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Professors and administrators have ‘academic legitimacy that signals to students what is morally respectable,’ AMCHA Initiative director tells The College Fix
A recent report by the AMCHA Initiative reveals evidence of employees at the Universities of California propagating an “anti-Israel agenda that has fueled harassment, exclusion and intimidation of Jewish and pro-Israel students.”
Much of campus antisemitism is employee-driven because “faculty and staff possess something students do not: institutional authority … the academic legitimacy that signals to students what is morally respectable,” initiative Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The College Fix.
AMCHA Initiative is a non-profit organization that investigates, documents, educates about, and combats antisemitism at American colleges and universities. AMCHA means “your people” in Hebrew.
The report, released in February, is titled, “When Faculty Take Sides: How Academic Infrastructure Drives Antisemitism at the University of California.”
It asserts that, although most of the focus on antisemitism has been on students, the “hostile or exclusionary campus conditions documented here reflect a governance breakdown.”
The University of California System says its leaders are reviewing the report.
“The University takes the findings in the AMCHA Initiative report seriously and is reviewing the incidents cited within it,” a spokesperson for the Office of the President told The Fix in a recent email. “Academic freedom and freedom of expression are core values at UC, but we will take action to respond to and counter antisemitism and hate incidents when they occur.”
The spokesperson additionally stated that the university system has taken “numerous steps” to combat antisemitism over the past few years. In January, its Board of Regents approved amendments to make disciplinary actions for faculty and staff faster and uniform across campuses.
However, the background section of the amendment document stated that a university workgroup focused on campus expression decided that “existing policies adequately address conduct involving free speech, campus safety.”
AMCHA’s report focuses on three universities in the University of California System: UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, and specifically the supposed anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish faculty and staff within them.
For example, the report notes, “Academic departments and programs used official channels for anti-Israel/anti-Zionist advocacy in ways that exceeded the bounds of individual faculty speech,” including official department statements, department-sponsored anti-Israel events, and one-sided political course content, among other avenues.
Statistically, “harassment, threats, intimidation, exclusionary conduct, and eliminationist rhetoric rose sharply” after the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, according to the report.
For example, at UCLA, at least 18 campus entities run by faculty and staff sponsored events with speakers who “urged disruptive protest actions, dismissed reports of extensive sexual violence on October 7 as propaganda, and framed antisemitism allegations as baseless,” the report found.
At Berkeley, the report pointed to its employment of “at least 171 faculty who publicly endorsed an academic boycott of Israel — one of the largest documented cohorts of academic boycotters at any U.S. university.”
UC Santa Cruz allegedly fared no better. Its chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine “operated as a faculty political infrastructure promoting anti-normalization and endorsing maximalist boycott/exclusion demands.”
The chapter also declared “‘Zionism is not welcome on our campus’” in response to a Jewish Unity Walk, according to the report.
AMCHA’s Rossman-Benjamin taught Hebrew and Jewish studies at UC Santa Cruz for two decades before moving into her current role.
“When faculty use that authority to promote … the idea that Zionism — or Jewish self-determination — is uniquely illegitimate, they are not simply expressing private political views,” she told The Fix in a recent email.
“They are signaling, through the university’s own structures, that Jewish and Zionist students are suspect, unwelcome, or unworthy of equal participation,” Rossman-Benjamin said.
Several University of California institutions have been involved in litigation over similar antisemitism allegations.
In February, the U.S. Department of Justice sued UCLA for allegedly turning a “blind eye” to a hostile work environment against Jewish and Israeli faculty and staff in the wake of the 2023 Hamas terrorist attack, The College Fix reported.
Additionally, the University of California System agreed to pay more than $6 million in 2025 to settle with Jewish students who alleged that UCLA failed to protect their safety. The students said they were blocked from accessing parts of campus during anti-Israel protests in the wake of the 2023 terrorist attack, The Fix reported previously.
MORE: Former UCSB student government president sues school alleging antisemitic harassment
