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A Florida JCC canceled a slavery-focused talk with a Jewish author, citing ‘the current political climate’
(JTA) – A South Florida Jewish community center has landed in the middle of the state’s culture wars after canceling a talk by an author whose novel focuses on race in America.
The Mandel JCC in West Palm Beach had booked Jewish author Rachel Beanland to headline a $100-a-plate luncheon in January 2024. The plan was for Beanland to discuss her latest novel, “The House Is On Fire,” a work of historical fiction concerning a deadly Richmond, Virginia, fire in the early 1800s that the city tried to blame on its enslaved population.
But in August, Beanland received an email from the JCC’s arts and culture coordinator asking for more details about her planned presentation and seeming to imply that it would be best to steer clear of some topics.
“Of course, this is Florida and our politics around the Black community, the history of the Civil War, and education in general are… complicated,” the employee wrote. The ellipsis was present in the original message.
For Beanland, the language was shocking. “I don’t think I was wrong to interpret it in this way: It was asking me not to talk about Black people,” she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Beanland wrote back with her publicist copied on the email to say that “any presentation I give is likely to address slavery and the rights of women.” A few weeks later, the JCC employee wrote back.
“After much discussion and debate, we have decided that this book is not the right choice” for the scheduled event, the employee wrote, adding, “Also, our decision is very much affected by the current political climate here in Florida.”
Last week, Beanland made the email exchange public by posting it to Instagram. The JCC issued a public apology on Monday. On Tuesday, the Jewish Book Council, a major organization for Jewish author,s issued a statement criticizing limits on free expression and calling for Beanland to be reinvited.
The episode highlights the new ways in which Jewish authors and even institutions have become embroiled in a broad effort, driven by conservatives, to constrain how race and racism are discussed in public. Florida has been an epicenter of that effort, with Gov. Ron DeSantis urging his state education department to deemphasize race in school instruction and inviting parents to challenge books in school libraries. DeSantis barred public schools from using the national Advanced Placement African-American history curriculum, prompting it to be revised, and the state recently approved new guidelines that historians and activists say whitewash topics such as slavery and racism. DeSantis ignited a firestorm in July when he defended the guidelines and said slavery afforded benefits to some people who experienced it.
The state’s guidelines do not apply to non-public schools and institutions, but the emails from the West Palm Beach JCC employee add to a growing body of evidence that a chilling effect can be felt beyond the letter of the law.
“Obviously, we were dismayed to see this happen,” Naomi Firestone-Teeter, executive director of the Jewish Book Council, told JTA.
The council promotes Jewish books and authors and facilitates a virtual author marketplace to give JCCs and other Jewish institutions the chance to book authors for events. The Mandel JCC had booked Beanland through this network, which, Firestone-Teeter said, made the cancellation particularly disappointing to the council and led to its decision to issue a statement criticizing the JCC.
“When our sites make commitments, it’s our hope that they would honor the commitments that they’re making to our authors,” Firestone-Teeter said.
After Beanland posted the exchange with the JCC employee, who has not been named publicly, the center’s CEO Jesse Rosen spoke to her by phone. Beanland insisted that Rosen issue a public apology, which he did Monday, on the JCC’s Instagram page.
“We are deeply sorry for what our JCC communicated with Rachel, as it does not reflect the values we stand for,” Rosen and board chair Joel Yudenfreund wrote.
They added, “We are deeply committed to promoting diverse voices, opinions, and perspectives,” and said that the opinions about Beanland’s talk came from two members of their volunteer-run book committee, whose views “are completely counter to our values.”
Speaking to JTA, Rosen said the employee in question had been terminated, but for a separate issue. He condemned the employee’s emails and said they did not reflect the JCC’s views.
“The wording that she used is just not who we are, and doesn’t represent the work we do,” he said. “We hope that you look at the 40 years of work we’ve done, including many [on] slavery and civil rights and LGBTQ and other topics — that we’ve never been afraid to have hard conversations. That’s what we do.”
He also said that the email’s wording, in addition to being inappropriate, wasn’t reflective of “the actual reasons” why the center canceled the talk. Instead, he said, the committee had determined that the event would be too “topically similar” to one the previous year that had also focused on slavery — evidence he also cited for why he believes the JCC has “a long history of taking on hard topics, and we have every intention of continuing to.”
Both Beanland and the Jewish Book Council say it should have been clear from the outset that her book discusses slavery. For Beanland, the bigger issue is that the center’s actions are in line with the state’s larger culture war over Black history — and an abdication of a Jewish responsibility.
“I feel like if there’s any community in the United States outside of the African-American community that should understand how essential it is for us not to erase or obscure history, it should be the Jewish community,” she said. “And in light of everything that’s happening in Florida, and the fact that DeSantis has kind of ushered in this wave of legislation that is really trying to make African-American history, Black history, just disappear — it felt really concerning.”
Beanland’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, supported her in a statement.
“Difficult subjects will not go away by pretending the books that address them don’t exist,” the publisher told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “We stand against book banning in all its forms, including preemptive self-censorship.”
Rosen insists, despite the employee’s email, that the JCC’s staff never discussed the political climate when determining their bookings.
“There was just never any conversation that, based on whatever’s happening in the state or the country, that we need to adjust what we do or how we do it,” he said. “It never, ever even entered into the conversation.”
Rosen further insisted that Beanland hadn’t been entirely disinvited from the center, only asked to headline a smaller event instead. But Beanland told JTA she had no interest in doing so. “I was obviously pretty offended” at seeing the event downgraded, she said.
Rosen said he was hoping to have discussions with the Jewish Book Council to determine “her willingness to come to our community still.” He added, “We certainly know we need to apologize, and we’re never trying to not have the conversation.”
In its own statement, the Jewish Book Council criticized the JCC’s initial decision but said it was “heartened by this apology.” It added that it hoped the invitation would be returned. (Jewish Book Council president Elisa Spungen Bildner, who co-signed the statement with Firestone-Teeter and co-president Joy Greenberg, is a board member of JTA parent company 70 Faces Media.)
The prospect of Beanland accepting such an invitation seems unlikely. She told JTA she’s “not interested in ever talking to them again.”
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The post A Florida JCC canceled a slavery-focused talk with a Jewish author, citing ‘the current political climate’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote
Demonstrators holding a “Stand Up for Internationals” rally on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in Berkeley, California, US, April 17, 2025. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect.
The University of California (UC) Faculty Assembly has rejected a proposal to establish passing ethnic studies in high school as a requirement for admission to its 10 taxpayer-funded schools for undergraduates.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the campaign for the measure — defeated overwhelmingly 29-12 with 12 abstaining — was spearheaded by Christine Hong, chair of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department at UC Santa Cruz. Hong believes that Zionism is a “colonial racial project” and that Israel is a “settler colonial state.” Moreover, she holds that anti-Zionism is “part and parcel” of the ethnic studies discipline.
Ethnic studies activists like Hong throughout the University of California system coveted the admissions requirement because it would have facilitated their aligning ethnic studies curricula at the K-12 level with “liberated ethnic studies,” an extreme revolutionary project that was rejected by California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2023. Had the proposal been successful, school officials of both public and private schools would have been forced to comply with their standard of what constitutes ethnic studies to qualify their students for admission to UC.
Being indoctrinated into anti-Zionism and “hating Jews” would essentially have become a prerequisite for becoming a UC student had the Faculty Assembly approved the measure, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner on Friday. AMCHA Initiative first raised the alarm about the proposal in 2023, calling it “a deeply frightening prospect.”
“Ethnic studies never intended to be like any other discipline or subject. It was always intended to be a political project for fomenting revolution according to the dictates of however the activists behind the subject defined it,” Rossman-Benjamin explained. “And anti-Zionism has been at the core of the field, and this became especially clear after Oct. 7. Most of the anti-Zionist mania on campuses that day — the support for the encampments, the Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters — it was a project of Ethnic Studies. At UC Santa Cruz, 60 percent of Faculty for Justice in Palestine members were pulled from the ethnic studies department.”
Founded in the 1960s to provide an alternative curriculum for beneficiaries of racial preferences whose retention rates lagged behind traditional college students, ethnic studies is based on anti-capitalist, anti-liberal, and anti-Western ideologies found in the writings of, among others, Franz Fanon, Huey Newton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Karl Marx. Its principal ideological target in the 20th century was the remains of European imperialism in Africa and the Middle East, but overtime it identified new “systems of oppression,” most notably the emergent superpower that was the US after World War II and the nation that became its closest ally in the Middle East: Israel.
UC Santa Cruz’s Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) department is a case study in how the ideology leads inexorably to anti-Zionist antisemitism, AMCHA Initiative argued in a 2024 study.
Following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, CRES issued a statement rationalizing the terrorist group’s atrocities as political resistance. Additionally, the department days later participated in a “Call for a Global General Strike,” refusing to work because Israel mounted a military response to Hamas’s atrocities — an action CRES called “Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.” Later, the department held an event titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our [sic] Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” in which professors and teaching assistants were trained in how to persuade students that Zionism is a racist and genocidal endeavor.
Imposing such noxious views on all California students would have been catastrophic, Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner.
“The goal of admissions requirements is to make sure that students are adequately prepared for college,” she noted. “Their goal was to use their power to force students to take the kind of Critical Ethnic Studies that is taught at the university, with the goal of revolutionizing society. The idea should have been dead on arrival, being rejected on the grounds that there is no evidence that it is a worthwhile subject that should be required for admission to the University of California.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post University of California Rejects Ethnic Studies Admissions Requirement in Faculty Assembly Vote first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations
Paraguayan President Santiago Peña praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem on Dec. 12, 2024. Photo: The Western Wall Heritage Foundation
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar praised Paraguay’s decision to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organization, and to broaden the country’s previous designation to include all factions of Hamas and Hezbollah.
The top Israeli diplomat congratulated the South American country and described President Santiago Peña’s decision as a “landmark move” in addressing security challenges and fostering international peace.
“Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens regional stability and global peace,” Sa’ar wrote in a post on X. “More countries should follow suit and join the fight against Iranian aggression and terrorism.”
I commend Paraguay and @SantiPenap for the landmark decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations.
Iran is the world’s leading exporter of terrorism and extremism, and together with its terror proxies, it threatens… https://t.co/OzWACbWcno— Gideon Sa’ar | גדעון סער (@gidonsaar) April 24, 2025
On Thursday, Peña issued an executive order designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization “for its systematic violations of peace, human rights, and the security of the international community.”
The executive order also expanded Paraguay’s 2019 proscription of the armed wings of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist group in Lebanon, to encompass the entirety of both organizations, including their political wings.
“With this decision, Paraguay reaffirms its unwavering commitment to peace, international security, and the unconditional respect for human rights, solidifying its position within the international community as a country firmly opposed to all forms of terrorism and strengthening its relations with allied nations in this fight,” Peña wrote in a post on X, emphasizing the country’s strategic relationship with the United States and Israel.
Iran is the chief international backer of Hamas and Hezbollah, providing the Islamist terror groups with weapons, funding, and training. According to media reports based on documents seized by the Israeli military in Gaza last year, Iran had been informed about Hamas’s plan to launch the Oct. 7 attack months in advance.
Last year, Peña reopened Paraguay’s embassy in Jerusalem, making it the sixth nation — after the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo, and Papua New Guinea — to establish its embassy in the Israeli capital. During the same visit, he condemned the Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, calling the perpetrators “criminals” in a speech at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.
The Trump administration also praised Paraguay’s decision to officially label the IRGC as a terrorist organization, describing it as a major blow to Iran’s terror network in the Western Hemisphere.
“Iran remains the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world and has financed and directed numerous terrorist attacks and activities globally, through its IRGC-Qods Force and proxies such as Hezbollah and Hamas,” US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.
The US official said Paraguay’s action will help disrupt Iran’s ability to finance terrorism and operate in Latin America — particularly in the Tri-Border Area, where Paraguay borders Argentina and Brazil, a region long regarded as a financial hub for Hezbollah-linked operatives.
“The important steps Paraguay has taken will help cut off the ability of the Iranian regime and its proxies to plot terrorist attacks and raise money for its malignant and destabilizing activity,” the statement read.
“The United States will continue to work with partners such as Paraguay to confront global security threats,” Bruce added. “We call on all countries to hold the Iranian regime accountable and prevent its operatives, recruiters, financiers, and proxies from operating in their territories.”
During his first administration, Trump designated the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), citing the Iranian regime’s use of the IRGC to “engage in terrorist activities since its inception 40 years ago.”
At the time, Trump said this designation “recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a state sponsor of terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft.”
“The IRGC is the Iranian government’s primary means of directing and implementing its global terrorist campaign,” he continued.
The post Israeli FM Praises Paraguay Decision to Label Iran’s IRGC, Proxies Hamas and Hezbollah as Terrorist Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’
Yale University students at the corner of Grove and College Streets in New Haven, Connecticut, U.S., April 22, 2024. Photo: Melanie Stengel via Reuters Connect.
As darkness fell over Yale University on Wednesday evening, Jewish students faced intimidation that echoed history’s darkest chapters. The following day, as the sun rose on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the world solemnly reflected on the devastating consequences of unchecked hatred.
Yet, disturbingly, at Yale, the shadows of that same hatred linger once again.
For several nights now, radical anti-Israel activists, primarily organized by “Yalies for Palestine,” an anti-Israel hate group, have targeted Jewish students at Yale — in many cases, based solely on their outwardly Jewish appearance.
On Wednesday, protestors blocked walkways, physically intimidated Jewish students, and hurled bottles and sprayed liquids at them — all while campus police stood by and did nothing.
One Jewish student described her chilling encounter with the protesters the night before, on Tuesday: “When I tried to get through, they blocked me, ignored my requests to pass, and handed out masks to those obstructing me. Yale security told me they couldn’t help.”
The immediate trigger for this harassment is the invitation extended by Shabtai, a Yale Jewish society, to Itamar Ben-Gvir, an Israeli government minister. Whether one supports or opposes Ben-Gvir’s politics is beside the point. Notably, Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister, was also protested and disrupted during a separate campus event in February, underscoring a broader trend of hostility toward Israeli speakers regardless of their political affiliation.
These events signal more than isolated protests; they constitute a redux of hatred that historically escalates when met with institutional silence or indifference.
Yale’s administration, under President Maurie McInnis and Dean Pericles Lewis, has failed to adequately respond. Though Yale revoked official recognition from Yalies for Palestine, its tepid actions have not halted the dangerous slide toward overt hostility. The silence — from both the university and the Slifka Center, Yale’s center for Jewish life — is deafening.
This isn’t the first troubling instance at Yale. A year ago, similar demonstrators disrupted campus life with vitriolic anti-Israel rhetoric, silencing dialogue and fostering an atmosphere hostile to Jewish students.
Earlier this year, CAMERA on Campus documented Yale’s Slifka Center pressuring students to erase evidence of anti-Jewish harassment during a pro-Israel event, effectively whitewashing antisemitism and emboldening extremists.
As CAMERA’s Ricki Hollander has powerfully documented, the rhetoric of anti-Zionism today often revives the antisemitic patterns of the past, particularly those propagated by the Nazi regime in the 1930s. These tactics, she explains, echo Nazi-era propaganda that portrayed Jews as subhuman, sinister, and uniquely malevolent — a narrative used to justify marginalization and, ultimately, genocide.
These dynamics — scapegoating, dehumanizing, and ostracizing Jews under the guise of “anti-Zionism” — are not relics of history. They are alive and active across elite American campuses. And now, unmistakably, they have taken root at Yale.
McInnis must break the silence and condemn the open harassment and assault of Jewish students. She must also hold the perpetrators of the heinous actions and those responsible for the safety of students accountable for their inaction.
This week has revealed a grave failure of moral and institutional duty on many fronts. When law enforcement stands by as Jewish students face intimidation and assault, it sends a chilling message: their safety matters less.
We must demand a full investigation and real accountability. Condemnations of antisemitism are not enough. Policies must be changed to ensure Jewish students and organizations can freely exercise their right to free expression without being subject to harassment and assault. Anything less would betray Yale’s stated values — and the promise of “never again.”
Douglas Sandoval is the Managing Director for CAMERA on Campus.
The post Yale’s Silence Is Allowing Blatant Campus Antisemitism — and Betraying the Promise of ‘Never Again’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.