Faculty members for weeks have aided pro-Palestinian students protesting and camping on university grounds, but not all professors are fans of their anti-Israel agenda.
The newly launched Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement seeks to create a national network of academics to stand against “antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Israel activity on their campuses,” as well as stick up for Jewish students facing bullying and worse.
“We needed to show students that there are faculty, hundreds, thousands even, that just will not tolerate their being occupied or harassed and intimidated,” said Miriam Elman, chair of the Academic Engagement Network, which presented the faculty group last month.
“It’s really a vocal minority that’s moving forward a lot of this kind of ugly, nasty activism in the faculty space,” Ms. Elman told The Washington Times. “There’s so many faculty that don’t support that at all.”
A major motivation for the group’s formation: the Faculty for Justice in Palestine Network, which boasts chapters at nearly 100 universities since its formal launch in February, including Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University.
Spurred by a call from the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, Faculty for Justice in Palestine seeks to defend the free-speech rights of students and intercede on their behalf “if security guards and administrators attempt to shut down their protests and teach-ins.”
“Our hope is that FJP groups will become a fixture on college campuses, just as SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] chapters have,” said Andrew Ross, a New York University professor, and University of California Santa Barbara professor Sherene Seikaly in a March 15 op-ed in Inside HigherEd.
Ms. Elman, who taught at Syracuse University for 13 years, said she and other academics are “really worried about these new chapters and what it’s going to mean for the campus climate.”
“We’ve been really concerned about the language, the messaging, their activism,” she said. “It’s just like a ramped-up negativity from the faculty. That’s a big part of why we want to do this visible movement, so that there’s a different voice, and it’s not just one group.”
At some universities, professors have become an integral part of the anti-Israel protests. Last week, Columbia faculty and staff wearing orange vests formed a human chain to stop outsiders from entering the sprawling “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” erected on the school’s West Lawn.
Faculty members have also joined pro-Palestinian activists at the University of Southern California, the University of Texas at Austin, New York University and other protest hotbeds.
Also stoking concerns are outspoken anti-Israel professors like Columbia’s Joseph Massad, who described the “jubilation and awe” that erupted after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, part of what he called the “war of liberation” between the Palestinians and their “cruel colonizers.”
His Oct. 8 article in the Electronic Intifada had House Republicans demanding his dismissal, but while such academics have become highly visible, Ms. Elman said the “silent majority” of faculty members are cut of a different cloth.
“Most faculty are not part of Faculty for Justice in Palestine. But that group is so noisy and vocal that they give the impression that they’re much, much larger, and capture the narrative,” she said. “So this is going to be a real pushback to that. And I think our faculty are fed up.”
Her experience with the Academic Engagement Network is illustrative. Founded in 2015 to counter the rise of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, the organization now has more than 1,000 members on 322 campuses.
Ms. Elman said the impetus for the Faculty Against Antisemitism Movement “actually came from our faculty members. They were asking us, ‘Can we do something more activist? Can you give us T-shirts?’”
Interest soared when University of California Berkeley professor Ron Hassner decided to hold a “sleep-in” in March to protest antisemitism on campus. For two weeks, he refused to leave his office, but invited people to drop by and visit by keeping a light on in his seventh-floor window.
“My slogan was, if my students can’t walk across campus safely, then I’m not going to walk across campus. I’m going to stay in my office,” Mr. Hassner told The Washington Times. “My office is set up like a living room, with a sofa, an espresso machine, and I brought in a mattress.”
He received more than 100 visitors on average every day, two-thirds of them students. Another 33 California professors followed his example by dragging mattresses in their offices and flipping on the lights.
“When Ron Hassner did his thing, you had all these faculty in California in our network saying, ‘We’re going to do a one-night action in solidarity with Ron,’” Ms. Elman said. “We thought, ‘Wow, that is amazing. But we thought, could we do this on a national level? From there was born this idea of Faculty Against Antisemitism.”
For FAAM’s first campaign, #KeeptheLightOn, faculty are encouraged to follow Mr. Hassner’s example by leaving a light on in their windows “as a beacon to their Jewish students, showing support and solidarity for them, and to publicly demonstrate their commitment to fighting antisemitism.”
As protests go, it may not be on the same level as the violent takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia, but it’s possible that you don’t have to sow strife to change minds.
Mr. Hassner never broke a single window or set up a single tent, and yet Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ agreed to his three requests: Ensure that all students can pass through Sather Gate unimpeded; invite back any speaker whose talk was interrupted or canceled, and mandate antisemitism and anti-Islamophobia training for students who supervise other students.
“She called me on my cellphone out of the blue and said, ‘Hey, here’s what’s happening, you can go home now,’” Mr. Hassner recalled.
He said most faculty members are sympathetic to Israel, not Hamas, and yet their voices are frequently drowned out by the anti-Israel wing. By bringing pro-Israel faculty together, the FAAM initiative can provide safety in numbers.
“I think you will agree that the vast, overwhelming majority of faculty are not Israel haters,” Mr. Hassner said. “I think there’s a small minority terrorizing students and faculty. At Berkeley, it’s maybe four or five. There’s a silent majority caught in the crossfire that doesn’t know what to do.”
He said that “if all they do is carry mugs and T-shirts saying, ‘I’m Against Antisemitism,’ then it will give people courage.”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.