Anti-Zionist Faculty Take Control of UC Santa Cruz

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Anti-Zionism isn’t just for young people, callow and shallow, anymore — the kind who like to scream “From the River to the Sea/Palestine Will be Free,” without knowing which “river” and which “sea” are meant, the kind who chant their demand for Israel to “End the Genocide,” or who enter college classrooms to shout down pro-Israel instructors, or rip mezuzahs from the doorjambs just outside Jewish students’ dormitory rooms, and who, on the campus itself, surround Jewish students so that they cannot escape, and shout into their faces about Israel being an “apartheid settler-colonial genocidal state.” We expect such stupidity from the young. We like to think they may grow out of it. A few do.

But now we have an entirely new phenomenon: the faculty, not the students, as quintessential political idiots, promoting an anti-Israel and pro-Hamas message. At the University of California at Santa Cruz, a group formed after October 7, “Faculty for Justice in Palestine” (FJP), now rules the political roost on campus. It is this group of faculty, and not the anti-Israel Students For Justice in Palestine (SJP), who are calling the pro-Hamas shots. More on this faculty group can be found here: “How Anti-Zionist Faculty Captured a University of California Campus and What It Means for the Future of Jews in America,” by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Algemeiner, April 12, 2024:

“Let’s make it clear – zionism is not welcome on our campus” read a recent Instagram message, which was followed by raised fist and Palestinian flag emojis.

At first blush, this posting appeared to be one more bullet in the barrage of vitriolic hatred and harassment aimed by anti-Zionist students groups like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Israel’s supporters on campus, especially Jewish students, in the aftermath of Hamas’ genocidal attack on Israel last fall.

But that’s not the case. The above message shunning the campus presence of Zionism — and by obvious extension, Zionists, which the vast majority of Jews identify as — wasn’t authored by students at all.

When a group calls for “shunning Zionism” on campus, that means shunning Zionists, which means shunning Jewish students, Jewish faculty, Jewish visiting speakers, who are overwhelmingly Zionists. But those who wrote that Instagram message can’t — as yet — dare to say what they mean, which is that the Santa Cruz campus should ideally be Judenrein.

Rather, it came from their professors — more than 100 of them — founders of a Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).

Let that sink in. A large group of faculty at one of the finest public university systems in the world is using a popular social media platform to proclaim the modern-day equivalent of the ubiquitous Nazi-era slogan “Juden sind hier unerwünscht” (“Jews are not wanted here”).

Even more chilling is the fact that the faculty group’s message was part of a larger post urging their colleagues and students to attend an on-campus “March Against Zionism” organized by an allied anti-Zionist student group, whose goal was “to make it clear that the racist settler-colonial ideology of zionism is not welcome on this campus!”…

Yes, a MARCH AGAINST ZIONISM. Brownshirts required; jackboots optional though desirable. Everyone pure of mind and heart — i.e.,  Against Zionism —  must show up to denounce that evil ideology, and stamp around the campus, goose-stepping with the good, the hearty guys! It’s a march to make clear to everyone on campus — especially to Jews who will no doubt be standing apart,  scowling their Jewish scowls, angry that their precious little Israel is being, as they like to say, “maligned” — that “Zionists have no place on our campus.”

The Students for Justice in Palestine, with the support of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, were delighted to harass the small group of Jewish students trying to hold their own quiet gathering in support of Israel. Our marching orders are clear: disturb, disrupt, and disperse the groupuscules of Jews standing up for Israel.

According to Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, it’s the anti-Zionist faculty who are now the driving force in encouraging antisemitism on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, one of the founders of AMCHA (which means “your people” in Hebrew), which seeks to discourage BDS activities on campus, also happens to be a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz.

FJP’s mutually beneficial collaborations with academic departments have significantly strengthened the anti-Zionist reach and impact of both FJP and the individual departments with which the group collaborates. Consider, for example, that it was academic BDS-supporting leaders of UCSC’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department who founded the campus FJP chapter, that more than 60% of CRES’ principal faculty are members of the faculty group, and that an invitation to join FJP and help “organize for Palestine” has been prominently displayed on CRES’ departmental homepage since November. It’s therefore not surprising that CRES has become a primary provider of the group’s political muscle in its time of need….

Why are you not surprised that the FJP chapter at UCSC was founded by members of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department rather than, say, by members of the Physics or Mathematics Departments? You know the answer to that. The hard sciences require real thought. It’s the fashionable and the phony fields, of negligible worth, centered in recent years on Race and Gender, and Sexuality, that attract the wicked and the dumb. And what could be dumber or more wicked on our troubled campuses than “Critical Race and Ethnic Studies”?

The Faculty for Justice in Palestine began with a chapter founded after October 7,  nurtured in the protective bosom of the  Center for Racial and Ethnic Studies, which ought to simply be shut down, its faculty fired, and the  money now spent on them should be distributed to the History, English, Art History, and Philosophy Departments. The FJP has already attracted more than 100 members at UC/Santa Cruz alone, who have managed to cow into silence other faculty who may disagree with them, but don’t want to become the object of harassment or worse. Campus administrators, too, are unwilling to discipline the FJP for using university resources to further their non-academic campaign to stamp out all Zionist activities and any signs of solidarity with Israel on campus.

That pusillanimous refusal of campus administrators to discipline the Faculty for Justice in Palestine branch at UC Santa Cruz means that a higher authority — the President of the entire California University system, and the Regents — must step in. They have the power to take control of the campus, to discipline the SJP members for intimidating Jewish students and the FJP faculty members for using university resources, meant only for academic purposes, for narrow political ends. Those ends are clear:  to make the campus hostile to Zionist supporters, which in effect means Jewish students and faculty, and to promote the disappearance of the only Jewish state, and its replacement “from the river to the sea” by a twenty-third Arab state. If the President and Regents do their job, they should be able to clip the wings of FJP at the ten campuses that constitute the University of California system. May they prove willing and able to proceed, undeterred by the fury and threats from the SJP and the FJP.