Jewish Voice for Peace Op-Ed | Special to the Daily Cal | Photo: Vivienne Lin
On Sept. 4, 160 members of the UC Berkeley community — including students, alumni, staff and faculty — were notified that their names had been turned over to the federal government as part of an investigation into alleged antisemitism. As Jewish Voice for Peace, let us be clear: Handing over these names is not done out of concern for the safety of Jews. It is a collaboration with an authoritarian witch hunt, a disgusting descent into fascism and an active investment in the most live-streamed genocide in history.
U.S.-made bombs, funded by university dollars, have been raining down on Gaza. These UC system investments have made possible the nearly two years of ongoing genocide in Palestine, the cultural erasure of Palestinians on this campus and globally and the rapid expansion of one of the most repressive surveillance regimes in U.S. history. This surveillance attempts to suppress any mention of UC investment in weapons manufacturers who supply the means by which Israel commits genocide in Palestine. As a complicit agent of this genocide, the university has proven time and time again that it is committed to protecting its financial interests at the expense of Palestinian lives.
Jewish Voice for Peace condemns UC Berkeley’s transparent and sinister capitulation as a betrayal of its own supposed ideals and the campus community. The exploitation of Jewish safety to justify Palestinian death is reprehensible. As Jewish students, we reject accusations that say solidarity with Palestine is antisemitic. To stand against genocide and to stand in solidarity with Palestine is not just a human imperative — it is a core Jewish value. UC Berkeley’s actions are a weak attempt to hide its alignment with an antisemitic government by falsely claiming to care for Jewish students.
As anti-Zionist Jews on this campus, we have experienced antisemitism at the hands of Zionists; our members have been called “fake Jews,” “self-hating Jews” and “kapos.” In fall 2024, UC Berkeley destroyed our religious structure for the holiday of Sukkot in a display of overwhelming police force. Through these experiences, we see that our faith is disregarded and our perspectives are excluded from campus conversations concerning Judaism simply because we affirm Palestinian human rights. Done in the name of Jewish safety, the university’s willingness to comply with the U.S. Department of Education’s investigation — a witch hunt — is both despicable and cowardly, as well as a glaring attempt at currying favor with President Donald Trump’s administration.
Though the Trump administration is aligned with neo-Nazis and white supremacists, it is using this investigation to claim solidarity with Jews. This solidarity is a sham. The list is not intended to protect Jewish students but to intimidate those who advocate for a free Palestine. It would be a mistake to say that the university is being manipulated by Israel or the Trump administration. It is doing what it has always done: using war as a means to enrich its profits. From World War II weapons research contracts to Cold War military funding to weapons investments in South African apartheid, universities such as UC Berkeley have long profited from the war economy. This is the nature of imperialism. Violence is used to maintain control and extract wealth, and in this case, is done with a veneer of concern for Jewish safety.
This year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, deemed UC Berkeley a “hostile campus for systematic suppression” of anti-genocide students. Since Oct. 7, 2023, the campus community has been emboldened to enact Islamophobic violence on campus. A faculty member physically assaulted a Palestinian student who dared to say “Salam Alaikum”; administrators in leaked email exchanges said they “didn’t want anything to do with them Muslims” entering meditation spaces on campus; faculty have published op-eds calling for federal investigations into students. A staggering 85% of Muslim students on UC Berkeley’s campus have reported instances of Islamophobic harassment. And yet, accusations of antisemitism dominate conversations.
We see through UC Berkeley’s veil of progressivism and free speech for what it truly is: a PR campaign run by spineless pawns of fascism. This fabricated reputation attempts to cover their active complicity with rising authoritarianism to protect profits. In the last year, the Trump administration has withdrawn and threatened to withdraw federal funding from universities whose students have strongly vocalized support for Palestine, including Harvard University, Columbia University and UC Berkeley.
In recent congressional hearings, Chancellor Rich Lyons affirmed his commitment to free speech. However, by bowing to Trump, he and the broader UC system have proven their words cheap. From what we can see, neither he nor the university cares about student well-being. Their sole concern is maintaining the status quo.
Make no mistake: This status quo — a drive for profitability — is derived from the U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine. As our university surrenders the names of those who denounce the massacre of Palestinians, our campus administrators’ pockets grow fatter. However, the repression we see on this campus pales next to what Palestinians endure. Bombs paid for by our tuition dollars have decimated Gaza and have been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people — a number far higher than Western news sources care to report.
The investigation by the Department of Education is but one step in our nation’s attempt to silence the voices of those standing against this genocide. We are living through an intensified period where dissent is criminalized, solidarity is treated as a threat and the language of “safety” is used to justify state violence. Our ancestors experienced this in Nazi Germany and would be ashamed to see it repeated now. UC Berkeley has chosen to side with tyrannical power. This pattern endangers Palestinians above all and will forever be remembered as a bloody stain on the reputation of this campus.
