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Why was my Jewish identity so apologetic and humiliating?, Obama speechwriter asks in new book
(JTA) — Sarah Hurwitz calls her first book, “Here All Along,” a “love letter” to Jewish tradition. Describing a journey begun when she worked as a speechwriter at the White House— first for President Barack Obama and later for First Lady Michele Obama — the book was a celebration of her rediscovering Judaism as a thirty-something who grew up with what she describes as a “thin” Jewish identity.
But if that book was sunny, her new book explores the shadows and storm clouds of Jewish belonging. “As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us,” confronts the challenges of being Jewish at a time of rising antisemitism, a polarizing debate over Israel, and pressures and temptations that keep many Jews from appreciating a tradition that belongs to them.
Shifting the focus from personal discovery to a host of contemporary issues, “As a Jew” is both a primer and a polemic, explaining Jewish history, texts and practices in order to counter misinformation and inspire readers.
“We need to know our story. We need to know our history. We need to know our traditions,” she said in an interview on Thursday. “We need to know what we love about being Jews, so that when people come to us and they say, ‘Judaism is violent and vengeful and sexist and has a cruel God and is unspiritual,’ we can say that’s not true.”
The book also draws on her recent training and experience as a hospital chaplain, volunteering on the oncology floor of a hospital in the Washington, D.C. area, where she lives.
Hurwitz, 44, is a graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School. She also served as a speechwriter for Vice President Al Gore and in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. In January, she plans to start training for the rabbinate at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Beit Midrash for New North American Rabbis.
We spoke at a livestreamed “Folio” event presented by the New York Jewish Week and UJA-Federation of New York. Hurwitz discussed her time in the Obama White House, what she’s learned from meeting with college students struggling with antisemitism, and the challenges of writing a Jewish book in the post-Oct. 7 moment.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity. To watch the full conversation, go here.
Your first book, “Here All Along,” was about your return to Jewish learning. What hadn’t you said in that first book that you felt compelled to say now? And how does “As a Jew” extend or challenge the earlier journey?
My first very much a love letter to Jewish tradition, and this book is much more of a polemic. That first book really reflected me at the age of 36 rediscovering Jewish tradition, having grown up with this very thin kind of Jewish identity.
In this new book, I began to really ask the question, why did I see so little of Jewish tradition growing up, why did I have to wait until age 36 to actually discover so much of our tradition? Why was my identity so apologetic, so kind of humiliating and, having grown up in a Christian country, how much of my approach to Judaism was really through a Christian lens? This book really dives into those questions at a time of rising antisemitism, where Jews need to start thinking about these things.
What does it mean to be apologetic? How did the Christian lens distort your understanding of Judaism?
I certainly believed that Christianity is a religion of love, but Judaism is really a religion of law. And I really did buy that, that ours is a kind of weedy, legalistic, nitpicky tradition with this angry, vengeful god. I mean, that is just classic Christian anti-Judaism. I also used to think this world is carnal, degraded, inferior, kind of gross, and the goal of spirituality was to transcend them. That is not a central Jewish idea at all. That is not what Jewish spirituality is. If you read the Torah, our core sacred text, you’re going to find a great deal about our bodies, but how we treat them, about really contemplating how they are quite sacred.
You say more than once in your book that you want to “take back the Jewish story.” What does it mean to take back the Jewish story, and from whom or what?
Our story has often been told by others, and you actually see this in this very old story about Jewish power, depravity and conspiracy. You see it in the core story about a group of Jews conspiring to kill Jesus. And you see these themes winding their way through history. That story has been told about Jews for centuries. I want to replace it with our actual story, as told through Jewish texts and traditions.
The alternative you propose, in order for Jews to embrace their own story, is that they embrace the “textline,” which you call “the repository of our Jewish memory, the raw material for the story we tell about who we are.” I am not familiar with “textline” — how does it differ from “text”?
This is actually from [the late Israeli novelist] Amos Oz, and his daughter, historian Fania Oz-Salzberger. They say, “Ours is not a bloodline, it’s a textline.” Jews are racially and ethnically diverse, but our shared DNA, the thing that unites us, is our texts. Sadly, in the early 1800s, as Jews gained citizenship in Europe, there was a decision to assimilate and reshape Judaism to look more like Protestantism — a kind of “Jewish church.” In doing so, we de-emphasized 2,500 years of textual tradition beyond the Torah, which is where much of Jewish wisdom and ritual is found. Reclaiming that textual tradition is critical.
The idea and dilemmas of Jewish power is a theme in your book and incredibly timely, given the debate over Israel’s display of power in Gaza and several other fronts. How does your book approach the moral and spiritual tension of Jews moving from centuries of powerlessness to now having power and a state?
Many Jews today feel distress over the responsibility that comes with power. For 2,000 years, Jews were powerless, blameless victims. The problem with statelessness was that it led to slaughter on a massive scale. Some yearn for that innocence of powerless Jewish life, but I disagree that the cost of millions of deaths was worth it. With power comes moral responsibility. Israel, like all nations, is conceived and maintained in violence. I see the moral complexity, but I do not want to give up the power or the responsibility that comes with it.
After your first book came out, you became a prominent voice in Jewish life. Can you share encounters on the road that shaped your thinking for this book?
First, training as a volunteer hospital chaplain helped me realize the profound, Jewish-centered human experience of accompanying people in moments of illness, grief and death. Second, visiting universities before Oct. 7, 2023, I was stunned by Jewish students asking how I dealt with antisemitism in college. When I said I hadn’t experienced any, the students were shocked. Post-2023, the Gaza war accelerated ugly narratives on social media, which deeply worried me. I also reflected on my first book and realized that the Judaism I grew up with was oddly edited, shaped by our ancestors’ attempts to assimilate for safety — a choice I deeply respect but which left us somewhat “textless.”
How do your chaplaincy experiences relate text to real life?
I volunteer in D.C. hospitals. Being present with people in illness, grief and death is profoundly Jewish. Modern society finds these experiences uncomfortable, but Jewish tradition calls us to accompany mourners, prepare the dead lovingly, and inhabit the thin spaces where life and death blur. This presence, grounded in community, is essential. People often find relief simply in having someone acknowledge reality and speak openly about it.
You started writing this book before Oct. 7. How did the Hamas attacks and the Gaza war influence your writing about peoplehood, empathy and responsibility?
Oct. 7 didn’t change the arguments or themes of my book, but it gave more data points. For decades, Jews in America and Israel lived somewhat disconnected lives. Oct. 7 revealed underlying tensions and reminded us that Jewish identity has always carried conditionality. Some had illusions about a “golden age” of safety in the 1980s and 1990s, but many had faced real threats. The attacks shattered any illusions of security and exposed deeper societal challenges.
You talk about students on campuses being excluded from college clubs and causes because they are Zionist. I found your response intriguing — that Jews again create their own institutions the way they created Jewish hospitals and universities in the early part of the 20th century as a response to exclusion. Do you worry that you are overreacting?
Campuses vary widely. Some departments are excellent; some are hostile. In difficult environments, I advise Jewish students to try dialogue, but if excluded, to create their own spaces — clubs, organizations and initiatives, that are radically inclusive and excellent. Historically, Jews created hospitals, law firms and universities that welcomed anyone committed to excellence and tolerant of Jews. We can do that again. For example, Allison Tombros Korman founded the Red Tent after being ostracized [in the reproductive rights space] for her Zionist beliefs. It funds abortion services for anyone and is inclusive — an inspiring model.
Your book includes a chapter on Israel that aims to counter the accusations that Zionism is colonialist and racist. But you also include criticism of Israel, saying the country is not without its “serious flaws.” How do you navigate the lonely place of being a liberal Zionist today, which I often define as being too Zionist for the liberals and too liberal for many Zionists?
I navigate it like I navigate being an American: I can criticize, feel frustrated and yet remain committed. Israel is the home of 7 million Jewish siblings. Criticism does not mean abandonment. Many confuse ideology with family obligation, but Israel is our family, and we must stand with it while lovingly correcting its errors. This mirrors my commitment to America.
You were active in a Democratic administration and no doubt have seen the evidence of decreasing support for Israel among Democrats. Was that your experience when you worked in the Obama administration? Is that something you had to push back against?
I think people are a little bit confused about when the Obama administration ended, which was 2017. That was well before this 2023 dark turn, you know, it was a pretty normie administration. I don’t remember a single time in the Obama administration where anything negative was said about Israel. It was a great administration to be a Jew. I started first exploring Judaism when I was working in the White House, and my colleagues were so overwhelmingly proud of me, I could not just [believe] the encouragement they gave me. One time I actually ran into the White House chief of staff, a wonderful guy named Denis McDonough, and he asked me what I was doing for the December vacation, and the answer was, I was going to a weeklong silent Jewish meditation retreat. You don’t tell the chief of staff that you’re doing that, but I did, because I didn’t want to lie, and he just could not have been more proud.
I now see, unfortunately, an ideology that’s been on the fringes of the left slowly making its way to the mainstream, and that worries me. I don’t think it is outrageous for Democrats to withhold an occasional shipment of weapons to express displeasure with Israel’s policy, but what worries me is that we are in a bigger environment of a real demonization and delegitimization of Israel.
I’m also really worried about the right. If you look at the data, especially among young men, they’re increasingly antisemitic, increasingly anti-Israel. And what I particularly worry about is that I see President Trump under the guise of fighting antisemitism on campus, engaging in really heavy-handed efforts to defund university campuses. And you can celebrate that. You can say it’s good for Jews, but I disagree, and I also worry about the precedent, that five or 10 years from now, when there is a president with a very different political ideology, who says that “Israel is a terrorist country, Zionism is a terrorist ideology, and I’m going to go and defund every campus that has an active Hillel, because Hillel is a Zionist entity.” We’ve paved that illiberal path, and it’s very easy for someone on the other side to walk down it.
I also really worry about, on the right, the MAGA ideology that says that a small group of powerful, depraved elites is conspiring to harm you and your family, to vaccinate you, to make your kids trans. It’s a very ugly ideology that is the very structure of antisemitism. The leap between elites and Jews is about a centimeter and Tucker Carlson’s made the leap. It’s got millions of followers. A lot of other people are making the leap.
Your books are, as you’ve said, love letters to Jewish tradition. But often observant Jews, here and in Israel, who are deeply steeped in Jewish text and practice, also embrace views that are illiberal and ultra-nationalist. How do you reconcile their embrace of the “textline,” and the illiberal positions they arrive at?
You are talking about the extremists, like [Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, two far-right Israeli cabinet ministers]. I think they are being quite unfaithful to Jewish tradition. Judaism operates in polarities, holding opposing truths: love the stranger yet remember Amalek; humility and self-esteem; compassion with caution. Extremists claim only one pole, but both are essential. Jewish tradition demands wrestling with these tensions.
And yet those tensions are straining communal ties. How do Jews remain responsible for one another when there are such deep disagreements?
Judaism emphasizes the ethic of family. Even if family members espouse objectionable views, we engage them with tochecha — loving, private rebuke — to correct and guide them. Boundaries must exist for safety, but generally, we strive to keep people at the table, engage with them, and educate them.
A lot of Jewish authors are finding that it is difficult since Oct. 7 to promote their books, especially when they lean heavily into Jewish or Israeli content. How are you being received, having written a Jewish book in this time and place?
I only do events in Jewish institutions with a very small number of exceptions, so I haven’t been in any bookstores. I’m not really interested in going to bookstores. I want to go to places that have, frankly, good security and where it will be more than 20 people. I will say I’ve been surprised at how little pushback I’ve gotten to my book, because I thought this was a pretty edgy book. You know, I think my first book was pretty soft — like, “yay Judaism!” The second book is a polemic, and I was worried that I would get real pushback, real criticism, real anger. And yet, from the Jewish world, I’ve had Jewish leaders who are more on the right-wing side of the spectrum politically who like it, and leaders who are on the left-wing part of the spectrum who like it. They’ll tell me, “I see your compassion, and I see that you’re really wrestling with the other side, with those who disagree with you.”
Is there a Jewish text that you kind of live by, or that you really love, or just came across yesterday that really spoke to you this week or in this hour?
There’s so many, but I’ll take one. I’ll just simplify it. In [the Babylonian Talmud, Brachot 5b,] Rabbi A gets sick and then Rabbi B shows up and takes his hands and heals him. But then Rabbi B himself gets sick and Rabbi C shows up and takes Rabbi B’s hand and heals him. And the rabbis studying the story are very confused, because if Rabbi B, who was kind of known as a healer, could heal Rabbi A, then when he got sick himself, why didn’t he just cure himself? Why did he need Rabbi C to come and cure him?
And the answer that they offer is because “the prisoner cannot get himself out of prison.” I just think that’s a really beautiful story about the ways that we become trapped in our own anxiety, fear, anger, loneliness and really do need other people to come and take our hand and kind of pull us out. I thought about this a lot while writing my book. There’s about 80 people in my acknowledgements who read part or all of this book. And that was very important, because as a writer, I cannot get myself out of the prison of my own biases, my own ignorance, my own narrow views, and so many people reached out, took my hand and said, “What you’re writing is wrong,” or “that’s offensive,” or “you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And they said it very nicely. It was so important to me because I could actually step out and learn.
So I love that story. I think it illustrates something profound about what it means to be human.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post Why was my Jewish identity so apologetic and humiliating?, Obama speechwriter asks in new book appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump Proclaims Isolationist Critics ‘Are Not MAGA’ While Defending Mark Levin From Vulgar Insult
US President Donald Trump speaks during a visit at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, US, Feb. 13, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
An uncouth online argument between two of the most prominent American conservative commentators inspired an intervention on Sunday night from US President Donald Trump, who backed radio host Mark Levin during a heated exchange with podcaster Megyn Kelly.
Trump also defended his policy toward Iran in his Truth Social post, lambasting isolationist critics of his foreign policy as not being part of his so-called “Make America Great Again (MAGA)” movement.
“Mark Levin, a truly Great American Patriot, is somewhat under siege by other people with far less Intellect, Capability, and Love for our Country. Mark is Tough, Strong, and Brilliant, hence the nickname, ‘THE GREAT ONE,’ conceived by our MAGA friend, the wonderful Sean Hannity,” Trump wrote before effusively praising Levin as “a true Conservative, and Intellect” who was “far smarter than those who criticize him but, above all, he is a man of Great Wisdom.”
Trump warned that “those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside, as do the people whose ideas, policies, and footings are not sound.” He went on to proclaim, “THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM, and MAGA includes not allowing Iran, a Sick, Demented, and Violent Terrorist Regime, to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
Repeating his pledge to obliterate the Islamic regime in Iran, Trump vowed that “MAGA is about stopping them cold, and that is exactly what we are doing. GOD BLESS OUR GREAT MILITARY, WHICH I HAVE REBUILT SINCE THE BEGINNING OF MY FIRST TERM, TO ACHIEVE EVERLASTING PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
While not naming the specific individuals who had attacked Levin, online observers recognized the commander-in-chief had written in response to a provocative exchange between “the Great One” and Kelly which had devolved into grade-school-level taunting.
In recent months, Kelly has earned the ire of pro-Israel advocates due to her decision to align herself with the antisemitic positions and conspiracy theories promoted by fellow podcasters Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and Nick Fuentes. During a discussion with Carlson in January, Kelly praised Fuentes — a man who has celebrated Adolf Hitler, promoted Joseph Stalin, supported Hamas, and urged his “Groyper” followers to rape women — as “very interesting and he’s very smart.” She said, “There is value to be derived from that guy’s messaging.”
Kelly, Owens, Carlson, and Fuentes have also been adamantly opposed to the US military campaign against Iran, claiming without evidence that Israel dragged Trump into the conflict.
On Sunday, Levin wrote on X: “Poor Megyn Kelly. An emotionally unhinged, lewd, and petulant wreck. She’s completely revealed and destroyed herself. She’s everything people say she is, but much worse. Never an intelligent, thoughtful, or substantive comment. Utterly toxic.”
Kelly reposted Levin’s remarks before she struck below the belt. In a post that has since received 6.3 million views, Kelly wrote, “Micropenis Mark @marklevinshow thinks he has the monopoly on lewd. He tweets about me obsessively in the crudest, nastiest terms possible. Literally more than some stalkers I’ve had arrested. He doesn’t like it when women like me fight back. Bc of his micropenis.”
Levin then reshared Kelly’s jab at his manhood and responded with a Freudian implication, writing, “Busy Sunday morning for Megyn Kelly. She wakes up and has ‘micrope*is’ on her mind. Suffice to say, if it talks like a harlot, and posts like a harlot, it’s … well, you know the rest. Shalom!”
Early Monday morning, Kelly doubled down on her vulgarity and responded to Trump’s Truth Social post, suggesting that Levin had requested support.
“Micro penis @marklevinshow is such a SMALL MAN he had to go beg the president for a pat on the head (in the middle of a war!) to make himself feel better about … well, you know,” Kelly wrote. “This, after one mean tweet about him – following his 111 (!) nasty, non-stop, personal, misogynistic attacks on me. (Fox has an OBSESSED HARASSER on its hands.)”
Kelly added, “Just like all feckless, weakling bullies Micro can dish it out but he can’t take it. After just one post putting the so-called ‘great one’ in his place, he ran crying to Daddy.”
Rejecting the charge that he had solicited support in their flame war from the president, Levin wrote on X that “no, I did not speak to the president about releasing any statement. These reprobates have nothing but lies and conspiracies and hate. And the more they talk and post, the more people have had enough of them. They will eventually dry up and blow away, like those who’ve come before them.”
On Sunday night, Levin thanked Trump for his praise, writing, “I am beyond humbled by your words and graciousness in writing such a beautiful note and sharing it on Truth Social. I am honored that you took the time to write it. Your courage, strength, and moral clarity are truly unparalleled. And your leadership has made our country and the world much safer.”
Six hours after Kelly’s initial insult against Levin, her ally Owens took her own shot, writing in a long note on X that “no matter how many articles Bari Weiss publishes or how many monologues Mark Levin stammers through, the overwhelming majority of people in the world sense that Charlie Kirk was murdered for opposing this war and that Israel’s hands are not clean in the story.”
Owens further aligned herself with Carlson and Kelly, stating, “People like myself and like Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly (however ignorant we may or may not have been in our earlier assessments) once genuinely supported Israel and thought Zionism was a moral position.”
Continuing to advance her conspiracy theory of Israeli involvement in the murder of her friend Kirk, Owens wrote, “In their sheer arrogance, rather than meaningfully working to restore relationships, zionists continue to use tactics of slander, deception, law-fare and yes, murder to force their perspectives. They no longer seem capable of making a distinction between illusion and reality. They wrongly assumed that with enough money, they could purchase truth.”
On Monday, former US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene backed Kelly in the feud, writing, “I wholeheartedly support Megyn Kelly telling the world that Mark Levin has a micropenis. It’s the most deserved insult and I don’t care if it’s vulgar. And Trump’s gigantic defense of Levin only enraged the base more. People are DONE. MAGA destroyed by micropenis Mark Levin.”
Greene had written her comment in response to Kelly defending her rhetoric to far-right influencer Mike Cernovich, who criticized the intra-right battle as a “total distraction to spend hours a week reacting to each other. It’s slave behavior.”
Kelly responded to Cernovich by justifying herself, writing, “Disagree. You can take the high road and ignore for a while but eventually after hundreds of tweets/attacks you punch the bully in the rhetorical face. And then he goes running to daddy about his Micropenis.”
While debates about Israel and the Iran war may engage online pugilists with audiences to entertain, polling shows that the vast majority of Republicans (85 percent) and self-identified “MAGA” supporters (91 percent) back Trump’s decision to bomb the Islamic regime in Iran.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Leaves the Left Party Over Anti-Israel Stance, Lack of Support Amid Death Threats
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s antisemitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has resigned from the Left Party, citing a rise in antisemitism within the ranks, relentless personal attacks, and a party climate that has become intolerable.
“I struggled with this decision for a long time, as I have felt a deep connection to the party over many years,” Büttner wrote in a letter to the party leadership, as reported by German media.
“But I have reached a point where I must acknowledge that I can no longer remain a member of this party without betraying my own convictions,” he continued.
According to several German media reports, the commissioner, who had been a member of the Left Party since 2015, said he was resigning over the party’s handling of antisemitism, internal expulsion proceedings aimed at removing him, and relentless personal attacks.
“The fight against antisemitism is a task that transcends party lines,” Büttner wrote in his letter. “All the more shocking for me is what I have had to witness within my own party for years.”
He criticized the Left Party’s rejection of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, noting that the party falsely regards it as a tool to repress protest while continuing to relativize antisemitic rhetoric.
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016.
Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
In his letter, Büttner also condemned the Left Party in Lower Saxony, a federal state in northwestern Germany, for its position on Zionism, insisting that challenging Israel’s right to exist is unacceptable — especially after the state convention passed resolutions branding Israel a “genocidal state” and an “apartheid state.”
“These resolutions are no longer acceptable to me,” he said.
In recent years, Büttner has faced not only external threats but also a sustained campaign of insults and defamation from members within his own party.
“The way my own party has handled attacks against me is particularly troubling,” Büttner wrote in his letter. “Instead of clear solidarity, I have too often experienced silence.”
Federal party leader Jan van Aken expressed regret over Büttner’s resignation but rejected any accusations of antisemitism within the Left Party, reiterating that the party “stands unequivocally against antisemitism.”
Earlier this year, Büttner endured two personal attacks within a single week, the second escalating into a death threat.
The Brandenburg state parliament received a letter threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
A former police officer, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
In the week prior to this latest attack, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red, inverted Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking what was at the time latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
In August 2024, swastikas and other antisemitic symbols and threats were also spray-painted on his personal car.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials have noted that the real number of antisemitic crimes registered by police is likely much higher, as many do not get reported.
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Over 100 Groups Call on University of California to Address Campus Antisemitism
Illustrative: Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
Over 100 Jewish advocacy groups have signed a petition imploring the University of California (UC) system to confront faculty antisemitism amid the fallout over a new AMCHA Initiative report which argued that professors accelerated the campus antisemitism crisis by promoting the use of their platforms to promote anti-Jewish tropes in the name of opposing Israel and Zionism.
“We urge the [UC Board of Regents] to act now: stop faculty and academic units from using UC authority, resources, classrooms, and UC-branded platforms to advance political advocacy as institutional practice by strictly enforcing UC’s existing rules, and strengthening them where needed,” said the petition, which has so far amassed 124 signatures from groups, as well as 4,000 individuals. “This is not about policing faculty speech. It is about enforcing the crucial boundary between private speech and institutional advocacy.”
It continued, “When that boundary disappears, academic norms break down and students face harassment, intimidation, and exclusion. We call on you to protect students, restore the university’s academic integrity, and rebuild public trust in the University of California.”
The petition’s signatories include Alums for Campus Fairness, the Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, The Lawfare Project, Zionist Organization of America, and Students Supporting Israel (SSI).
The AMCHA Initiative report, titled “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California” examined the “antisemitism crisis” across UC campuses since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel. It included dozens of examples of faculty antisemitism, including their calling for driving Jewish institutions off campus; founding pro-Hamas, Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapters; and endorsing institutional adoption of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The University of California system is a microcosm of faculty antisemitism, the AMCHA Initiative explained in the exhaustive 158-page report, which focused on the Los Angeles, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz campuses.
“The report documents how concentrated networks of faculty activists on each campus, often operating through academic units and faculty-led advocacy formations, convert institutional platforms into vehicles for organized anti-Zionist advocacy and mobilization,” the report said, adding that the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) alone holds at least 115 faculty endorsers of the BDS movement, according to the report. Meanwhile, dozens of its academic departments issued statements of support of the pro-Hamas encampments which struck college campuses during the 2023-2024 academic school year and became the hubs of antisemitic assault and discrimination.
It also said that FJP chapters offered more than supportive words, “defending and helping orchestrate boycott-aligned activism (including encampment demands), seeking to deplatform Israeli speakers, and filing an amicus brief … that denied Zionism’s place within Jewish identity and defended exclusionary encampment conduct toward Zionist Jewish students, including expulsion from campus spaces.”
UC Office of the President spokesperson Rachel Zaentz reportedly said the UC system was taking AMCHA’s report “seriously” and reviewing it. However, UC spokesperson Dan Mogulof expressed concerns about the methodology used to compile the data.
“While we appreciate this organization’s dedication to confronting antisemitism, it is unfortunate that no apparent effort was made to seek information directly from the campus and/or confirm information, some of which appears to have been gathered from unreliable sources,” Mogulof told The Daily Californian.
The AMCHA report followed previous studies revealing the extent of faculty misconduct in higher education promoting anti-Israel animus and even outright antisemitism.
In February, The Algemeiner learned that, according to a lawsuit, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University assigned a Jewish student a project on “what Jews do to make themselves such a hated group.”
Similar incidents have come at a fast clip since the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre: a Cornell University professor praised the terrorist group’s atrocities, which included mass sexual assaults; a Columbia University professor exalted Hamas terrorists who paraglided into a music festival to murder Israeli youth as the “air force of the Palestinian resistance”; and a Harvard University FJP chapter shared an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Zionists as murderers of Blacks and Arabs.
The AMCHA Initiative has explored faculty antisemitism before.
In September 2024, the organization published a groundbreaking study which showed that FJP is fueling antisemitic hate crimes, efforts to impose divestment on endowments, and the collapse of discipline and order on college campuses. Using data analysis, AMCHA researchers said they were able to establish a correlation between a school’s hosting an FJP chapter and anti-Zionist and antisemitic activity. For example, the researchers found that the presence of FJP on a college campuses increased by seven times “the likelihood of physical assaults and Jewish students” and increased by three times the chance that a Jewish student would be subject to threats of violence and death.
FJP, AMCHA’s researchers added, also “prolonged” the duration of “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” protests on college campuses, in which students occupied a section of campus illegally and refused to leave unless administrators capitulated to demands for a boycott of Israel. They said that such demonstrations lasted over four and a half times longer where FJP faculty — who, they noted, spent 9.5 more days protesting than those at non-FJP schools — were free to influence and provide logistic and material support to students.
Additionally, FJP facilitated the proposing and adopting of student government resolutions demanding acceptance of the BDS movement — which aims to isolate Israel culturally, financially, and diplomatically as the first step toward its destruction. Wherever FJP was, the researchers said, BDS was “4.9 times likely to pass” and “nearly 11 times more likely to be included in student demands,” evincing, they continued, that FSJP plays an outsized role in radicalizing university students at the more than 100 schools — including Harvard University, Brown University, Princeton University, the University of Michigan, and Yale University — where it is active.
“One of the important functions of these groups is to give academic legitimacy to the notion that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and that’s a hugely important trope being trafficked on campuses right now,” AMCHA Initiative executive director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner at the time.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.