DAILY BEAST COLUMN: …A majority of Jewish college students, 54 percent, reported being subjected to or witness to anti-Semitism on campus during a six-month period, according to a 2014 survey published by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Trinity College. Not only was this survey undertaken before the violent summer conflict in Gaza, which researchers Barry A. Kosmin and Ariela Keysar said led to a “worldwide flare-up in anti-Semitism,” but they also noted that the “data suggest there is an under-reporting of anti-Semitism through the normal campus channels.”
Even more disturbingly, students reported that they often felt universities did not take their concerns about anti-Semitism seriously. “The response of many university faculty and administrators to Jewish complaints and outrage often shows that their threshold for the definition of the existence of the crime of anti-Semitism is set ridiculously high,” write Kosmin and Keysar.
At schools where students strive to protect the rights of ethnic and racial minorities, stomp out sexual and gender discrimination, and regularly remind people to “check their privilege,” hate speech against the Jewish community has become a pernicious problem… (more)
EDITOR: As a graduate of Berkeley and a visitor to the campus five years ago (and also a Jews), it does not surprise me that there would be anti-Jewish symbols and propaganda on the campus.
Berkeley has always attracted diverse and impassioned students. A visit to Sather Gate will convey that message as one is accosted by all sorts of demonstrating fringe groups, some hurling epithets at one another. This is especially the case with the Orthodox Jews and the Pro-Palestinians. Problem? I think not so long as they simply exercised their right of free speech.
I also suspect that Israeli’s appearance of intransigence concerning Palestinian statehood is generating a certain amount of antisemitism. Actually, most Conservative and Reform Jews have similar concerns about Israel’s practices.
Should the university administrations intervene? I hope not. Students need to toughen up and perhaps listen to criticism, just or not. The. observations will prepare them for the world.
