By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — As the former director of the Jewish Studies Program at San Diego State University for 18 years and holder of the Nasatir Chair in Modern Jewish History there for 24 years, I was outraged by the Horowitz Center designation of SDSU as one of the top ten anti-Semitic universities in the United States.
First, consider the source. For those of you unfamiliar with David Horowitz and the Freedom Center, check out the Wikipedia entry and Tablet article on him. The Southern Poverty Law Center considers his Center a far-right wing group noting:
“Horowitz, who spent his young years as a Marxist, has in recent years become a furious far-right antagonist of liberals and leftists. He also provides some funding support for other anti-Muslim ventures, including, according to the blog SpencerWatch.com, paying Spencer $132,537 to run the JihadWatch website. Horowitz sees no philosophical gradations; if you’re not in total agreement with his view of Islam, you’re in favor of Muslim hegemony. He believes the Muslim Brotherhood and “Islamofascists” control most American Muslim organizations, especially Muslim student groups on college campuses.”
The ADL sketch of him reads:
David Horowitz, founder of the right-wing conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center, provides Geller and Spencer with some financial support, including the sponsorship of Spencer’s Jihad Watch blog. In recent years Horowitz has sponsored “Islamofascism Awareness Week,” a project on college campuses that promotes anti-Muslim views and features events with anti-Muslim activists.”
Tina Malka, the associate regional director of the ADL director in San Diego, responded to the Horowitz listing with these words:
“It’s utterly ridiculous to call San Diego State University an anti-Semitic university. I don’t believe Jewish students on campus feel it’s an anti-Semitic environment.” In my own correspondence with the Hillel director at SDSU, the word “ridiculous” was also used to characterize placing San Diego State on the list.
The Horowitz Center issued its typical vilification of those who disputed its claims with the headline: “ADL Rushes to Defend Campus Anti-Semites.”
Unlike the Brandeis Center on Campus Anti-Semitism which was released this week, the Horowitz Center does not appear to have done any systematic surveying of Jewish students or on-campus investigations of the anti-Semitic incidents it lists. Instead, it looks like it compiled the list by merely googling the names of campuses and looking for postings about anti-Semitic incidents.
For example, for San Diego State, two of the incidents involve the student government’s debate over divestment. If you look closely at the April 2014 entry, you’ll notice that though the BDS resolution was introduced over three different senate meetings and discussed, it “failed to pass.” The vote was 16 against, 3 for, and one abstention. Is that an example of student anti-Semitism?”
The majority of anti-Semitic incidents listed concern anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian speakers who have been on campus. I usually do not attend these talks, but, when I have, the Aztecs for Israel group (the pro-Israel student group) and Stand With Us have handed out information about the topics addressed by the speakers and have challenged their statements in the Q and A. The Report equates anti-Semitism with any demonstrations in support of the Palestinians or critical of Israeli policies. While I disagree with the characterizations of Israel I have seen on the Apartheid Wall display and from quotes I have read from some of the speeches, they usually fall within the parameters of protected free speech.
Of the 14 anti-Semitic incidents listed at SDSU, only four go beyond the limits of free speech and university rules. One involves the verbal harassment of students running a pro-Israel table in the commons space; the second is the dropping of leaflets warning students to evacuate the Student Union before it is bombed by the IDF. Students for Justice in Palestine was charged with violating university rules because “when you ask someone to evacuate when there is no intention of evacuation that’s disrupting university business. Unfortunately, although there is a disclaimer at the top, it’s still a violation.” Third, the Horowitz Center includes “a speaker event with Greta Berlin, co-founder of the Free Gaza Movement. Berlin created a controversy when she tweeted a blatantly anti-Semitic video.” If Berlin showed that video at SDSU, I would consider that anti-Semitic, but the problem is the Horowitz report doesn’t contain a link to any coverage of Berlin’s talk, only a sketch of her political activities and an article about tweeting the anti-Semitic video 2 years earlier and then removing it from her Twitter account. Finally, SJP students interrupted a talk by a pro-Israeli speaker.
Yes, San Diego State has an active SJP group-but it also has an active pro-Israeli student group. It has a fine Jewish Studies Program which annually organizes a 4 lecture symposium on Israel and hosts a Visiting Israeli Professor who usually teaches courses on Israel and the Arab-Israeli Conflict in his or her discipline. Having attended the University of Wisconsin when it was one of the epicenters of student activism, I can attest to the fact that SDSU is a rather apolitical campus, in part because the majority of students don’t live on campus and are only there when they have classes.
What is disheartening about the hype surrounding Horowitz Center Story is that so many newspapers, including the San Diego Jewish World, for which I write, posted it without any background on the Horowitz Center or attempt to verify the report’s validity. And then, as happens automatically in our age of internet communications, it got picked up and posted by newspapers and websites around the country and in Israel. As the Brandeis Survey indicates, anti-Semitism poses a problem on American campuses today, but, if we are to effectively counter it, we need to be careful in distinguishing between valid expressions of free speech and real acts of anti-Semitism.
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Baron is professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. This article also appeared on a blog maintained for Jewish studies faculty members across the country. Your signed comment may be posted in the space provided below or sent to lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com
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I taught at SDSU for more than forty years and never thought of it as an anti-Semitic campus. I helped found the Jewish Studies Department, taught a course for them and had students from all walks of life. I never felt threatened by the democratic dissent displayed on campus by the pro-Palestinians.
Each year Yale Strom, a visiting professor, hosts Moslem and Jewish music/musicians on campus. In the last five or so years there has not been one anti-Semitic display by any group on campus.
Like Laurie Baron, “I was outraged by the Horowitz Center designation of SDSU as one of the top ten anti-Semitic universities in the United States.”
The Horowitz Center must have gotten the information from Fox News.
“A soch en vay.”
I love comments like this. Someone I have never met judges my politics.
Regarding Horowitz, let me quote from the Tablet Profile of him:
His most deeply felt grievance, however, is a perceived lack of encouragement from mainstream conservative institutions. (This is not necessarily a financial issue: His foundation, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is underwritten by the Bradley, Olin, and Scaife foundations.) In his turn-of-the-21st-century heyday, shortly after publishing Hating Whitey, an assault on affirmative action and race-based quotas—or “the anti-white racism of the left”—that preceded his campaign against reparations for slavery, Horowitz appeared on op-ed pages, talk radio, and television nearly every day. (He even wrote a bi-weekly column for the liberal Salon.com.) But in 2012, his books are not just ignored by the New York Times, but by the Weekly Standard and National Review. “There are plenty of conservatives who don’t like my manner,” he admitted. “It’s too aggressive, too Jewish, too leftist
I suspect Baron’s main problem with Horowitz, is Horowitz’s disavowal of Marxism and his educated switch to Conservatism. I further suspect that anyone to the right of Baron, would be considered an extreme right winger. no shades of conservatism.
I assume you are referring to the Palestine Solidary Week which is sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine and, if you are correct, the Muslim Student Association. If this occurs only at campuses that have chapters of SJP, then there are 80 other universities that have such a week.
While I don’t agree with SJP’s goals, it has a right to conduct political demonstrations and host speakers on campus as does Aztecs for Israel. The point of my article is that these can only be designated as anti-Semitic when they involve or incite violence towards Jewish students on campus.
Let me refer you to the legal ruling on whether similar activities at UC-Berkeley
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Berkeley-students-anti-Semitism-suit-dismissed-2425191.php
But the main issue I wanted to raise was the dubious way the Horowitz Center compiled this list. If the number of anti-Israel activities is a gauge of anti-Semitism at universities, then I wonder how UC-Berkeley, UC-Irvine, UC-Davis, and even UCSD, all of which as passed BDS resolutions, do not appear on the
list, but SDSU which soundly defeated it does. — Laurie Baron
How many universities have an annual “hate week” sponsored by Muslim students associations?