University of California downplays rising threats to Jewish students

When the Regents of the 10-school University of California (UC) system discuss a statement of principles against intolerance this week, it is unclear if anti-Semitism — clearly rising on their campuses — will be given specific consideration.

Alarmed by a rash of anti-Semitic incidents on UC campuses, a large number of Jewish scholars and activists have urged that the Regents adopt, in the context of their deliberations, the U.S. State Department’s working definition of anti-Semitism as an essential step in dealing with this grave problem.

What the incident count at UC schools demonstrates is that the intellectually modish anti-Zionism that animates campus activism on Middle East issues has effortlessly combined with anti-Semitic invective of the more traditional sort.

“Zionists should be sent to the gas chamber,” as one bathroom wall scrawling at UC Berkeley declared, sounds like a slogan coined at a messaging workshop jointly convened by the American Nazi Party and Students for Justice in Palestine. In a similar vein, the grilling of a Jewish candidate for student government at UCLA over how her origins might impact her views on Israel brings to mind Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s disdain for “rootless cosmopolitans,” along with the brutal anti-Semitic campaign that accompanied it.

I was one of 34 scholars and experts on anti-Semitism who signed an Aug. 31 letter to UC President Janet Napolitano and the UC Regents supporting the adoption of the State Department definition, which underlines that visceral attacks on Israel, and especially calls for its destruction, are anti-Semitic.

Our letter quoted the late Professor Robert Wistrich, a truly irreplaceable authority on anti-Semitism and its history, observing that anti-Zionism “is the most dangerous and effective form of anti-Semitism in our time.”