Antisemitism claim against UC Berkeley groups

Two pro-Israel attorneys have filed a civil rights complaint against UC Berkeley over the refusal by nine law school student groups to invite guest speakers who support Zionism. The attorneys said anti-Zionism is antisemitism and that the groups, and the university, are legally required to host speakers of differing viewpoints.

The groups are led by Law Students for Justice in Palestine and include Law Students of African Descent, Women of Berkeley Law and the Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association. They total nine of about 100 organizations in the 1,100-student law school. They adopted bylaws Aug. 21 saying they would not host pro-Zionist speakers, who describe Israel as a Jewish state, and would support a boycott of goods made in Israel.

The student groups say Zionism is used to justify the displacement and oppression of Palestinians. But in a complaint filed Friday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, attorneys Gabriel Groisman and Arsen Ostrovsky defined Zionism as “the Jewish people’s right to selfdetermination and liberation in their ancestral homeland, the Land of Israel, which has for millennia formed an integral part of Jewish identity.”

“A rejection of Zionism ... is an act of antisemitism and direct assault upon the very core ethnic and racial identity of Jewish students,” the lawyers wrote.

They asked federal officials to hold UC Berkeley responsible for the student groups’ actions and to order the university either to require the groups to repeal their policies, or to cut off their funding. If the Office for Civil Rights decides the complaint plausibly claims violations of federal law, it can conduct an investigation and, depending on the results, refer the case to the Justice Department for court action.

The law school’s dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, said he disagrees with the student organizations’ exclusion of Zionists — a policy, he told the groups, that might bar him from appearing as a speaker because he supports “the existence of Israel” — but said that they have a right to invite speakers who agree with their views.

“Obviously, a college Republicans’ group could decide only to invite conservative speakers,” or a women’s-rights group could reject speakers who oppose abortion, Chemerinsky wrote in a column for the Los Angeles Times. “To require student groups to invite speakers of views they loathe would violate the 1st Amendment as a form of compelled speech.”

Since August, some pro-Israel publications have alleged that the Berkeley campus contains or promotes “Jewish-free zones.” Chemerinsky said a truck has been driving around the law school with a large picture of Adolf Hitler alongside the words, “If you want a Jewish Free Berkeley, raise your right hand,” and another truck has displayed names of students from the nine organizations under a banner that reads “Berkeley Law’s Antisemitic Class of 2023.”

The lawyers’ civil rights complaint sounded a similar theme in more-restrained language.

“By effectively saying ‘Zionists are not welcome,’ these student groups — and by extension Berkeley, from its failure to act — are excluding, marginalizing and silencing Jews, and contributing to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty and staff,” wrote Groisman, a Florida attorney, and Ostrovsky, who is based in Israel.

They cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2010 upholding a policy by UC College of Law San Francisco (formerly Hastings) that required student clubs to allow members regardless of their beliefs, and its denial of funding to a Christian club that excluded LGBT students and nonbelievers.

That ruling, however, applied only to the clubs’ membership and not to their practices of hosting speakers. Chemerinsky said his law school has an “all-comers” policy that requires student organizations to accept members regardless of their views.

Zoha Khalili, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal, said Monday that the student groups have a legal and moral right to boycott Zionist speakers.

“These are organizations that care about human rights,” she said. “They shouldn’t be forced to check their support for Palestinians ... at the door.”