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U of Minnesota, Temple, Brown among latest federal campus antisemitism investigations
(JTA) – Complaints about anti-Israel protests at Temple and Brown filed by a Jewish right-wing activist who attends neither university are among the latest round of antisemitism investigations opened by the U.S. Department of Education.
The department’s civil rights office is also looking into a series of University of Minnesota faculty statements condemning Israel, following a complaint by a prominent Republican on the law school faculty.
In addition, as of this week the civil rights office has opened investigations at the two largest Bay Area public school districts, where some families have cited antisemitism concerns in applying to transfer out. And it is scrutinizing a private college where a Jewish anti-Zionist professor has publicly supported Hamas.
The investigations are among a new batch announced Wednesday as the department hastens to use its leverage to get universities and school districts to tackle antisemitism on their campuses.
With this latest round, the department’s Office of Civil Rights has now opened more than 50 Title VI “shared ancestry” investigations in the months since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel triggered a wave of campus anti-Israel activism. The department does not comment on its ongoing investigations, which range from the most prestigious Ivy League schools to tiny rural K-12 districts, but says that opening a probe does not mean the case necessarily has merit.
“I think it’s about time,” Richard Painter, a law professor at the University of Minnesota who filed the antisemitism complaint that triggered the school’s Title VI investigation, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “Universities all over America are dealing with this.”
Painter, a former George W. Bush administration official, filed his complaint in December alongside Michael Hsu, a former regent; the department opened its investigation Tuesday. The complaint alleges that the university should have done more to rebut three different liberal-arts faculty groups that published statements condemning Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks.
In a statement, the university said, “The University stands firmly in support of speech and actions that provide an atmosphere of mutual respect, free from any form of prejudice and intolerance, as our Board of Regents policies state.”
Previously, upon news of Painter and Hsu’s initial Title VI filing, the school had told local media, “The letter’s broad characterizations of the University are inaccurate and are fundamentally contrary to our mission and values.”
One such faculty statement, by members of the department of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies, reads in part, “We assert that Israel’s response is not self-defense but the continuation of a genocidal war against Gaza and against Palestinian freedom, self-determination, and life.”
This statement was especially galling, Painter felt, because a department with a focus on women, gender and sexuality didn’t mention the sexual assaults committed by Hamas during its attacks. His efforts to have the college’s dean intervene have been unsuccessful, he said. (The other statements he objected to came from professors in the American Indian studies and Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature departments.)
“Henry Ford was putting this kind of crap in newspapers back in the ’30s,” Painter said, referring to the auto mogul’s antisemitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent.
Neither Painter nor Hsu are Jewish, and Hsu, while he was a regent in 2019, opposed university efforts to rename campus buildings named after antisemites. (Painter’s wife Karen, who is not Jewish, is an academic who studies the antisemitism of Nazi-era music.) But Painter said he still sees the fight against campus antisemitism as one he can lead.
“This is a critical issue not just for the Jewish community, but for our democracy,” he said. And he believes his efforts at the university have already borne fruit: After a candidate to lead the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion office recently hedged in an interview on whether Hamas had assaulted Israeli women during its attack, he and other like-minded critics mobilized against the potential hire. Following the resulting bad press, the person is no longer a candidate for the job.
“We did win,” Painter said about the DEI fight. “That went all over.”
Two other new antisemitism investigations, at Temple University and Brown University, both stem from one complainant: Zachary Marschall, a professor at the University of Kentucky and editor-in-chief of the right-wing college advocacy site Campus Reform.
Marschall is Jewish but has no connection to either school. He told JTA he independently filed those complaints, and 18 others, after interviewing “Jewish and pro-Israel students across the country who are too afraid to speak out.”
On Campus Reform, he published partial copies of letters from the Department of Education confirming that it had opened the investigations based on his complaints; a statement from a Brown representative also noted that the investigation stemmed “from beyond Brown’s campus” and named Marschall’s publication as its source.
Marschall said his Temple complaint was related to recent reports of pro-Palestinian protesters in Philadelphia targeting an Israeli-owned falafel shop, as well as “From the river to the sea” chants at rallies by the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. The department opened its Temple investigation on Tuesday.
In a statement about the investigation, a Temple spokesperson said, “Temple University unequivocally condemns hate and discrimination against any person and will always strive to ensure that all of our students, faculty, and staff feel welcomed and safe in our community and throughout our campus.”
Marschall’s Brown complaint was also tied to that university’s SJP chapter, which released a statement shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks holding “the Israeli regime and its allies unequivocally responsible for all suffering and loss of life, Palestinian or Israeli.” His complaint also quotes from campus vigils held by the chapter in the days after the attacks, at which students reportedly chanted “Glory to our martyrs.” The department opened its Brown investigation Jan. 9; universities elsewhere have banned or suspended their SJP chapters since the war began.
Information on the reasons for the other new Title VI investigations was not immediately available, but several of the schools in question have made headlines recently for antisemitism-related reasons.
Two large Bay Area public school districts, San Francisco Unified School District and Oakland Unified School District, are the sites of two of the remaining investigations. Oakland’s was opened on Tuesday and San Francisco’s was opened on Jan. 12.
Both districts have experienced a rash of controversy over Israel in recent months: Jewish parents in Oakland have begun pulling their students out of public schools after incidents including the local teachers union voting on a measure calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel, while San Francisco’s district recently reviewed a contract with a local anti-Zionist group that had organized a walkout for Palestinians and another protest.
The San Francisco teachers union also passed a resolution in November calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, which prompted the head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council to label the union “bigoted.”
In response to queries, a representative for Oakland’s district said it does not comment on pending legal matters but added, “OUSD is a sanctuary district, inside Oakland, a sanctuary city, inside California, a sanctuary state, which means we support all students, families and staff, regardless of religion, heritage, ethnicity, where they came from, or how they got here. We protect all students, and harassment of anyone is never acceptable.
“In this time of heightened tensions because of what’s happening in the Middle East, we are regularly communicating to our community, reminding them of our core values of love and support, so it should be clear that everyone is welcome and valued in our schools,” the statement continued.
Representatives for the San Francisco district and both teachers unions did not return requests for comment.
In response to a query about an investigation at Ohio State University opened Tuesday, a spokesperson for the school did not say what the investigation concerned. “Ohio State has never – and will never – tolerate discrimination or harassment of anyone based on their religious beliefs, nationality or identity,” the spokesperson wrote.
OSU had recently been the site of two reported incidents at which Jewish students and buildings were targeted: one in which two Jewish students were punched in the face after a “verbal altercation” outside a bar, and another in which trespassers to the campus Hillel stole Israeli flags and yelled insults at staff. Although the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs, which is active in campus antisemitism matters, had sent a stern letter to university leadership the same day the investigation opened, a representative for the group told JTA it was a “crazy coincidence” and that it wasn’t behind the investigation.
Meanwhile, Jewish alumni at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, told JTA that multiple Title VI antisemitism complaints had been filed against the school in recent weeks. More than 7,700 people have signed an online petition urging administrators to remove a Jewish anti-Zionist anthropology professor who has published opinion pieces supporting Hamas and questioning whether it can be blamed for the violence on Oct. 7. The Department of Education opened an investigation into the college on Tuesday, but the specific trigger for the investigation could not be verified.
In a statement, a Muhlenberg spokesperson said, “We do not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia or any other form of harassment, bigotry or abuse nor any incitement to violence or calls for genocide. If/when there are accusations of conduct violations, these are thoroughly investigated with appropriate actions taken based on the findings.”
Finally, the Department of Education announced a new investigation at the University of Illinois Chicago on Jan. 10, which it listed as the second such investigation at the university in the past month. The first concerned a complaint brought by Palestine Legal, a pro-Palestinian legal group that alleged the university had discriminated against Arab and Palestinian students by kicking them out of a 2021 webinar about the Israeli healthcare system.
But it was possible the second investigation might in fact be a correction of the first investigation. A spokesperson for Palestine Legal told JTA that the education department told the organization on the same day that it had revised the discrimination claim in its initial investigation from “shared Muslim ancestry” to “shared Palestinian ancestry,” as one of the complainants is Christian. UIC representatives and the Department of Education did not return requests for comment.
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The post U of Minnesota, Temple, Brown among latest federal campus antisemitism investigations appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
The post Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding
Hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, primarily university students, rally at Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square on Oct. 28, 2023. Photo by Sayed Najafizada/NurPhoto
As I sat in an anthropology lecture at the University of British Columbia, we debated the question: What is a unifying national identity for Canadians? In response, I said, “Our national identity is that we aren’t Americans; our identity is contrasted against American identities, for good or for bad.”
Some students laughed, and my professor nodded approvingly. How I wish we could laugh about our lack of Canadian identity today, as we watch university student encampments support the repressive tyrannical terrorist regime Hamas, the antithesis of democracy.
I am not Jewish, but I have watched in awe as the Israel Defense Forces fights to defend the Jewish nation from Hamas, and free the remaining hostages. The parliamentary democracy that governs Israel acts as a beacon of light in the Middle East. The strong national identity that interlocks the state and the people propels the continued hostage rescue operations.
It is my greatest hope that Canada, my country, would feel as strongly in their national responsibility to rescue me, my family, or fellow Canadians if we were ever taken hostage, or if Canada was invaded by a terrorist group. However, I fear that the national Canadian identity would not be strong enough to withstand the international pressure that Israel has withstood to continue the hostage rescue missions.
Across Canada, university students are assuming pro-Hamas identities — many after reading ill-informed or false Instagram posts. In the name of social justice, they are aligning with a cause that approves the intentional targeting of Jewish civilians, calls for the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state, and ignores the fact that Israel is waging one of the lowest civilian-to-combatant casualty wars in the history of armed conflict.
Here in Canada we, as the Gen Z’ers, don’t have a strong national identity. We haven’t grown up with a strong appreciation for our democracy, military, or a high respect for our veterans. Many of us under the age of 30 do not know the words to “O’Canada.” We have taken for granted the freedom that is our democratic right in Canada. I hypothesize that so many of our younger generations have fallen for terrorist propaganda because we lack rootedness in a national backbone.
There is nothing wrong with advocating for civilians in war zones. It’s exactly because of our democratic freedoms that we can have differing dialogues around war. But what is taking place on campuses is not pro-peace, pro-innocent civilians, pro-hostage release, or pro-democratic values.
These university encampments are anti-peace and they promote hate, propaganda, and terrorism. Before our eyes, since the Oct. 7th massacre carried out by Hamas, many university students have sided with the terrorist organization.
I am nearly infuriated to the point of tears most days, in what feels like a never-ending battle of terrorist propaganda being shared by my leftist friends. I have always been a politically center-left person, but as the left moves further to the extremist side, I feel the need to call this extremism out.
As a non-Jewish Canadian university student, I have had enough of this childish behavior. If we want to be treated like adults, we need to act like them. As silly as that sounds, my peers are using their democratic rights to advocate for a terrorist group. A terrorist group who would kill us if given the chance.
Without a strong national backbone, we have lost ourselves to incompetent “social justice” causes that cease to make rational or logical sense. Canadian democratic values are about peace, respect, and diversity. Hamas is a radical Islamist military movement that does not believe in equal rights for men and women, let alone LGBTQ+ individuals. It does not make democratic sense to advocate for a terrorist group who are fanatical Islamic extremists.
Intense false realities have been created by the extreme left that fantasize and romanticize terrorists as resistance fighters — a desperate attempt to create a false narrative that implicates Israel as the terrorist organization. Instead of calling for accountability and disbandment of Hamas, the blame has been unfairly placed on Israel. These dangerous terrorist-sympathizing ideologies need to be met with harsh repercussions, as the democratic values of future adult Canadians rest in the balance.
Many of us on the left have lived in fear of falling victim to cancel culture, and have instead allowed the extremism on the left to grow. The hypocrisy and privilege of these protestors have stripped them of their credibility for a social justice movement.
Putting up signs stating “F*** KKKANANDA” at the University of British Columbia, painting “F*** Quebec” in Montreal on the face of a new Holocaust museum poster, and chanting “Death to America” on campuses, is life or death for Western democratic values.
The (false) colonial narrative about Israel has become dizzyingly amplified on campuses, commonly stating that Israel is a colonizer of the land and the Palestinians are the oppressed. Instead, the ancestral and Indigenous right of Jewish return is the ultimate act of decolonization.
The intense leftist approach to teaching makes race the center of every issue, causing students to view indigeneity and colonization in simplified forms without historical context. I am an Arts student who has always been politically and socially left, and an active feminist.
However, I have been inundated with intense frameworks of colonialism, racism, and intersectionality since beginning my undergraduate studies — and these claims are not always based in historical reality.
I never thought I would write these words, but I am dismayed by how my leftist peers are acting, and it is becoming more extreme every day. They are acting like puppets for terrorism, amplifying propaganda and disinformation about what occurred on Oct 7th.
I do not want to live in a society that denies rape, denies accountability, and denies basic human rights to Israelis and Jewish people. I love that my friends in the LGBTQIA2S+ community get to live freely here in Canada and that my friends who choose to receive an abortion for personal or life-saving reasons, can do so. Also, as a woman, I can live equally in a society that promotes my human rights. None of these rights are awarded by Hamas in the society they govern. With the privileged position of having access to basic human rights, I am thankful to call myself a Canadian citizen.
If we don’t fight for our Canadian democratic values, we will be flattened by external forces. It is time to build and cultivate a strong national backbone that holds us accountable for upholding our country. Maybe we will one day be able to look back with humor on this dark period in academic spaces that have allowed this ideology to foster. Until then, we must fight for our country to remain the “True North, strong and free.” If we stand for nothing, we will fall for everything.
As a Gen-Z Canadian, I refuse to allow my peers to degrade our freedoms by romanticizing terrorism.
Zara Nybo is a student at the University of British Columbia, and a Campus Media Fellow with HonestReporting Canada and Allied Voices for Israel.
The post Weak National Canadian Identity Is Leading to Democratic Values Backsliding first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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University of Pennsylvania Suspends Pro-Hamas Rioters for Full Semester, Activist Group Says
Pro-Hamas encampment at University of Pennsylvania on May 5, 2024. Photo: Robyn Stevens Brody via Reuters Connect
The University of Pennsylvania has suspended four pro-Hamas protesters who participated in illegally occupying the campus, according to an activist group that helped organize the demonstration.
“The [university’s] administration has continued to endorse Zionist ideology and bent to the will of their donors in order to prioritize their profit and image. In their most recent attempt to stifle pro-Palestinian speech, they have suspended four of their own students,” a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) splinter group — Freedom School for Palestine — wrote on Instagram.
“It is clear that Penn is not an institution of education but a corporate power which serves to oil the gears of the global war machine (and then beat, jail, and suspend those who protest this) [sic],” the post continued, adding that the students were “placed on semester-long or year-long suspensions.”
Freedom School for Palestine — which helped organize a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” in which pro-Hamas students lived for weeks and refused to leave unless administrators agreed to boycott and divest from Israel — also implored the public to flood the administration’s office with messages demanding revocations of the suspensions, claiming that the students have been “robbed of their income, health insurance, and access to education.”
The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) commented on the report on Wednesday.
“Penn continues to review student conduct cases in connection with campus demonstrations this spring,” it said in a statement shared with The Algemeiner. “The university affords due process to all students in accordance with our policies and recommends sanctions as appropriate on a case-by-case basis.”
Penn’s handing down disciplinary sanctions came nearly two months after it finally cleared protesters from school property with the help of the Philadelphia Police Department. The university had attempted to negotiate with the protesters, but its patience wore thin amid their escalating conduct. After hours of discussions failed to yield a settlement acceptable to both sides, interim president Larry Jameson publicly called the protesters a safety hazard while noting that they had committed acts of vandalism, including defacing a statute of Benjamin Franklin, one of the United States’ Founding Fathers, and “The Button,” a sculpture built in the early 1980s.
In addition to divestment from Israel, the demonstration’s leaders demanded that the university vacate a suspension of Penn Students Against the Occupation of Palestine, which the school shut down after multiple rules violations. Frustrated with the university’s refusing to grant them any concessions, masses of new people joined the encampment, expanding it over a larger area of school property and forcing the university to request additional security on campus.
“The protesters refused repeatedly to disband the encampment, to produce identification, to stop threatening, loud, and discriminatory speech and behavior, and to comply with instructions from Penn administrators and Public Safety,” Jameson said after the tents were dismantled. “Instead, they called for others to join them in escalating their disruptions and expanding their encampment, necessitating that we take action to protect the safety and rights of everyone in our community.”
Antisemitism fueled by anti-Zionism exploded at the university long before the “encampment” was set up, an action which was precipitated by Israel’s military response to Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. In September, it hosted “The Palestine Writes Literature Festival,” which included speakers such as Palestinian researcher Salman Abu Sitta, who once promoted antisemitic tropes, saying in an interview, “Jews were hated in Europe because they played a role in the destruction of the economy in some of the countries, so they would hate them.” Another controversial figure invited to the event was former Pink Floyd vocalist Roger Waters, whose long record of anti-Jewish snipes was the subject of a documentary released last year.
One day before the event took place, an unidentified male walked into the university’s Hillel building behind a staffer and shouted “F—k the Jews” and “Jesus Christ is king!” before overturning tables, podium stands, and chairs, according to students and school officials who spoke with The Algemeiner. Days earlier, just before the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, a swastika was graffitied in the basement of the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design.
Former Penn president Elizabeth Magill, who refused to stop the university from hosting the festival, resigned from her post in December, ending a 17-month tenure marked by controversy over what critics described as an insufficient response to surging antisemitism on campus.
The University of Pennsylvania will continue to deal with the events of this academic year for some time. Last month, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging a US congressional investigation of antisemitism there, which the House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched after Magill failed to provide acceptable answers about her handling of the problem during a hearing in December. The ruling cleared the way for Congress to continue an inquiry that could complicate Penn’s attempts to repair a perception that it coddled antisemites because they claimed to be partisans of the progressive left.
As part of its inquiry, the committee, led by US Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), subpoenaed the university for a trove of documents, including reports and correspondence, which would provide a window into how administrators discussed antisemitism on campus.
Such documents have already proved injurious to Columbia University, which according to reports by The Washington Free Beacon, derided Jewish students’ concerns about rising antisemitism, calling them “privileged” and “wealthy.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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