including Simon Cobbs of Sussex Friends of Israel, Natasha Haudsdorff of UK Lawyers for Israel , Labour Against Antisemitism, Euan Phillips and Israel’s Ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev.

“I had the displeasure of meeting Williamson when he came to Nottingham, my university, for a Politics department lecture. Many students, including myself, were outraged by the invitation of a man who has been accused of being antisemitic.

In response, we organised a protest to the event. We had a large turnout of students representing a diverse spread of political, religious and social perspectives including representatives from the Liberal Democrat Society, the Labour Society and the Conservative Society. Jewish and Zionist students as well as Catholic students stood together. Despite the rain, we had an impressive turnout of about 50-60 students. I also attended the talk itself, during which one of our members confronted Williamson in the Q+A section in a video that has now been viewed hundreds of thousands of times online. When Williamson was called an “antisemite” to his face, he of course protested, claiming that he was being smeared. He tried to lean on his record as an anti-racist campaigner for the “party of anti-racism”. We (the protest organisers) were also accused of trying to shut down freedom of speech… but today we are vindicated. Williamson reverted to classic Zionist conspiracy theories and Israeli interference rhetoric in his resignation letter. His language in the letter is a clear violation of the IHRA definition of antisemitism that the Labour party adopted in September last year. Likewise, through closer examination of Williamson’s rhetoric in the lecture, I believe there are important insights to be learned about the nature of modern left-wing antisemitism.”

Read more from Nottingham University CAMERA Fellow, Daniel Marcus, at the Jewish News.

Hosted by the campus department of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA), a media watchdog organization, students from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Israel took part in a four-day conference at Boston University’s Hillel to learn more about Israel and how to stand up to anti-Israel campus groups—and also to know they are not alone.

Ben Newhouse, a rising junior at New York University in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, told JNS that one of the biggest takeaways from the conference was the realization that most of the anti-Israel actions he has seen on campus are actually anti-Semitic as well.

“One takeaway from the conference is that they are very clear in saying anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination, just like any other group of people do,” he said. “If you are saying that Jews don’t have this right and are only pointing your finger at the Jewish community, then you are anti-Semitic.”