It was a dreary day in Berkeley, with spring seemingly on hold. On the California campus in mid-April, the magnolias were curled up and the Japanese cherry trees were dotted with droplets. Deborah Blocker had arranged to meet at the Free Speech Movement Café, but it was closed for renovations, replaced by a tent set up in front of the library.

Freedom of expression was also in a bleak state. Sixty years after the protests that made Berkeley the beacon of student dissent, the campus is paralyzed, gripped by an "Arctic" chill, as law professor Christopher Kutz described it. "People are afraid to talk or sign a letter on something as non controversial as the importance of the rule of law," he explained. "The [Trump] administration said they wanted to defend the freedom of speech. They crushed it."

Blocker is a French professor and an Italian studies expert specializing in Medici-era aesthetics in Florence. On March 27, she received an email from the vice president for legal affairs at UC Berkeley. The message informed her that the institution, under pressure from the federal tax force investigating anti-Semitism, had been equired to disclose the name, position, hiring date, phone number and personal email address of professors who had signed a petition regarding the conflict in Gaza.

Witness for the prosecution

The professor "didn't understand" what was happening. She thought she was being accused of anti-Semitism – she, the granddaughter of Louis Casimir Blanc, a Jewish polytechnic alumnus and resistance fighter, and William Blocker, a Zionist pharmacist from Brooklyn. A colleague had to explain the situation to her: The federal task force was actually seeking to call her as a witness for the prosecution in the anti-Semitism case opened against UC Berkeley and 10 other universities.

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