President Donald Trump has called for a tougher stance against campus antisemitism. On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education announced investigations into “widespread antisemitic harassment” at five universities, including UC Berkeley, the campus where I teach.
Many universities deserve such an investigation. But Berkeley is the least among them.
If anyone merits investigating, it is not the university presidents, chancellors or provosts, who are doing the best they can in uncertain times. And it is not the scholars, who are protected by academic freedom. Rather, it is the university bureaucracies specifically tasked with addressing discrimination that are not doing their job. They should be protecting us against anti-Jewish bias but are often the most dismissive (at best) of Jewish concerns.
Many such bureaucracieswere hastily established at universities in recent years in response to a progressive wave of anti-racist alarm. Many of their administrators play an important role in protecting and promoting minority groups — but Jews are low on their list of priorities. Often, Jews are absent from their agendas altogether.
If universities really wish to eradicate anti-Jewish bias, they have their work cut out for them.
Last March, I launched a two-week sleep-in in my office to encourage my administration to take firmer action against bigotry. The chancellor and provost responded, slowly but decisively, to both my concerns and those of the wider Jewish community. While much is left to be accomplished, particularly in reforming its own bureaucracies, Berkeley has made significant strides in addressing some of the most disturbing aspects of anti-Jewish bias by enforcing stricter rules and requiring antisemitism education.
The last year and a half exposed breathtaking hatred toward Israeli and American Jews on U.S. campuses. But while the presidents of Columbia, Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania were called to task by congressional hearings, Berkeley avoided the national limelight thanks to the prudent responses of its leadership.
My campus has not been without moments of outrage: Cowardly protesters (perhaps students, perhaps not), who were masked to escape responsibility, intimidated and physically confronted Jewish students. They blocked their passage through campus, vandalized university property and harmed several Jewish students. They celebrated the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack, shouted genocidal slogans and sprayed Hamas symbols on campus buildings. On posters, in tweets and in graffiti in the streets of Berkeley, they accused then-Chancellor Carol Christ and me of genocide, terrorism, murder, torture and all manner of fantastical misdeeds.
Like other campuses, Berkeley was caught off guard by these developments. There was no rulebook to guide university leaders through the post-Oct. 7 hellscape. The protesters of the 1960s were, by and large, not terrorism groupies. They were not masked and typically were neither abusive or violent.
Following Oct. 7, the administration had neither the means nor the legal backing for assertive action. It responded cautiously at first but learned to adapt to the new reality at an accelerating pace.
After smart negotiations with the anti-Israeli activists, in which campus leaders offered little and gained much, the protesters dismantled their tent encampment. New directives from the UC Office of the President empowered the Berkeley administration. An attempt in October to block Sather Gate lasted exactly one night before university staff dismantled the obstruction. Other than that, there have been no further attempts at mass protests, blockages or encampments on the Berkeley campus since June.
In parallel, Berkeley’s new chancellor, Rich Lyons, has spoken unambiguously about the need for civic discourse and mutual respect across student communities. A university call for initiatives to teach about bias, discrimination and the history of the Middle East received 72 proposals from students, faculty and staff. The campus has funded new academic programs to combat bias, such as the Bridging Fellowship Program, led by the heads of the Center for Middle East Studies and the Center for Jewish Studies to facilitate “conversations about Israel and Palestine.” As I was personally promised at the end of my sit-in, the university now mandates antisemitism training for all incoming students.
None of these has completely eliminated anti-Jewish animus on our campus. Some bigoted faculty and students continue to traffic in Oct. 7 denial. Some of my close colleagues have called for the university leadership to denounce these scholars.
I share my colleagues’ disgust, but I respectfully disagree. The university must prevent physical violence and abuse. But it is not the responsibility or even the right of administrators to interfere with classroom discourse. Academic freedom comes first. Lies about the Israel-Hamas war, no matter how galling, should be countered by truths, not by administrative dictates.
Students are free to attend biased classes, or not, and engage in debates with interlocutors. Faculty are free to offer better classes.
Campus leaders can and should denounce displays of bias and bigotry. They, too, have the right to free speech, even if they cannot block the speech of others. In the past, they did so promptly and vehemently in response to bias against all minorities. They are now doing so in response to bias against Jews as well.
Entrenched bureaucracies treat all harassment with appropriate concern but tend to weigh antisemitism on a different scale. If it is accompanied by anti-Israel bigotry, it is often tolerated. To them, intersectionality binds all aggrieved groups, except Jews. Such bias might be expected among extremist students, but it is infuriatingly hypocritical among the very bureaucracies tasked with protecting us from bias.
These bureaucracies are well-staffed and well-funded, and their indifference to Jews is deeply rooted. If the Department of Education chooses to investigate them, it will take a good while and significant effort to steer them back on the right path.
UC Berkeley is far ahead of its peer campuses in setting things right, but we all have a long way to go.