The University of California, Irvine, abruptly decided last month not to renew its contract with Rabbi Daniel Levine, a well-liked lecturer who until this coming academic year had taught the university’s foundational “Jewish Texts” course.

Levine told National Review that, given the addition of two anti-Israel faculty replacements, the decision appears to have been motivated by ideology.

Levine, who works as the rabbi for the Hillel of Orange County and taught the “Jewish Texts” course for the past three years, told NR that the move not to renew his contract is about more than just his job.

“This is problematic in general, because one of the wider themes that I think is relevant and goes far beyond just me and my contract is that there’s a fight right now about control over the Jewish studies program and the history department,” he said. “The head of the history department is attempting to control this program and fill it with faculty that have extreme anti-Israel ideologies.”

That department chair is Susan Morrissey, a professor whose research interests include such topics as “political violence and terrorism,” the histories of “suicide” and “emotion,” “subjectivity,” and “gender and the body.”

Morrissey, a member of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine organization, was one of many University of California system faculty and staff in ethnic and gender studies programs who signed an October 24 “statement of solidarity” in which signatories blamed Israel for the October 7 attack and claimed that it is wrong to “police Palestinian means of resistance.”

The faculty and staff described reports of sexual assault and killings of children committed by Hamas as “the regurgitation of centuries-old orientalist, colonialist, and Islamophobic tropes which work to manufacture consent to flatten Gaza” and urged “the community to practice critical media literacy when consuming mainstream media stories of violence against women and children committed by Palestinian resistors which serve to frame Palestinian freedom fighters as evil, monstrous ‘terrorists.'”

The UCI history department offered its support for students who organized the anti-Israel encampment on the school’s lawn in a series of messages and called on the university to enter negotiations with the demonstrators — demonstrators who demanded, among other things, that UCI “[e]nd all zionist university programs and collaborations with zionist organizations and individuals.”

That same department announced in a May 29 statement that it would bring two new professors to UCI instead of renewing Levine’s contract.

Rachel Smith, a current fellow at Columbia University’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies who holds a doctorate in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, will replace Levine in the fall of 2024. She will teach the “Jewish Texts” course in either the winter or spring quarter of 2025. The next visiting scholar, Myriam Fitoussi, will begin in the summer of 2025.

Both of Levine’s replacements signed an October 29 letter titled “Jewish Studies’ Scholars Say Jewish Studies MUST Demand a Ceasefire,” in which dozens of Jewish studies faculty, students, and alumni demanded that entities devoted to Jewish studies call for a list of actions including “the end of all U.S. funding to Israel immediately.” Those who signed the letter described Israel’s war against Hamas as “the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

A large number of Jewish students at UCI signed two letters addressed to the university administration, the first argued that Levine should be retained and the second described what the students characterized as a “conflict of interest” for Morrissey and concerns over the two replacement professors.

The students who signed the letter argued that the university’s decisions “run counter to the interests of the campus Jewish community,” especially given the antisemitism that has surged on campus and the role of the Jewish studies center in providing a safe haven for Jews at UCI.

They wrote that Morrissey’s involvement with Faculty for Justice in Palestine — an organization that attempted to pressure the university to cut funding for the Jewish studies center and, like the students, called for UCI to sever relationships with “Zionist organizations and individuals” — left the students “concerned that Professor Levine’s visibly Jewish identity, which is often assumed to entail support for Israel, is what led Professor Morrissey to choose not to renew his contract.”

The Jewish students also addressed the hiring of Smith and Fitoussi, writing that they are both outspoken in their opposition to Israel, that they are both recent graduates of their doctoral programs and therefore lack the necessary experience to serve in their new roles, and that their backgrounds do not comport with the aims of the Jewish Studies Center.

Smith, the students noted, has a background in Ottoman Jewish history, not Jewish history as a whole, while Fitoussi is a documentary filmmaker and not a scholar of Jewish history.

After students caught wind of the news that Levine would be replaced — and replaced by blatantly anti-Israel professors — individuals both inside and outside the broader university community began sending messages to the history department.

UCI humanities dean Tyrus Miller described concerns that the two new professors were hired because of their political views as a “misinformation campaign” that represents an “unacceptable and deeply reprehensible” attempt to “negatively influence and derail the academic mission of the university.” He said the two new professors will join the UCI faculty because of their academic experience and noted that Levine was a lecturer at the university, not a tenure-track professor. Miller said the university prefers to hire tenure-track professors when possible.

Levine, who also discussed this controversy with David Bahnsen on National Review‘s Radio Free California podcast, told NR he believes that UCI should be receptive to the students’ complaints.

“The school needs to start taking the pain and hurt of Jewish students seriously instead of chalking it up to conspiratorial thinking,” he said.

Moreover, Levine told NR that the decision to hire outspoken anti-Israel professors is another step toward the transformation of higher education into advocacy and activism rather than learning.

“I see my role as an educator, not an activist. I really dislike when educators, especially at universities, use their role as activism,” Levine said. “There are a lot of academics who pretend like what they’re putting out is based on good research, but instead, it’s based on these ideologies, and they’re just biasing the way these students are seeing the world.”

NR contacted UCI representatives for comment on the decision not to renew Levine’s contract and the two new hires. UCI communications staff said the university’s history department is “committed to supporting Jewish Studies through regular offerings of essential courses for the Jewish Studies minor.”

“Looking ahead, the department plans to offer History 18A (Jewish Texts) no less frequently than biennially, with the next offering scheduled for the winter or spring quarter of 2025,” the communications representative wrote. “Additionally, the department is preparing to welcome new Senate faculty members in July 2024 and July 2025, who will further support the Jewish Studies offerings. It is standard practice in academic departments to assign teaching responsibilities primarily to Senate faculty members, resorting to hiring Unit 18 lecturers as needed to address any curriculum gaps that Senate faculty cannot cover.”

UCI did not address any of NR’s questions about the two particular professors the department chose or Morrissey’s involvement with anti-Israel groups that seek to divert funding from the Jewish studies program.