SAN DIEGO (SDJW) — As students at schools and universities return from summer vacations, the battle is being renewed on campuses across the county over Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians and the spillover impacts on Jewish students.
StandWithUs has urged the administration at UC Berkeley to investigate Hatem Bazian, a professor of Near Eastern and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, who was the founder of the first chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and is chair of the American Muslims for Palestine.
Meanwhile, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has issued a warning to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst that plans are illegal to exclude Israelis and professors of other nationalities who receive Israeli funding from an upcoming Women in German (WiG) conference.
Roz Rothstein, cofounder and executive director of StandWithUs, commented: “Professor Bazian’s long record of antisemitic statements is not an isolated lapse; it is a pattern. From spreading dangerous antisemitic memes online, to trivializing the Holocaust, to questioning Jewish peoplehood, to his latest libel that Jews ‘monetize antisemitism,’ Bazian has repeatedly crossed the line. Jewish students should never have to endure a campus climate in which antisemitism is normalized by faculty. UC Berkeley must take action now.”
StandWithUs elaborated on Bazian’s record in a news release: “Bazian’s antisemitism is not new: he urged audiences to scrutinize Jewish donor names on Berkeley buildings to “decide who controls this university,” shared grotesque antisemitic caricatures in 2017 depicting Jews celebrating murder, organ trafficking, and abusing welfare, and distorted Holocaust memory by claiming Zionists “partner(ed) with the anti-Semitic European powers” during World War II.
“Hatem Bazian’s remarks during his latest appearance underscore the danger of normalizing such rhetoric: he is also scheduled to speak at the upcoming People’s Conference for Palestine, a national gathering of thousands of activists and organizations in Detroit that promotes extreme anti-Israel agendas. His platforming at such a high-profile event demonstrates how his long record of antisemitic remarks is not only tolerated but amplified, further reinforcing concerns about a climate of hostility toward Jewish students and the broader community and the urgent need for the Berkeley administration to investigate and take appropriate action.”
Across the country, the Brandeis Center addressed the WiG controversy in a news release:
“The conference, scheduled to be held on the UMass Amherst campus on November 6-9 in full partnership with the University, prohibits anyone from relying on financial support from ‘Israeli institutions’ to attend and participate. WiG makes clear that this includes not only funding from Israeli governmental agencies, but ‘all Israeli academic and cultural institutions.’ In order to attend conferences and cover related expenses, though, Israeli scholars — like scholars worldwide — rely on the Israeli International Science Relations Fund, which is administered through Israeli universities.
“Given this, the ‘WiG BDS Policy is designed to ensure that Israeli scholars of German language, history, culture, and other overlapping disciplines, whether students, researchers, or faculty, are prevented from attending or giving lectures, presenting papers, participating in panel discussions, and otherwise enjoying the professional and personal benefits of the WiG Conference. The policy’s intent, purpose, and effect are to deny Israelis the same access, opportunities, services, and benefits that WiG offers to citizens and residents of every other country on earth.'”
The Brandeis Center demanded that “UMass must require, as a condition for conducting its conference on the UMass Amherst campus, that the WiG BDS policy not be in effect for any part of the conference.”
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