All 18 members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus have signed a letter urging the University of California and California State University systems to do more to protect Jewish students.
The group of state legislators expressed its “outrage and concern” about what it called an “explosion of antisemitism” at the two schools.
“While we appreciate your willingness to meet with us two weeks ago to discuss our concerns, recent events have made it clear that the environment on our campuses has only grown increasingly hostile toward Jews,” the legislators wrote. “Indeed, we have heard shocking reports from Jewish students, faculty and staff who have been traumatized by a barrage of physical abuse, threats, intimidation, hate speech, online harassment and exclusion from academic opportunities.”
Among many examples the legislators cited were UC Berkeley, UC Davis and San Jose State students physically attacked for supporting Israel; UC San Diego Jewish students who required a police escort for their safety; and “a social-media post by a UC Davis faculty member with knife, ax and blood emojis calling for violence against Zionists in their homes and their ‘kids in school.’”
The politicians added that anti-Israel student groups celebrated the Hamas’s terror attacks of Oct. 7, and “the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council glorified the largest mass murder, rape and kidnapping of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust as worthy of support as part of the ‘Palestinian freedom struggle.’” Further, professors canceled classes “for anti-Israel rallies, requiring students to view extreme anti-Israel propaganda and expressing profound hostility towards Jews and Israelis—all in classes unrelated to foreign affairs or to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
While schools in the two state university systems provide “space on campus to various identity and affinity groups,” they do not do so for Jewish organizations, wrote the legislators. “The response by many campus administrators to the targeting of Jewish students has been woefully inadequate,” they continued, suggesting that campus officials would respond very differently “if it involved another historically marginalized group.”
“We cannot imagine—nor would we tolerate—silence or equivocation if any other group on campus were being similarly targeted,” they wrote. “We have seen the UC and CSU stake out bold positions on politically charged issues like immigration and LGBTQ+ rights; it should not be this difficult to condemn antisemitism.”
‘More needs to be done’
Scott Wiener, a Democratic member of the state Senate, who co-chairs the caucus and whose district includes San Francisco, told JNS that “people have strong beliefs about the war in Gaza—and they have every right to those beliefs—but this wave of antisemitic incidents is horrifying and unacceptable.”
“Jewish students on campus are feeling threatened, and they’ve told us that the response from UC and CSU has left them feeling unsupported,” he added. “It is absolutely essential that these institutions make clear that violent hate speech is neither protected nor acceptable and that they lay out a clear plan to combat these incidents before they escalate even further.”
Jesse Gabriel, caucus co-chair and a Democratic member of the state Assembly, told JNS that the caucus is “committed to working at the highest levels to ensure that UC and CSU take immediate action to address this challenge.”
“After hearing from students, faculty, staff and Hillel directors across California, it became abundantly clear to us that more needs to be done to address the frightening surge of antisemitism on many campuses,” he said.