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Anti-Zionist Faculty at UC Santa Cruz Defy the Law and Betray Jewish Students
McHenry Library at University of California, Santa Cruz. Photo: Jay Miller/Wikimedia Commons
Harvard University, responding to two anti-discrimination lawsuits threatening its Federal funding, recently agreed to acknowledge on its official website, “For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Conduct that would violate the Non-Discrimination Policy if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the policy if directed toward Zionists.”
The same day that Harvard’s remarkable agreement was announced, the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) — which was a party to a recent resolution agreement following a Federal investigation into charges that its faculty created a hostile environment for Jewish students – made a different kind of announcement, which thumbed its nose at the US government and doubled down on condoning faculty antisemitism.
Prominently displayed on UCSC’s campus-wide Events page was an announcement for an Education Department talk subtitled, “Centering an Anti-Zionist Commitment in (Early Childhood) Teacher Education,” whose speaker would explore “why and how it is important to center Palestine and an anti-Zionist commitment within teacher education.”
The phrase “anti-Zionist commitment” made it crystal clear that the speaker would not be advocating for teaching children how to critique the policies of a sovereign state. Rather, it seemed to imply that she would be arguing for instilling in children as young as pre-school age a visceral hatred for Israel, which happens to be home to half of world Jewry and central to the identity of the vast majority of Jews on the planet.
The only thing missing from UCSC’s announcement of this event were the words “Jews not welcome here” – though that message came through loud and clear.
Tellingly, this talk was also promoted on the website of UCSC’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter, a group that shares the speaker’s “anti-Zionist commitment” and passion for expressing that commitment in educational spaces. It’s worth noting that more than 40% of the Education Department’s core faculty have publicly allied themselves with this group, which was established a few weeks after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre, mutilation, rape, and kidnapping of more than 1,400 Israeli civilians.
UCSC’s FJP is one of more than 160 chapters of the FJP National Network, a project of the US arm of the Hamas-linked Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. Established as the academic brigade of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, FJP is tasked with promoting an academic boycott of Israel, or academic BDS, urging faculty to boycott their school’s Israel-related programming, agreements, or projects, with the ultimate goal of eliminating Zionism and Zionists from academia.
Since its founding, UCSC FJP has diligently executed its marching orders, engaging in academic BDS-compliant behavior that harms their own students, especially those who are Jewish, including by: calling on fellow faculty members to cancel classes “in solidarity with Palestine” and praising graduate instructors for withholding students’ final grades to blackmail the university into boycotting Israel; co-authoring statements demanding the school cut all ties with Israeli universities, including popular study abroad programs, and boycott Jewish campus organizations such as Hillel; and rallying students and faculty to participate in a “March Against Zionism” intended to disrupt a student-organized “Jewish Unity Walk,” by posting to the FJP Instagram page: “UCSC… Let’s make it clear — zionism is not welcome on our campus”.
The school’s Education Department is not the only academic unit with a significant number of faculty openly expressing an “anti-Zionist commitment.” Nearly half of the UCSC Anthropology Department’s core faculty are affiliated with FJP or have signed a public statement in support of academic BDS, as has one-quarter of the Literature Department.
But the true prize goes to the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department (CRES), 85% of whose core faculty are either members of FJP, have expressed public support for academic BDS, or both.
Several CRES professors brazenly display their “anti-Zionist commitment” on their office doors, visually accosting the unsuspecting Jewish passer-by with a bevy of posters and stickers expressing deep animus towards the Jewish State and, presumably, Jews who identify with it. They contain images that speak volumes: a rifle-toting keffiyeh-clad woman; an enormous fist over the words Free Gaza; and a map of Israel draped entirely in a keffiyeh next to the words “Free Palestine”.
Yet even more disturbing than faculty using their positions to express their “anti-Zionist commitment” are whole departments engaging in such behavior, with CRES again leading the pack.
In 2021, CRES issued a statement pledging departmental allegiance to “the struggle for Palestinian liberation” and bringing academic BDS into their teaching and research. CRES also helped launch and closely collaborated with the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism (ICSZ), an antisemitic organization dedicated to producing pseudo-scholarship opposing Zionism and the existence of the Jewish State.
Soon after the October 7 Hamas attack, CRES issued a statement blaming Israel for Hamas’ atrocities, shut down its department to protest Israel’s defensive actions, and urged students to boycott their classes. The department also held a teach-in promising to help graduate teaching assistants “contextualize the unfolding genocide in Gaza” in their classrooms, promoted the student protest “Shut it Down for Palestine,” that closed off all access to the university for several hours, and prominently advertised explicitly anti-Zionist statements.
CRES also acted as the de-facto sponsor of FJP, publicizing an invitation for faculty to join the newly established chapter, which remained on the CRES homepage for the rest of the academic year and beyond.
This academic year, despite efforts by the UC Regents to curb departmental abuse, CRES has continued to express its “anti-Zionist commitment” with impunity. The department’s Fall 2024 newsletter opened with a message from the FJP-affiliated academic BDS-supporting CRES chair, who wrote, “As we return from summer, I want to linger on the joyful note we ended last academic year after feeling uplifted by the solidarity, vision, and conviction of our students and faculty fighting to free Palestine from a globally supported genocide.”
In addition to hosting a series of anti-Zionist events and offering a new course on “Palestine” taught by a professor who has endorsed the call to bring academic BDS into her classroom, this year CRES continued its unabashed promotion of anti-Zionist activism, including by advertising FJP’s “Walk Out for Palestine” event urging “No School, No Work,” which grotesquely took place on the one-year anniversary of the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, and inviting students to join SJP and participate in their “Student Intifada.”
Unfortunately, Jewish students at UCSC who identify with Israel don’t only have to worry about the professors who teach them, but also those serving as administrators tasked with providing academic and social support – many of whom have all endorsed an academic boycott whose goal is to purge Zionism and Zionists from campus life.
An even graver threat to Jewish students is the UCSC Academic Senate. Tasked with reining in faculty abuse, it has instead defended and amplified it. An FJP-authored resolution intended to shield anti-Zionist faculty from accountability was overwhelmingly passed by the Senate. Perhaps the fact that one of its five officers and 20% of its Executive Committee have either expressed support for academic BDS, affiliate with FJP, or both, has something to do with the Academic Senate’s abdication of a crucial shared governance responsibility.
Given the pervasiveness of anti-Zionist expression among faculty at UCSC, it’s hardly surprising that UCSC scores a “5 – Extreme” on AMCHA Initiative’s new Anti-Zionist Faculty Barometer, ranking 4th highest out of 730 schools. Without significant intervention and institutional fortitude, the problem will only get worse. But what can be done?
First and foremost, meaningful steps must be taken to ban the implementation of academic BDS and its promotion by UCSC faculty. A terrorist-linked boycott that shuts down the academic freedom and educational opportunities of students and faculty and incites virulent antisemitism has no place on a college campus.
Next, the administration must acknowledge that FJP, the faculty group expressly established to implement academic BDS on U.S. campuses, must be prohibited from operating on campus, receiving university funds or recognition, or partnering with any official university office, department, or registered student organization.
Individual professors who abuse their positions to express their “anti-Zionist commitment” should be sanctioned up to and including dismissal. Such egregiously unprofessional behavior would never be tolerated in any other kind of workplace and should certainly not be tolerated at a publicly-funded university. While faculty are free to engage in political advocacy and activism on their own time and dime, guaranteeing they will not bring their political commitments onto campus and into their classrooms or administrative offices should be a requirement of continued employment at the University.
Departments that believe working towards dismantling the Jewish state is part of their core disciplinary mission should themselves be dismantled.
An Academic Senate that screams loudly to protect the academic freedom of anti-Zionist faculty but loses its voice entirely when it comes to prosecuting those same faculty members’ malpractice and abuse has forfeited the privilege of shared governance, and should not be allowed to have a say in the operation of the University.
UCSC officials who are unwilling or unable to rein in out-of-control anti-Zionist faculty and departmental abuse and ensure that the campus is in compliance with the law should be replaced.
And finally, if UCSC continues to allow faculty antisemitism to flourish, the new administration in Washington should make good on its threat, backed by law, to remove the school’s Federal funding.
Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is the director of AMCHA Initiative, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to combating antisemitism at colleges and universities in the United States. She was a faculty member at the University of California for 20 years.
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Jewish Woman Wearing Israeli Flag Attacked in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark. Photo: Furya via Wikimedia Commons.
A Jewish woman wearing an Israeli flag was almost “lynched” in an antisemitic attack in Copenhagen, Denmark, last week.
According to the Danish newspaper BT, the 39-year-old woman was riding her scooter through the Christiania neighborhood in the Danish capital on Friday night, wearing an Israeli flag, when a man dressed in black approached her and asked her if she was Jewish.
After the victim said yes, the assailant reportedly asked, “Are you proud of that?” and then called her a “child murderer,” she told BT.
While she was calling the police, another man appeared and told her to throw away her Israeli flag.
“Before I could even get answers from the police, things escalated further,” the woman said. “Suddenly, a group of men rushed towards me.”
“A strong man with a Middle Eastern appearance shouted at me to take off the flag immediately,” she recalled.
When she refused to throw away her flag, the group of men started tearing it apart. According to her testimony, there were at least 50 bystanders who watched the attack without intervening.
“When I screamed for help, one of the men smiled mockingly and said, ‘Nobody will help you here.’ Then he grabbed me by the throat and started choking me with his hands,” the woman recounted.
“One of them pulled the flag over my head so I couldn’t see what was happening. I kept shouting for help, but no one intervened,” she continued. “Then they started dragging me off the asphalt.”
The woman also said one of the assailants cut off her jacket with a knife. When she tried to call the police again, the group of men allegedly began taunting her and calling her a “Jewish whore.”
“When I finally got through to the police, the policeman didn’t ask if I was OK,” she said. “Instead, he asked me why I was carrying an Israeli flag in an area like Christiania. I felt completely abandoned.”
“I had to beg and convince him that I was in extreme danger,” she continued. “Finally, he agreed to send two female officers.”
Local police confirmed they have opened an investigation into the antisemitic attack after receiving a report about the incident.
According to BT, the victim was left with scratches and bruises on her body after being discharged from the hospital.
In an interview with Israel Hayom, the woman said she usually displays her Jewishness, hanging an Israeli flag on her balcony and wearing her Star of David at work as a nurse.
“The patients notice it immediately; sometimes I see their faces contort. But this is my identity, and I don’t intend to hide it,” she said.
However, the woman recently noticed a much more hostile reaction to her displays of Jewishness in her daily routine.
“People look at me differently,” she told Israel Hayom. “A week ago, someone called me a ‘Zionist s–t.’ Others refused to talk to me because I’m Jewish. I could live with that — as long as it didn’t turn into physical violence.”
She said this was her first experience of such violence.
“They broke my phone and tried to tear up the flag. I almost got lynched,” she recalled. “I was afraid they would burn it, so I held on to it with all my strength.”
“They shouted ‘Free Palestine’ at me … It was so humiliating.”
Mikkel Bjørn, a member of the Danish Parliament for the Danish People’s Party, condemned the attack in a post on X.
“A Jewish woman is brutally attacked in Christiania by a group of men with a Middle Eastern background. Spit on, called a ‘child murderer,’ choked and dragged along the ground while 50 people watched and laughed. No one helps. Is this the import of hatred we want to accept in Denmark?” Bjorn wrote.
En jødisk kvinde overfaldes brutalt på Christiania af en gruppe mænd med mellemøstlig baggrund. Spyttet på, kaldt “barnemorder”, kvæles og slæbes hen ad jorden, mens 50 ser på og griner. Ingen hjælper. Er det denne import af had, vi vil acceptere i Danmark? #dkpol #dkmedier pic.twitter.com/d12ekbyGiJ
— Mikkel Bjørn (@Mikkel_Bjorn) March 11, 2025
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Iran, China, Russia Call for End to ‘Unlawful Sanctions’ Amid Tensions With US Over Tehran’s Nuclear Program
From left to right: Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi pose for a photo as they meet with reporters after their meeting at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025, in Beijing, China. Photo: Lintao Zhang/Pool via REUTERS
China and Russia have called for an end to the “unlawful sanctions” imposed on Iran, as the three nations expand their cooperation amid growing Western pressure over Tehran’s nuclear program.
During a meeting in Beijing on Friday, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi, and Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov discussed areas of cooperation and the Iranian nuclear program, expressing solidarity over a range of issues.
In a joint statement, the three countries emphasized the “necessity of terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions,” seemingly referring to US and other Western economic penalties imposed on Iran’s imports and exports as an attempt to prevent the country from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
They called on all “relevant parties to refrain from taking any action that would escalate the situation” and undermine diplomatic efforts, stating that dialogue based on “mutual respect” is the only viable option.
The countries also “emphasized that the relevant parties should be committed to addressing the root causes of the current situation and abandoning sanction, pressure, or threat of force,” calling such actions “unacceptable” and highlighting the risks of regional escalation and environmental disaster.
In their statement, Russia and China praised Iran’s purported commitment to comply with its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Safeguards Agreement to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
After their meeting, Beijing and Moscow emphasized that Tehran’s right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy should be “fully” respected.
“The Iranian side has never said a single word about intending to obtain nuclear weapons,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a separate statement. “In this respect, of course, all sanctions and restrictions are, in our view, illegal.”
“We believe that our Iranian friends have the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy industry in their country,” he continued. “Russia is actively involved in this and is assisting our Iranian friends in this regard.”
On Thursday, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN, Amir Saeid Iravani, accused Western countries of spreading false information about Tehran’s nuclear program to impose “illegal sanctions” that have deprived Iran of essential medical supplies and restricted its exports.
“Despite these facts, certain Western countries, particularly the United States, Britain, France, and Germany, have persistently sought to create a false narrative about Iran’s nuclear activities, alleging non-cooperation [with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog] and military ambitions,” Iravani said.
In their joint statement, Iranian, Chinese, and Russian officials also announced they achieved “very important and valuable agreements regarding the development of trilateral cooperation on significant international issues, including the necessity for the three countries to work together to counter US unilateral and bullying sanctions.”
Friday’s meeting came after Iran, China, and Russia on Wednesday concluded three days of joint naval drills in Iranian territorial waters in the Gulf of Oman, bolstering defense cooperation. Experts told The Algemeiner this week that expanding military cooperation between the three countries presents a rising threat to the US and its allies in the Middle East, especially Israel.
Both Beijing and Moscow have had deep interests in Tehran as a partner in the Middle East. China has continued to purchase Iranian crude oil despite Western sanctions and remains one of the top markets for Iranian imports. Meanwhile, Russia has relied on Iran for the supply of bomb-carrying drones used in its war on Ukraine.
Iran’s growing ties with China and Russia come at a time when Tehran is facing increasing sanctions by the United States, particularly on its oil industry, as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign aimed at cutting the country’s crude exports to zero and preventing it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Even though Tehran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, the IAEA has warned that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level.
Tehran has repeatedly claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than weapon development.
However, Western states have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
Last week, Iran’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Tehran will not be bullied into negotiations after US President Donald Trump revealed he had sent a letter to the country’s top authority to negotiate a nuclear deal.
Last month, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi rejected the possibility of nuclear talks with Washington.
“There will be no possibility of direct talks between us and the United States on the nuclear issue as long as the maximum pressure is applied in this way,” Araghchi said during a joint press conference with his visiting Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.
Iran and Russia, which recently signed a pact to deepen their defense ties, have been working on an initiative to form an international alliance against US sanctions.
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Elise Stefanik Blasts UN for ‘Antisemitic’ Report Accusing Israel of Sexual Violence in Gaza
United Nations Ambassador-designate Elise Stefanik spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 22, 2025. Photo: Zach D Roberts/NurPhoto via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the next American ambassador to the United Nations has repudiated a new UN-backed report accusing the Israel Defense Force (IDF) of perpetrating sexual violence against Palestinians in Gaza, lambasting its claims as “antisemitic” and baseless.
“The corrupt UN Human Rights Council’s new baseless report is antisemitic and anti-Israel slander,” US Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) posted on social media on Thursday, when the report was published. “The so-called ‘Human Rights Council’ [UNHRC] has failed to condemn the barbaric atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israel including the brutal slaughter, torture, kidnapping of thousands of innocent civilians, and Hamas’s horrific use of rape and sexual violence against Israeli women and girls, yet disgracefully attacks Israel with unfounded smears.”
Stefanik continued, “This report exposes the disgraceful and obsessive antisemitism of UNHRC and reaffirms why President Trump took the strong, correct decisive executive action to withdraw from it.”
The UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Thursday published a report, commissioned by the Human Rights Council, that accused Israel of committing “genocidal acts” and employing sexual violence in Gaza. The report alleged that Israeli military forces have used sexual abuse and forcible stripping as weapons of war against Palestinian civilians.
“Israeli authorities have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of the Palestinians in Gaza as a group, including by imposing measures intended to prevent births, one of the categories of genocidal acts in the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention,” the report said.
Upon the report’s release, Israel’s permanent mission to the UN released a statement rejecting the allegations, arguing that they lacked substantiation and were based on uncorroborated sources.
“In a shameless attempt to incriminate the IDF and manufacture the illusion of ‘systematic’ use of [sexual and gender-based violence], the [Commission of Inquiry] deliberately adopts a lower level of corroboration in its report, which allowed it to include information from second-hand single uncorroborated sources,” the mission said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also repudiated the UNHRC, arguing that the “antisemitic” council has launched unsubstantiated allegations against the Jewish state with the goal of tarnishing its reputation.
“Instead of focusing on the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed by the Hamas terrorist organization in the worst massacre committed against the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the UN is once again choosing to attack Israel with false accusations, including unfounded accusations of sexual violence,” Netanyahu wrote.
In contrast, Hamas, the terrorist group that runs Gaza, said that the report confirmed Israel’s “genocidal” actions within the enclave.
“The UN’s investigation report on Israel’s genocidal acts against the Palestinian people confirms what has happened on the ground: genocide and violations of all humanitarian and legal standards,” Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told AFP.
Several investigations have revealed that Hamas-led Palestinians perpetrated widespread sexual violence against Israeli women and girls not only during their Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of southern Israel but also later against Israeli hostages kidnapped during the onslaught.
Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and UN representative for NGO Monitor, told The Algemeiner that the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice will likely use the report to bolster their genocide cases against Israel. Other anti-Israel initiatives such as the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS) will also likely reference the report in future activities.
Stefanik was tapped by Trump to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations for the current administration. However, Stefanik has not yet been confirmed by the US Senate to serve in the post. Senate Republicans are reportedly slowing her confirmation process due to concerns over the narrow Republican majority in the House of Representatives, where her vote is seen as necessary to pass key legislation.
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