The faculty group also has its sights set on abolishing the protections afforded to Jewish students and the US Jewish community by the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner
Jewish lawyers and nonprofit leaders fired back at an anti-Zionist open letter which, while condemning the Trump administration’s crackdown on pro-Hamas activists on college campuses, presented itself as being a voice for all Jews.
“Not in our name … We are united in denouncing, without equivocation, anyone who invokes our name — and cynical claims of antisemitism — to harass, expel, arrest, or deport members of our communities,” Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff-Boston Area (CJFS) wrote earlier this month, drawing signatories from higher education institutions across the country.
“We specifically reject rhetoric that caricatures our students and colleagues as ‘antisemitic terrorists’ because they advocate for Palestinian human rights and freedom.”
The blistering letter went on to accuse the Trump administration of holding “Christian Nationalist” views and setting off an “existential terror” by preconditioning federal funding for universities on their enacting reforms that reduce antisemitic discrimination and left-wing bias.
It has done so, CJFS further charged, while appropriating the Hebrew language, using “Jews as a shield to justify a naked attack on political dissent and university independence.”
CJFS Boston Area circulated the missive following US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) arrest and detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University alumnus who was an architect of the Hamilton Hall building takeover and other disturbances in the New York City area this past academic year.
Similar action has since been taken against others, including Cornell University graduate student Momodou Taal, a dual citizen of Gambia and the United Kingdom, and Columbia University student Yunseo Chung, a noncitizen legal resident from South Korea.
The group is not representative of the Jewish community and should stop claiming to be, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a scholar and the executive director of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative, told The Algemeiner in a statement.
“Shame on these Jewish faculty members. As [the University of California] was heating up to be ground zero for BDS [the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel] and antisemitic harassment, Jewish students used to come to me crying because they felt abandoned by their Jewish professors, many of whom turned out to be not only unsympathetic to their plight, but actively contributed to campus antisemitism,” Rossman-Benjamin said.
“More than 50 signatories of this statement are members, and in some cases chairs, of Jewish or Israeli studies programs. And instead of speaking up on behalf of Jewish students who are facing an unprecedented explosion of antisemitic assault, violent threats, intimidation, and harassment on their campuses since 10/7 [Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel], they’ve chosen to speak out on behalf of an individual who is actually responsible for fueling such antisemitism, and to gaslight Jewish students by denying that antisemitism is even a problem at their schools.”
She continued, “These faculty are throwing Jewish students under the bus because of their hatred for Trump. I have one message: If you can’t put the safety of Jewish students above your politics, stop identifying yourself as a Jewish professor.”
Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), concurred, noting that the group seems driven by partisan opposition to US President Donald Trump and indifferent to the rise of antisemitism on college campuses that began after Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel.
“Beleaguered Jewish students on campus need support and protections from harassment, ostracism from educational spaces, and attacks on their identities — not their professors minimizing the serious problem of campus antisemitism as something made up by the Trump administration,” Elman said.
“Faculty should be defending and championing the bedrock academic principles of campus free expression, open inquiry, and academic freedom while also insisting on meaningful reforms and remedies that meet the real needs and concerns of Jewish and Zionist students. This is what the Jewish and Zionist faculty affiliated with my organization — the Academic Engagement Network — are doing to meet the current moment, and it’s why they didn’t sign on to this misguided and inflammatory petition.”
Rona Kitchen, associate professor of law at the Thomas R. Kline School of Law of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, went further, defending Trump’s deportation policy as legal and consistent with federal law which prohibits providing material support to a terrorist organization, a crime of which Mahmoud Khalil is accused of committing in violation of the terms of his visa.
“They’re making it seem as if most American Jews are opposed to taking action against those who engage in unlawful — and I stress the unlawful nature of their conduct — antisemitic and also anti-American activity on college campuses over the last year and a half,” Kitchen said.
“Most American Jews support taking action against that, and this group wrote this letter proclaiming that it shouldn’t happen in ‘our name’ because it is unhelpful to Jews, but, in fact, it is helpful action.”
She continued, “And that does not mean I agree with everything the administration is doing. I don’t. But detaining a person who was leading encampments in which there was serious violence and who is now a defendant in a lawsuit which alleges that he violated federal law by providing material support to terrorist organization is legal.”
CJFS is not content with just issuing letters. The group has its sights set on abolishing the protections afforded Jewish students and the US Jewish community by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, a reference tool universities and governing bodies have adopted — and, in some cases, codified in law — to help them determine what does and does not constitute antisemitism.
Harvard University, for example, has applied the definition to its non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies (NDAB) to recognize the centrality of Zionism to Jewish identity, and explicitly state that targeting an individual on the basis of their Zionism constitutes a violation of school rules.
New York University has also adopted the IHRA definition as part of an effort to recognize the subtleties of antisemitic speech and its use in discriminatory conduct that targets Jewish students and faculty.
Over 30 states have adopted the IHRA definition as well to enhance their investigations of antisemitic hate crimes perpetrated by both far-left and far-right extremists.
CFJS advocates such a policy despite data showing that antisemitic incidents on college campuses have risen by upwards of 321 percent across the country.
Seth Orenburg of the University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law told The Algemeiner that CJFS Boston “politicizes Jewish identity while demanding ideological conformity.”
The professor, who is Jewish, added that its latest initiative “is ironically, not in my name — and not in the name of justice either.”
