The U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce announced Tuesday that it had launched an inquiry into the University of California Berkeley for antisemitism, adding it to the list of universities being probed.
The announcement came after a series of antisemitic incidents on campus, including assaults on Jewish students and a recent mob attack in which enraged students, some allegedly using antisemitic slurs, pounded on glass doors to shut down an event with a pro-Israel speaker.
UC Berkeley professor Ron Hassner kicked off a sit-in protest 9 days ago, in response to the university administrators’ neglect in protecting Jewish students. On day 9, I had the chance to meet him and a group of Jewish students on the UCB Campus.
— MichaelRapaport (@MichaelRapaport) March 18, 2024
The brazen anti-Jewish… pic.twitter.com/zZ3hJiAsEB
Jewish groups have also sued Berkeley and its law school for antisemitism, including allowing student groups to exclude speakers who are pro-Israel — effectively, banning Jews.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported:
The committee’s investigation comes just nine days after the U.S. Department of Education announced it would add UC Berkeley to the list of schools being probed for possible discrimination.
The House committee has been investigating several universities for possible antisemitism, including Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the wake of a tense December 2023 hearing involving the presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT, all three faced intense pressure to resign. The presidents of Harvard and Penn acquiesced.
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Antisemitism at UC Berkeley has extended even to those who stand up against antisemitism. Recently, a class at the university disinvited a member of the Oakland City Council who had criticized Hamas terrorism against Israel.The committee asked the university to provide extensive documentation about its policies for addressing discrimination, all reports of antisemitic incidents, any disciplinary proceedings involving antisemitism or anti-Zionism, funding for Palestinian rights organizations on campus and funding from foreign entities.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
