Antisemitism at CUNY, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown

The October 7 Hamas-led massacre by thousands of Gazans did not spark antisemitism on American campuses. It merely exposed how deeply embedded it already was. At CUNY, UC Berkeley, and Georgetown, students and professors came out to celebrate the torture and murder of Israeli victims of terror — with institutional protection, foreign funding, and a growing network of terror-affiliated faculty and student activists.

UC Berkeley protestors come for Jews

Organizations like Canary Mission have tracked and documented the alarming volume of antisemitic activity from students and professors — revealing how extremism isn’t on the fringe anymore. The Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs have brought lawsuits against the universities. Now, the House Education & Workforce Committee is bringing the presidents of these three universities to Washington, D.C. on July 9.

CUNY: A Campus Captured by Hate

Canary Mission has documented dozens of CUNY students and professors who:

  • Featured speakers from U.S-designated foreign terrorist groups like Samidoun
  • Praised Hamas and Islamic Jihad
  • Supported Intifada
  • Called for the extermination of Zionists and Israelis
  • Calls Zionists “White Supremacists”

One notable example is Nerdeen Kiswani, a CUNY law graduate and founder of Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a group which openly calls for “globalizing the intifada” and “confront Zionists” wherever they are, including their homes and workplaces. Despite – or because of – this, she was chosen as the keynote speaker for the 2022 CUNY Law commencement — a decision defended by the law school.

Professors at CUNY have supported Hamas terrorism and protect antisemitic groups like Students for Justice in Palestine. They include Saadia Toor, Eve Tuck, Danny Shaw and Lucien Baskin. They have:

  • Called Israelis “Nazis”
  • Called to “Globalize the intifada”
  • Posted on social media the desire for destruction of Israel

They proudly teach this in their classrooms in departments that include “Center for the Humanities,” rebranding their noxious antisemitism as a component in the fight for human rights. This isn’t just tucked into a comment during a class; there are literally classes on globalizing the intifada.

UC Berkeley: The Legalization of Hate

Influence Watch has tracked Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FLP) which was founded in the 2023-4 school year. It is a network of professors which is associated with the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) and “advocates that universities end study abroad programs with Israeli universities, and advocates that universities end disciplinary action against students involved in pro-Palestinian campus protests.” There are chapters at UC Berkeley and Georgetown, among others.

Professors and students at Berkeley have:

In December 2022 – before the October 7, 2023 massacre – the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education (OCR) launched a formal investigation into UC Berkeley Law School over a controversial anti-Zionist bylaw adopted by several student groups in August. The groups sought to ban Zionists – individuals and groups – from campus.

Professors like Hatem Bazian are affiliated with several antisemitic and anti-Israel groups. He regularly calls out Jews and pro-Israel advocates as the leading spreaders of “Islamophobia” who are evil manipulators of Congress. He teaches courses at Berkeley on “Islam in America: Communities and Institutions” and “De-Constructing Islamophobia and Othering of Islam.” He addresses audiences and asks why there hasn’t been an intifada in the United States.

The school has been sued over its “unchecked antisemitism.”

Georgetown: Foreign Funds, Foreign Values

Georgetown – located in the nation’s capital of Washington, D.C. – is one of the most bought universities in America. It has received roughly $1.3 billion from foreign actors, with over $1 billion coming from Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas.

Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown, is a regular in Qatar. Georgetown opened a campus in the sheikhdom and Groves interacts regularly with the royal family, seemingly as a conduit for influence in the nation’s capital.

Though Georgetown has a more diplomatic tone, Canary Mission has documented:

  • Students and guest speakers who supported Hamas and BDS
  • Faculty like Jonathan Brown, who have repeatedly called Israel practicing “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.” He said Jews and Christians view the Middle East through an anti-Muslim lens but Muslims do not think of the conflict as stemming from antisemitism. It’s a remarkable dynamic considering Brown is a director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. The prince is a Saudi billionaire.

Georgetown has hosted a number of people with links to jihadi terrorism:

Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as covered by CAMERA

Unsurprisingly, Georgetown students have rallied to the terrorist group Hamas and its supporters in the aftermath of October 7, joining in the Global Intifada against Jews.

The Middle East Forum did a 30 minute video about Georgetown’s ties to Hamas sympathizers. It is worth watching:

Conclusion: Universities Incubate And Spread Antisemitism

The picture is clear. Professors promote terror. Students celebrate slaughter. Hostile governments fund it, and administrations on the take allow it to fester.

If these universities continue to protect hate under the banner of “academic freedom,” they will soon graduate leaders who believe murder is resistance, and Jewish life is expendable.

“We are going to have an intifada on every college campus! We are going to shut down all the Zionist events!”

  • Husam Kaid, YouTube, Nov 15 2019
People from CUNY in Times Square in 2019 calling for an intifada in every classroom and the destruction of Israel

This is not a free speech issue. It’s a moral emergency.

ACTION ITEM

Call Rep. Tim Walberg’s office at (202) 225-6276 to thank him for holding the session on campus antisemitism.

Call your senator to support the DETERRENT Act and call Sen. Thom Tillis’s office at (202) 224-6342 to thank him for sponsoring it.

Related:

Preview of July 9, 2025 House Education Committee Session On University Antisemitism: Foreign Funding (July 2025)

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

CUNY’s New Anti-Education Professor Of Intimidation (February 2025)

Hamas At Hunter College (May 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

CUNY’s New Anti-Education Professor Of Intimidation

The City University of New York schools have long been home to anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents. In the wake of the Iranian Proxies-Israel War, CUNY has decided it needs to ratchet up the temperature as Israel defeats the various armies of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Palestinian Arab terrorist groups.

CUNY Hunter posted a job search for two new positions for “Palestinian Studies.” The positions were to be housed in one or more of various established departments including “Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science or Women’s and Gender Studies.” It is a chance for a creative teacher to craft stories for American students about common attributes of the Arabs in the region.

Or one would think. As the job description makes clear, this is a role to lambaste Israel, not to lay out the story of regional Arabs.

The administration wants the course to be critical of Jews living in the region via a manufactured “settler colonialism.” It wants to condemn the Israeli military of committing “genocide.” It expects a course to teach that the government of Israel practices “apartheid.”

It’s a course that is built on attacking Jews and the Jewish State.

The invitation for “diverse theoretical” approaches and “innovative courses” seems to offer the professors a chance to craft a syllabus with no anchor in fact. The anti-reality classes in Gender Studies may invert the reality that Palestinians are grossly homophonic, have beheaded gays and has a significant population that has fled to Israel, to a concoction that Hamas welcomes gay people in its leadership and hosts a “pride” parade. Perhaps courses will whitewash Palestinian “honor killings” and mother’s who pray for their children to be martyrs who kill Jews, with a fabricated narrative of liberated women.

The anti-Israel and anti-reality professor is further invited to “engage in collaboration across the college” and “spark our students’ imaginations” to envelop the entire university to become anti-Israel agitators.

The situation for Jews at CUNY has long been terrible. It seems that the institution is now preparing to join the “Global Intifada” to intimidate and harass those on campus, and educate a new generation on creative fiction to annihilate Jews thousands of miles away.

Related articles:

The Diaspora Intifada (September 2024)

Hamas At Hunter College (May 2024)

Hamas’s Willing Executioners (July 2021)

Biden Enables Anti-Semitism On College Campuses

The terrible news seems to come out daily: anti-Semitism on the rise in cities and towns across the country. One of the worst locations is college campuses, where the government has the power to reduce the scourge, and refuses to do so.

Beyond The US And Beyond This Year

To be clear, the problem is not just local and not only recent.

In March 2022, United Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson saidI think that our universities, for far too long, have been tolerant of casual or indeed systemic anti-Semitism… it’s important that we have an anti-Semitism task force devoted to rooting out anti-Semitism in education,” calling out the Jew hatred in universities.

US President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 13899—Combating Anti-Semitism in December 2019 to address the problem, stating “my Administration is committed to combating the rise of anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic incidents in the United States and around the world. Anti-Semitic incidents have increased since 2013, and students, in particular, continue to face anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on university and college campuses.”

The United States government was trying to tackle the issue in November 2017 when it held a hearing to consider interpreting Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect Jewish students and other religious minorities from discrimination. At that time, Rabbi Cooper, Associate Dean, Director Global Social Action Agenda, Simon Wiesenthal Center called out for the government to help combat the hatred, arguing that “The failure of schools and Federal Government to protect Jewish students on campus from harassment is one of the most pressing issues for the American Jewish Community.”

But educational institutions and the government are backing away from providing protections to Jewish students on campus.

Failure of Leadership

The City University of New York (CUNY) has seen an enormous spike in anti-Semitic incidents. To combat the menace, over 100 non-profit institutions wrote a letter on June 28, 2022 to the NYC Council Committee on Higher Education to address “the alarming rise of antisemitism on campuses across the country, and at CUNY in particular.” After being postponed once, the committee finally met to address this serious issue, but CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez did not attend. Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov was angered at the chancellor’s absence and saidlast night, in a very cowardly fashion, the chancellor said he won’t appear. Instead he sent a lawyer to represent him. What a sham, what an insult to the Jewish community of New York.

President Biden is similarly aware of the scourge of anti-Semitism on campuses and opted to delay action until after mid-term elections.

President Biden is aware of the scourge of anti-Semitism on campuses and opted to delay action until after mid-term elections.

Shortly after Biden took office in February 2021, Kara McDonald, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. She saidwe must educate ourselves and our communities to recognize antisemitism in its many forms, so that we can call hate by its proper name and take effective action. That is why the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, with its real-world examples, is such an invaluable tool.”

It was the logical and appropriate time for Biden to follow-through on Trump’s EO 13899 and the federal government’s efforts to apply the IHRA definition to Title VI. Title VIprohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.” As most colleges receive federal funds and would collapse without them, and the fact that Jews do not fall neatly into “race, color or national origin,” Jews were counting on inclusion in the Title VI clause together with the working definition of anti-Semitism.

But Biden decided to postpone a decision on the Title VI matter until December 2022, after mid-term elections.

Biden Fears the Far-Left Anti-Zionists

While Biden was willing to champion the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism, he fears members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) within his party, and the threat that they will primary incumbent party centrists out of office. The IHRA definition has several references to Israel including “Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel“, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” and “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.” These anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic statements often come from the mouths of Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Cori Bush (D-MO), members of the DSA. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), a leading shrill voice of the DSA, has stated plainly that her squad will come after centrists if the Democratic leadership doesn’t bend to their extremist policy demands, including lambasting Israel. Biden doesn’t want to anger the squad and risk his party’s slim majority.

President Biden with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (left) and Rep. Debbie Dingell, May 2021. (photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

While studies have shown that “much of the antisemitic activity [on college campuses] was perpetrated by anti-Zionist students and student groups” at schools with “faculty academic boycotters,” and the federal government has a clear pathway to clamp down on the Jew hatred, President Biden has chosen to place party politics ahead of the safety of the young adults of the most persecuted minority in America.

Related articles:

Hamas And Harvard Proudly Declare Their Anti-Semitism And Anti-Zionism

Courageous Jews On Hostile Campuses

Hamas’s Willing Executioners

The Joy of Lecturing Jews

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live.

Please Don’t Vote for a Democratic Socialist

Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’