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The Home committee that castigated the now-resigned presidents of Harvard College and the College of Pennsylvania for his or her responses to antisemitism on campus has launched a probe of the College of California at Berkeley.
“We have now grave considerations concerning the inadequacy of UC Berkeley’s response to antisemitism on its campus,” Consultant Virginia Foxx, chair of the Home Committee on Training and the Workforce, wrote Tuesday in a letter addressed to Dr. Michael Drake, president of the UC system; Carol Christ, chancellor of Berkeley; and Richard Lieb, chair of the UC Board of Regents.
The committee can be investigating antisemitism at Harvard, Penn and the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how, and has known as the president of Columbia College to testify subsequent month about related points at her establishment.
In its letter to Berkeley’s management, the committee, which can be contemplating laws that might quickly revoke entry to federal monetary support for schools that don’t adequately defend free speech on campus, referenced quite a few alleged cases of antisemitism on Berkeley’s campus earlier than and after the Israel-Hamas battle began on Oct. 7, 2023.
Foxx characterised some latest incidents as “notably troubling,” together with one which turned violent final month.
On Feb. 26, a bunch of pro-Palestinian protesters broke two home windows and a door of the Zellerbach Playhouse positioned on campus, and reportedly assaulted and directed slurs at attendees of a chat by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, a lawyer and Israeli reservist, earlier than the college evacuated the venue. (On Monday, Bar-Yoshafat returned to campus and gave his presentation with out incident, in response to the college.)
Whereas the vast majority of campus protests which have taken place throughout the nation because the battle began have been peaceable, the violence that erupted at Berkeley adopted different forcible disruptions at Cooper Union a small, non-public faculty in New York, and at Columbia College.
Christ, Berkeley’s chancellor, and Benjamin Hermalin, govt vice chancellor and provost, condemned the protestors’ actions on Feb. 26 as “an assault on the elemental values of the college,” and stated they’d “do every little thing potential to preclude a repeat of what occurred.” The college has since launched a felony investigation into the incident.
Nevertheless, that hasn’t glad the Home committee, which stated within the letter that Berkeley’s “response to the incident didn’t determine the riot as an act of anti-Jewish hate.”
The committee set a deadline of April 2 for the college handy over a bevy of paperwork courting again to 2021. The committee says these paperwork will assist its members consider Berkeley’s antisemitism response. The requested paperwork embody these associated to reported antisemitic incidents, hiring within the division of Center Jap languages and cultures and overseas donations, with an emphasis on any from Qatari sources.
“We’ll present a complete response to the committee’s questions and considerations,” Dan Mogulof, assistant vice chancellor for govt communications, stated in an e-mail. “UC Berkeley has lengthy been dedicated to confronting antisemitism, and to supporting the wants and pursuits of its Jewish college students, school, and workers.”
As proof of that dedication, Mogulof famous that Berkeley established the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Scholar Life and Campus Local weather in 2015 and launched the Antisemitism Training Initiative in 2019.
Nevertheless, the congressional committee’s letter lists quite a few alleged examples of antisemitism on campus which have occurred since then—together with antisemitic harassment of Jewish college students and school. It additionally cited a 2023 Brandeis College research that stated Berkeley was among the many universities with “highest antisemitic hostility.”
Ron Hassner, a political science professor at Berkeley and one of many targets of the antisemitic harassment detailed within the letter, has slept in his workplace for the previous two weeks in protest of the college’s antisemitism response, in response to USA As we speak.
About 20 different school members from different California universities have began sleeping of their places of work to help Hassner, who is asking for workers coaching on mitigating antisemitism and Islamophobia and a coverage that might enable heckled audio system to return to campus to complete their shows.
“The final time period was essentially the most tough of my profession,” Hassner, who’s been a professor for 33 years, advised USA As we speak. “All people within the Berkeley management is deeply embarrassed by professors and college students who converse out of line and behave in unprofessional methods.”
Berkeley is one in all about 50 increased training establishments the Training Division has determined to analyze as a consequence of allegations of shared-ancestry discrimination because the battle started. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 requires federally funded establishments to guard college students from discrimination primarily based on race, coloration or nationwide origin.
Though the legislation doesn’t explicitly handle spiritual discrimination, it protects college students of any faith from discrimination, together with harassment, “primarily based on a pupil’s precise or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic traits, or citizenship or residency in a rustic with a dominant faith or distinct spiritual id,” in response to the Training Division.
Tyler Coward, lead counsel of presidency affairs for The Basis for Particular person Rights and Expression, stated whereas Congress has the authority to analyze allegations that increased training establishments are out of compliance with federal anti-discrimination legal guidelines and supply suggestions to the Training Division, lawmakers ought to achieve this thoughtfully.
“They need to be clear in regards to the information and the proof they’ve,” he stated. “They need to even be very cautious to not chill or ask for punishment of constitutionally protected free speech.”
In reviewing the committee’s letter to Berkeley, Coward famous that a number of the examples it cites as proof of unchecked antisemitism are extra clear reduce than others.
“A number of the information on this letter give rise to the chance that the establishment is in violation of federal anti-discrimination legislation,” Coward stated. “That stated, there’s an terrible lot of constitutionally protected speech cited on this letter and I believe that’s an issue.”
Whereas the committee’s letter outlined quite a few incidents that concerned bodily altercations, it additionally cited an Oct. 7 social-media publish from a pro-Palestinian pupil group supporting resistance in Gaza as proof of “a sample of deeply troubling incidents and developments at UC Berkeley.”
“There’s a whole lot of nuance concerned right here,” Coward stated. “However on the subject of speech, a pupil group’s assertion in help of Palestinians falls fairly clearly on the road of protected political expression.”
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