On July 15, 2025, Metropolis College of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Robert M. Groves, Interim President of Georgetown College, and Wealthy Lyons, Chancellor of the College of California, Berkeley will testify earlier than the Home Committee on Training and Workforce at a listening to on “Antisemitism in Larger Training: Inspecting the Function of College, Funding, and Ideology.”
As Jewish college on the three campuses, we name on universities to not adjust to any and all coverage directives from native, state, and nationwide governments that equate the critique of the Israeli state with antisemitism. The primary is a political viewpoint protected by free speech. The second is a type of discrimination that ought to be opposed as any type of racism ought to be. The tactical growth of the very concept of “antisemitism” to authorize repressive measures manipulates the historical past of repression underneath which Jews suffered and forgets the moral and political grounds for opposing types of state repression that criminalize legit viewpoints and chill free speech.
We write to affirm that there isn’t a rampant disaster of antisemitism on our campuses, regardless of extended makes an attempt by the present administration to influence the general public that there’s one. This marketing campaign of repression and censorship, together with deportation and detention, is proof of an Islamophobic and racist marketing campaign in opposition to political dissent. The general public opposition to Israel’s genocidal marketing campaign in opposition to the Palestinian individuals in Gaza relies on agency authorized and moral rules, and shouldn’t be mistaken for antisemitism.
Actually, the repression and censorship now levied in opposition to college and college students, for his or her alleged antisemitism targets Muslim, Arab and different college students of Center East heritage confuses the general public, because it conflates critique of and opposition to the State of Israel with antisemitism. It is usually an antisemitic marketing campaign, together with assaults on Jewish college and college students who criticize Israel, making use of conspiracy theories similar to these superior within the Heritage Basis’s “Challenge Esther,” and propagating the assumption that each one Jews really feel the identical manner in regards to the State of Israel, denying the complicated historical past of Jewish views, together with these essential of Zionism, state violence, censorship and racism. This marketing campaign to smear political dissenters as antisemites attracts on histories of state repression and violates elementary requirements of educational freedom in universities and freedom of speech inside constitutional democracies. Additional, the disaster it creates attracts consideration away from probably the most threatening type of antisemitism immediately, particularly, the antisemitic convictions of white, Christian nationalism, which have been repeatedly expressed by highly effective actors in authorities, media, and facilities of social life.
It’s crucial to oppose antisemitism, however to take action, we have to have an knowledgeable concept of what it’s. The Congressional hearings are a part of a broader marketing campaign of fear-mongering, forfeiting the accountability all of us need to determine any and all types of racism based on the factors that rightly governs such judgments and as an alternative weaponizing spurious accusations of antisemitism to advance a far-right authoritarian assault on larger training. Exactly as a result of antisemitism and quite a few types of racism live on, none of us can afford to have the cost of antisemitism cheapened. The cost turns into meaningless when it turns into a blunt instrument on the a part of political powers, more and more authoritarian, to repress political dissent and evacuate the duty all of us have to make use of language responsibly to combat the interlocking oppressions in society.
To defend the lives of Palestinians in opposition to obliteration is to defend life and oppose state powers that now wield death-dealing powers with out restraint. It’s the embodiment of the Jewish precept of pikuach nefesh. To defend the Palestinian proper to reside is to defend the shared lifetime of all individuals to survival, persistence, and flourishing. It’s the embodiment of the Jewish precept of tzedek (justice). These are rules that may be known as moral, non secular, or authorized. In every case, they don’t seem to be antisemitic. To say in any other case is to suggest that Jewish individuals as a complete assist the horrific death-dealing of the Israeli state, a false and antisemitic concept superior by the present administration and people organizing this Congressional listening to. Such a declare will not be solely offensive, however unfaithful.
Signed,Judith Butler, UC BerkeleyAlexandra Juhasz, CUNYLois Wessel, Georgetown UniversityBrooke Lober, UC BerkeleyKeith P. Feldman, UC BerkeleyLaura Tanenbaum, LaGuardia Neighborhood School, CUNYRosalind Petchesky, CUNY (emerita)David Arnow, Brooklyn School, CUNYNaomi Schiller, Brooklyn School, CUNYMaddy Fox, Brooklyn School, CUNYJean Halley, School of Staten Island and the Graduate Heart, CUNYMichelle Nice, Graduate Heart, CUNYYana Kuchirko, Brooklyn School, CUNYNaomi Braine, Brooklyn School, CUNY
Supporters:Victor Silverman, Pomona School (BA, MA, PhD UC Berkeley)Rebecca Alpert, Temple UniversityTerri Ginsberg, Rutgers College (previously CUNY college)Laura Goldblatt, College of VirginiaBeth Ribet, UCLA & UC Regulation San FranciscoElyse Crystall, UNC-Chapel Hill (BA CUNY)Alice Rothchild, MD, Harvard College (retired)Melissa Levy, College of VirginiaEmmaia Gelman, Institute for the Essential Examine of ZionismIrene L. Gendzier, Professor Emeritus at Boston UniversityMichael Drexler, Professor of English, Bucknell UniversityBenjamin Robinson, Indiana College BloomingtonBernadette Brooten, Professor emerita, Brandeis UniversityDaniel Segal, Professor Emeritus, Pitzer School of the Claremont CollegesLeigh Kimberg, Professor of Drugs, College of California, San FranciscoMax Greenberg, Goucher CollegeSam Shuman, College of VirginiaLynne Joyrich, Professor of Fashionable Tradition and Media, Brown UniversityBarry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish Historical past, Wake Forest UniversityCharles Manekin, Prof of Philosophy Emeritus, College of MarylandJonathan H. Grossman, College of California, Los AngelesMarla Stone, Professor of Historical past, Occidental CollegeMargot Weiss, Wesleyan UniversityAlan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis School Professor Emeritus, College of MichiganMark LeVine, PhD, professor of Historical past UC Irvine, Hunter School alumnus and adjunct lecturer, 1987 – 1998Susan Slyomovics, Distinguished Professor, UCLABeth Stephens, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers College (J.D., UC Berkeley Faculty of Regulation).Sherry Linkon, Professor of English, Georgetown UniversityLy Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown, Assistant Educating Professor of Incapacity Research, Georgetown College
