One year ago, the Santa Barbara Independent published our letter supporting the UC Santa Barbara students who were protesting the Gaza war (“We Are Old Activists, We Are Jewish, and We Support the Student Protests Against the Gaza War,” April 30, 2024.) Now it is almost exactly a year later, and we remain united in denouncing the Israeli war on the people of Gaza.
This conflict is not really about anti-Semitism. It is about the independence and autonomy of universities in the United States. Surveys of American Jews show a deep split about the Gaza situation. Sizable percentages support U.S. pressure on Israel to achieve a ceasefire and express positive attitudes toward the student protests. Thousands of Jewish academics have signed a statement of opposition to Israeli and U.S. policy titled “Not in Our Name.” Jewish Voice for Peace — an explicitly anti-Zionist organization actively engaged in protesting the war — now claims a half-million supporters.
As educators, we note the complexities of difference among Jews, as with other peoples in the world. There is deep historic variation among Jews as to what they do believe or should believe. To equate Jewish identity with the goals of the Israeli state reflects a political agenda.
Some leading Jewish organizations, notably the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), currently act on the erroneous idea that “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.” The ADL assiduously monitors what it considers anti-Semitic episodes, but makes no distinction between anti-Jewish speech and action versus expression of opposition to Zionist goals. For the ADL, demonstrations of support for Palestinian justice are counted as anti-Semitic. ADL furthermore asserts that these protests are engineered by or connected to Hamas.
UCSB has been an ADL target. The ADL “report card on campus anti-Semitism” singled out UCSB for an “F.” In conjunction with this branding, the U.S. Education Department’s Civil Rights Office investigated UCSB among a number of schools for civil rights violations — the “F” turned to “D” only after UCSB agreed to certain policies, including establishing advisory committees on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. Nevertheless, the UCSB administration continues to be inundated with emails demanding that the campus stop “tolerating anti-Semitism.” This logic is that of “moral panic,” familiar to us as sociologists — finding scapegoats for events otherwise somehow disagreeable or threatening. This moral panic about UCSB has been further inflamed by a recently distributed film October 8, which features events at UCSB in an effort to discredit the antiwar protests, while ignoring Israeli crimes against humanity, such as the complete destruction of Gaza and the killing of more than 50,000 Gazans, most of whom were civilians.
The campus and community are being damaged by the weaponization of anti-Semitism. Some Jewish students undoubtedly feel offended and isolated, even personally attacked, by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist slogans and speeches. Charges of harboring anti-Semitism, often based on fabrication, offend other Jewish students, many of whom took part in the protests and encampment. These conflicts also demoralize UCSB staff members who have been trying to sustain the campus community through dialogue, education, and goodwill.
Meanwhile, international students across America are being targeted, without due process, for visa revocation, incarceration, and deportation. A massive attack on the research operations of our leading universities (including UCSB) is taking place, using the “charge of anti-Semitism” as its rationale. Middle Eastern studies programs are being destroyed by government fiat. Pro-Palestinian faculty and speakers are being silenced.
We’re old enough to remember the days of McCarthyism in the ’50s. McCarthyism’s playbook constructed “communism” as a demonic force requiring suspension of the First Amendment and of academic freedom in order to eradicate this foreign, satanic menace. The new McCarthyism has substituted “Hamas” for “commies” and charged peaceful protesters with being terrorists. In some versions, professors and even the university itself are named as the “enemy.”
We are not optimistic about resolving the conflicts and murders that have been taking place in Israel and Palestine. We remain horrified both by the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, and by the relentless Israeli mass killing in Gaza since then. But as UCSB professors with a total combined teaching effort here of 180 years (!) we are certain that the First Amendment right to free speech and to protest must remain in force, that academic freedom must be protected, and that charges of anti-Semitism must not be instrumentalized in cynical and hypocritical attacks on the university.
