Following turmoil, college leaders are working to “improve the environment on campus for Israeli students.”
The University of California Berkeley is expanding its hatred learning this fall, including in its Golden Bear Orientation, in response to school turmoil linked to pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Antisemitism Education Initiative Director Gregg Drinkwater told The College Fix in a recent telephone interview that the new programs will make sure leader rulers of student organizations adhere to school policies and procedures. He stated that training on both hatred and Islamophobia will be provided.
” Increasing consciousness of antisemitism helps … improve the school environment for Jewish individuals, university, and staff”, Drinkwater said.
The school had to adjust after its June choice to develop antisemitism education because The Golden Bear Orientation is typically planned a month in advance, he told The Fix.
Drinkwater noted that the program also includes a more in-depth arrangement for resident assistants in addition to their programs for new learners. Additionally, the university is “making sure that the management of documented student organizations are all in conformity with school policies and procedures,” he said.
” When individuals, faculty and staff have more awareness of and cultural competence around hatred, Judaism, Jewish career, Jewish history and culture, they’re naturally better positioned to recognize hatred when they’re seeing it or experiencing it or possibly engaging in it themselves”, Drinkwater said.
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He claimed that better-informed people are “better positioned to try and do anything” and” to be sympathetic to or knowledge of Israeli faculty, staff, and students who are reporting they are experiencing antisemitism.”
In stated that he thinks that “everyone has a role to play in… improving the environment for Jews in America and reducing antisemitism, in the same way that all of us play a role in combating racism or sexism.”
According to its Center for Jewish Studies place, Berkeley has run its Antisemitism Education Initiative since 2019 in partnership with school Jewish companies.
But, in June, after weeks of violent and destructive pro-Palestinian demonstrations both on and off school, Chancellor Carol Christ announced plans to expand the task.
In a letter to the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on Jewish Student Life and Campus Climate, Christ wrote of her “appreciation” for the advocacy work of Faculty Ron Hassner and Ethan Katz “in support of new college programs to deliver hatred learning to larger amounts of students, workers, and faculty”.
Christ said that” the ensuing rise in reports of antisemitic expression, including on our own campus, is deeply disturbing”.
” I fervently wish for there to be peace, safety, and respect for all members of our country’s and campus’s Jewish communities, and for the Israeli and Palestinian peoples”, Christ wrote.
The Fix reached out to Christ, Katz, and Hassner twice by email for comment, but received no responses.
In a federal lawsuit filed by the university earlier this year, it was claimed that it did not protect Jewish students on campus. However, the university claimed it had already implemented the “proposed’replacements ‘” mentioned in the case, The Fix reported.
According to the lawsuit, antisemitism incidents on campus included the physical assault of a Jewish student at a Hamas celebration rally, the disruption of a Jewish student prayer group, and pro-Palestinian events that made Jewish students feel threatened over the course of the school year.
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IMAGE: UC Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies
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