Insider’s guide to campus bias faced by Jews

March 31, 2014

UC Santa Cruz Professor and cofounder of AMCHA Initiative, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, spoke about the alarming rise in campus anti-Semitism at T.E.A.M.’s 5th Anniversary Celebration on Sunday, March 30, at Congregation Beth Am in San Diego.  Nicole Bernstein from StandWithUs and Jean-Jacques (“J.J.”) Surbeck, T.E.A.M. cofounder, also spoke at the event about what it takes to stand up for Israel in the trenches of U.S. campuses.

By Tammi Rossman-Benjamin

SANTA CRUZ, California–How many of you saw the recent news story about the African American student at San Jose State University who was racially harassed and bullied by his dormitory roommates?  As soon as the student came forward to report the incident, university, county and state officials began investigating. Within days, prosecutors had filed hate crime and battery charges against three of the roommates and the university suspended them.  Within weeks, State Assembly Speaker John Perez announced the creation of a Select Committee on Campus Climate, and its first charge was to look into this incident, and to find a way to prevent incidents like this one from occurring on California campuses.

Compare that to the situation for Jewish students. Over the last several years Jewish students on campuses across California have also been physically, emotionally and intellectually harassed, intimidated, threatened and bullied, not only by their fellow students but also by some of their professors — and distressingly, university administrators have turned a blind eye to this long-standing and pervasive anti-Jewish bigotry and they have ignored Jewish students’ pleas for help.

To underscore what I am saying, just two weeks ago the University of California released a huge campus climate survey of all UC students, and lo and behold Jewish students on many campuses, including at UCSD, reported the highest level of discomfort with overall campus climate of all identified religious groups.

I want to talk about the hostile environment that many Jewish students are facing on California campuses today, and why the situation is growing more and more alarming. And then I’d like to talk about what we – the dedicated community activists who care about the safety and well-being of Jewish students – can do about the problem. KEEP READING HERE