Continuous efforts to separate themselves from Jewish people

From Academic blog -

Another piece apparently initiated by Judith Butler.

This letter functions as a smear campaign, not only against the Congressional hearings, but also rejects the premise that antisemitism exists in serious forms on university campuses. The authors categorically deny the existence of any crisis at all and reject acknowledgment of lived experiences from Jewish students who have raised concerns. Doing so is itself a form of erasure of Jewish students - an old antisemitic trope.

The letter’s rhetorical strategy is to delegitimize all claims of antisemitism as politically motivated attempts to suppress criticism of Israel. They neglect the fact that antisemitism, which they masquerade as political critique, deserves serious attention.

The letter weaponizes Jewish ethical language (pikuach nefesh, tzedek) to justify one political position while implicitly branding other Jews—those who are Zionist, or even just concerned about antisemitism—as complicit in state violence or as pawns of authoritarianism. This flattens Jewish identity into a monolith in exactly the way the authors claim to oppose.

Most troubling is the letter’s inversion of the accusation: it suggests that efforts to protect Jews from antisemitism are themselves antisemitic. This Orwellian twist makes the conversation nearly impossible because any concern for Jewish safety is recast as a form of oppression. The result is a chilling message: that Jewish suffering and fear will only be recognized if it aligns with the authors’ ideological commitments.

In this way, the letter actively denies and ridicules any lived experience of antisemitism, silencing those who speak out by dressing that silencing in the language of justice. They fail to notice that the eventual goal of those with whom they align is to erase them as well.

“On July 15, 2025, City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Robert M. Groves, Interim President of Georgetown University, and Rich Lyons, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley will testify before the House Committee on Education and Workforce at a hearing on “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding, and Ideology.”

As Jewish faculty at the three campuses, we call on universities not to comply with any and all policy directives from local, state, and national governments that equate the critique of the Israeli state with antisemitism. The first is a political viewpoint protected by free speech. The second is a form of discrimination that should be opposed as any form of racism should be. The tactical expansion of the very idea of “antisemitism” to authorize repressive measures manipulates the history of repression under which Jews suffered and forgets the ethical and political grounds for opposing forms of state repression that criminalize legitimate viewpoints and chill free speech.

We write to affirm that there is no rampant crisis of antisemitism on our campuses, despite prolonged attempts by the current administration to persuade the public that there is one. This campaign of repression and censorship, including deportation and detention, is evidence of an Islamophobic and racist campaign against political dissent. The public opposition to Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza is based on firm legal and ethical principles, and should not be mistaken for antisemitism.

In fact, the repression and censorship now levied against faculty and students, for their alleged antisemitism targets Muslim, Arab and other students of Middle East heritage confuses the public, as it conflates critique of and opposition to the State of Israel with antisemitism. It is also an antisemitic campaign, including attacks on Jewish faculty and students who criticize Israel, making use of conspiracy theories such as those advanced in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther,” and propagating the belief that all Jews feel the same way about the State of Israel, denying the complex history of Jewish views, including those critical of Zionism, state violence, censorship and racism. This campaign to smear political dissenters as antisemites draws on histories of state repression and violates fundamental standards of academic freedom in universities and freedom of speech within constitutional democracies. Further, the crisis it creates draws attention away from the most threatening form of antisemitism today, namely, the antisemitic convictions of white, Christian nationalism, which have been repeatedly expressed by powerful actors in government, media, and centers of social life.

It is imperative to oppose antisemitism, but to do so, we need to have an informed idea of what it is. The Congressional hearings are part of a broader campaign of fear-mongering, forfeiting the responsibility we all have to identify any and all forms of racism according to the criteria that rightly governs such judgments and instead weaponizing spurious accusations of antisemitism to advance a far-right authoritarian attack on higher education. Precisely because antisemitism and numerous forms of racism continue to exist, none of us can afford to have the charge of antisemitism cheapened. The charge becomes meaningless when it becomes a blunt instrument on the part of political powers, increasingly authoritarian, to repress political dissent and evacuate the obligation we all have to use language responsibly to fight the interlocking oppressions in society.

To defend the lives of Palestinians against obliteration is to defend life and oppose state powers that now wield death-dealing powers without restraint. It is the embodiment of the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh. To defend the Palestinian right to live is to defend the shared life of all people to survival, persistence, and flourishing. It is the embodiment of the Jewish principle of tzedek (justice). These are principles that can be called ethical, religious, or legal. In each case, they are not antisemitic. To say otherwise is to imply that Jewish people as a whole support the horrific death-dealing of the Israeli state, a false and antisemitic idea advanced by the current administration and those organizing this Congressional hearing. Such a claim is not only offensive, but untrue.

Signed,
Judith Butler, UC Berkeley
Alexandra Juhasz, CUNY
Lois Wessel, Georgetown University
Brooke Lober, UC Berkeley
Keith P. Feldman, UC Berkeley
Laura Tanenbaum, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Rosalind Petchesky, CUNY (emerita)
David Arnow, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Naomi Schiller, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Maddy Fox, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Jean Halley, College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Michelle Fine, Graduate Center, CUNY
Yana Kuchirko, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Naomi Braine, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Supporters:
Victor Silverman, Pomona College (BA, MA, PhD UC Berkeley)
Rebecca Alpert, Temple University
Terri Ginsberg, Rutgers University (formerly CUNY faculty)
Laura Goldblatt, University of Virginia
Beth Ribet, UCLA & UC Law San Francisco
Elyse Crystall, UNC-Chapel Hill (BA CUNY)
Alice Rothchild, MD, Harvard University (retired)
Melissa Levy, University of Virginia
Emmaia Gelman, Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emeritus at Boston University
Michael Drexler, Professor of English, Bucknell University
Benjamin Robinson, Indiana University Bloomington
Bernadette Brooten, Professor emerita, Brandeis University
Daniel Segal, Professor Emeritus, Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges
Leigh Kimberg, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Max Greenberg, Goucher College
Sam Shuman, University of Virginia
Lynne Joyrich, Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
Barry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Wake Forest University
Charles Manekin, Prof of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Maryland
Jonathan H. Grossman, University of California, Los Angeles
Marla Stone, Professor of History, Occidental College
Margot Weiss, Wesleyan University
Alan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis College Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
Mark LeVine, PhD, professor of History UC Irvine, Hunter College alumnus and adjunct lecturer, 1987 - 1998
Susan Slyomovics, Distinguished Professor, UCLA
Beth Stephens, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University (J.D., UC Berkeley School of Law).
Sherry Linkon, Professor of English, Georgetown University
Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown, Assistant Teaching Professor of Disability Studies, Georgetown University