Faculty members have been aiding students protesting and camping on university grounds for weeks, but not all professors support their anti-Israel agenda.
The newly launched Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement seeks to create a national network of academics to stand against “antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel activity on their campuses” and stick up for Jewish students being bullied and worse.
“We needed to show students that there are faculty, hundreds, thousands even, that just will not tolerate their being occupied or harassed and intimidated,” said Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, which presented the faculty group last month.
“It’s really a vocal minority that’s moving forward a lot of this kind of ugly, nasty activism in the faculty space,” Ms. Elman told The Washington Times. “There’s so many faculty that don’t support that at all.”
A major motivation for the group’s establishment is the Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network, which has formed chapters at nearly 100 universities since its formal launch in February, including Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University.
Spurred by a call from the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Faculty for Justice in Palestine seeks to defend the free speech rights of students and intercede on their behalf “if security guards and administrators attempt to shut down their protests and teach-ins.”
“Our hope is that FJP groups will become a fixture on college campuses, just as [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapters have,” said a March 15 Inside HigherEd op-ed by Andrew Ross, a New York University professor, and Sherene Seikaly, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Ms. Elman, who taught at Syracuse University for 13 years, said she and other academics are “really worried about these new chapters and what it’s going to mean for the campus climate.”
“We’ve been really concerned about the language, the messaging, their activism,” she said. “It’s just like a ramped-up negativity from the faculty. That’s a big part of why we want to do this visible movement: so that there’s a different voice and it’s not just one group.”
At some universities, professors have become integral to the anti-Israel protests. Last week, Columbia faculty and staff wearing orange vests formed a human chain to stop outsiders from entering the sprawling “Gaza solidarity encampment” erected on the school’s west lawn.
Faculty members also have joined pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University and other protest hotbeds.
Also stoking concerns are outspoken anti-Israel professors such as Columbia’s Joseph Massad, who described the “jubilation and awe” that erupted after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians. He called the attack part of the “war of liberation” between the Palestinians and their “cruel colonizers.”
House Republicans demanded Mr. Massad’s dismissal over his Oct. 8 article in the Electronic Intifada.
Despite the visibility of Mr. Massad and other academics who agree with him, the “silent majority” of faculty members are different, Ms. Elman said.
“Most faculty are not part of Faculty for Justice in Palestine. But that group is so noisy and vocal that they give the impression that they’re much, much larger and capture the narrative,” she said. “So this is going to be a real pushback to that. And I think our faculty are fed up.”
The Academic Engagement Network was founded in 2015 to counter the rise of the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement aimed at delegitimizing Israel and pressuring it to withdraw to its pre-1967 borders. The organization now has more than 1,000 members on 322 campuses.
Ms. Elman said the impetus for the Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement “came from our faculty members. They were asking us, ‘Can we do something more activist? Can you give us T-shirts?’”
Jewish students are facing an intolerable degree of antisemitism. Anti-Jewish harassment and discrimination on campus must end — now.
— Faculty Against Antisemitism Network (@FAAM_network) May 1, 2024
Join us: https://t.co/nzK4nE6MiW pic.twitter.com/bUvPKNF53b
Interest soared when Ron Hassner, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, held a “sleep-in” in March to protest antisemitism on campus. For two weeks, he refused to leave his office but invited people to drop by and visit. He kept a light on in his seventh-floor window.
“My slogan was, if my students can’t walk across campus safely, then I’m not going to walk across campus. I’m going to stay in my office,” Mr. Hassner told The Washington Times. “My office is set up like a living room, with a sofa, an espresso machine, and I brought in a mattress.”
He received more than 100 visitors daily, two-thirds of them students. Another 33 California professors followed his example by dragging mattresses into their offices and flipping on the lights.
“When Ron Hassner did his thing, you had all these faculty in California in our network saying, ‘We’re going to do a one-night action in solidarity with Ron,’” Ms. Elman said. “We thought, ‘Wow, that is amazing. But we thought, ‘Could we do this on a national level?’ From there was born this idea of Faculty Against Antisemitism.”
For the movement’s first campaign, #KeeptheLightOn, faculty are encouraged to leave a light on in their windows “as a beacon to their Jewish students, showing support and solidarity for them, and to publicly demonstrate their commitment to fighting antisemitism.”
The protests are not on the same level as the violent takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia, but the activists say they don’t have to sow strife to change minds.
Mr. Hassner never broke a single window or set up a single tent, but Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ agreed to his three requests: Ensure that all students can pass through Sather Gate unimpeded, invite back any speaker whose talk was interrupted or canceled, and mandate antisemitism and anti-Islamophobia training for students who supervise other students.
“She called me on my cellphone out of the blue and said, ‘Hey, here’s what’s happening. You can go home now,’” Mr. Hassner said.
He said most faculty members are sympathetic to Israel, not Hamas, yet the anti-Israel wing often drowns out their voices. By bringing pro-Israel faculty together, the initiative can provide safety in numbers, he said.
“I think you will agree that the vast, overwhelming majority of faculty are not Israel haters,” Mr. Hassner said. “I think there’s a small minority terrorizing students and faculty. At Berkeley, it’s maybe four or five. There’s a silent majority caught in the crossfire that doesn’t know what to do.”
He said that “if all they do is carry mugs and T-shirts saying, ‘I’m Against Antisemitism,’ then it will give people courage.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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