Students at San Francisco State University are suing school administrators, alleging that they have been complicit in creating a pervasive campus culture of anti-Semitism.
The Lawfare Project, a New York-based think tank involved in the suit, said in a press release that SFSU had “a long and extensive history of cultivating anti-Semitism and overt discrimination against Jewish students.”
According to the suit, the university “has not merely fostered and embraced anti-Jewish hostility -it has systematically supported ... student groups as they have doggedly organized their efforts to target, threaten, and intimidate Jewish students on campus and deprive them of their civil rights and their ability to feel safe and secure as they pursue their education at SFSU.”
In bringing the suit, the plaintiffs cited the cancellation of an April 2016 campus speech by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, following “genocidal and offensive chants and expletives by a raging mob that used bullhorns to intimidate and drown out the Mayor's speech and physically threaten and intimidate members of the mostly-Jewish audience.” Campus police were said to have stood down and refused to protect the event on the orders of senior university administrators.
Other examples of campus anti-Semitism included a 2002 rally in which Jewish students were targeted with calls of "Hitler didn't finish the job,” a 2009 event calling for the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel and a 2016 statement by University President Leslie Wong asserting that the physical safety of Jewish students was a “political issue.” More recently, Wong declined to categorically state that Zionists were welcome on campus.
Speaking with the Washington Post, recent graduate Jacob Mandel asserted that he “didn’t have the right to speak on my own campus” and that he “felt afraid as a Jewish student.”
“The administration was actively working against me,” he said. “I felt really powerless.”
In response, a University spokesman said that SFSU has been “working closely with the Jewish community, among other interest groups, to address concerns and improve the campus environment for all students” and that these “efforts have been very productive and will continue notwithstanding this lawsuit.”
Amanda Berman, the Director of Legal Affairs at the Lawfare Project, disagreed.
“"Every couple of weeks, another anti-Semitic incident occurred; another Jewish student faced harassment or intimidation on campus; another member of Hillel or AEPi was targeted; another openly degrading comment surfaced from a member of the administration; or another student faced recalcitrance when trying to benefit, the same as all other students, from the opportunities and privileges of enrollment at SFSU,” she said in a statement.
“These defendants seem to believe that they are above the law, that discrimination against Jews is entirely acceptable, and that their response to criticism must go only so far as to placate Jewish donors. It is time for profound institutional change at SFSU, and since the faculty and administration is entirely unwilling to pursue such a goal, Jewish victims of this pervasively hostile environment have been left with no choice but to ask a federal court to compel it."
