University Of California Narrowly Votes Down Proposal To Force High Schools To Teach Anti-Semitic Activism

 A committee of the University of California’s Academic Senate narrowly voted not to advance a proposal that would force every high school to teach anti-Semitic “critical” ethnic studies if they wanted students eligible for the university system.

Under a law called AB 101, California already requires all public high schools to teach ethnic studies, but requiring high schoolers to have taken such a course in order to even apply to a UC school — the largest college system in the nation — would impact high schools across the country, as well as private schools in California.

The version of ethnic studies required by UC would also be more extreme than the kind required by AB 101, which was somewhat toned down after Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed an earlier version because of its anti-Semitism.

UC ethnic studies scholars openly opposed a “guardrail” placed in that final bill that prevented them from promoting “bigotry,” saying such a ban interfered with ethnic studies’ mission as it relates to Jews and other topics.

The University of California Ethnic Studies Faculty Council in September wrote to Newsom to strenuously object to the requirement that ethnic studies not to “promote, directly or indirectly, any bias, bigotry, or discrimination.” 

“The so-called guardrails are a form of censorship and anti-Arab racism and function as ideological policing,” they wrote.

“Judgments about what constitutes an appropriate ethnic studies curriculum should be made by subject matter experts in the discipline, not by lobbyist groups or unelected bureaucrats,” they wrote, even though AB 101 is a law passed by elected representatives. They suggested Jews had used money to control the law, saying the ban on taxpayer-funded anti-Semitism training was because of “highly funded lobbying groups or special interests.”

The letter suggested that Jews are white and denigrated as “conservative” anyone who doesn’t want to paint them as oppressors rather that oppressed.

“Conservative groups and lobbyists, including those linked to ‘anti-CRT’ and anti-African American studies campaigns, are attempting to distort and destroy ethnic studies by mandating eurocentric studies of (white, European) ethnic groups. Ethnic studies is not ethnicity studies, much less a field for the reproduction of dominant or repressive forms of ethnonationalism,” they wrote.

After the October 7 attack on Israel, the Ethnic Studies Faculty Council lashed out at UC administrators for condemning Hamas’ terrorism.

“To hold the oppressed accountable for ‘terrorism’ reinscribes a colonial narrative,” they wrote. “In the strongest possible terms, the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council, a diverse statewide body that represents over 300 faculty systemwide, rejects recent UC administrative communications that distort and misrepresent the unfolding genocide of Palestinians.”

“We call on the UC administrative leadership to retract its charges of terrorism, to uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle, and to stand against Israel’s war crimes against and ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people,” they added.

On October 25, a collection of 115 Jewish and allied groups reminded the UC Board of Regents that these were the people in charge of putting together what high schoolers would have to be subjected to in order to even be eligible to apply to UC schools.

“UC faculty who cannot acknowledge that the Hamas massacre is terrorism and a crime against humanity, and who state that anti-Zionism and the elimination of the Jewish state is a core value of their discipline, must not be trusted to establish state-wide ethnic studies standards for California students. The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council’s disastrous admissions requirement proposal must be immediately rejected,” they wrote.

On November 3, the UC Academic Senate’s “Board of Admissions and Relations With Schools” committee quietly killed the admissions requirement — though they did so by only a single vote, and not because of concern for anti-Semitism but rather concern for how a new barrier to college could affect poor minorities.

At the beginning of the meeting, James Steintrager, chair of the Academic Senate, “remarked that the Area H Ethnic Studies propossal has raised concerns among the regents due to its association with the recent letter about the war in the Middle East from the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council.”

Committee chair Barbara Knowlton then “explained that this past June, the committee accepted the criteria devised by the Ethnic Studies Implementation Work Group (ESIWG). Now one consideration is whether requiring students to complete a course that satisfies the proposed Area H Ethnic Studies curriculum will be a barrier for high school students who want to attend UC,” according to meeting minutes.

A member pointed out that only two years of high school science were required because “under-resourced high schools can only offer two years.”

“Concerns about the ability of high schools to hire and train staff and purchase the new textbooks needed to teach Ethnic Studies curriculum when funding is in doubt are legitimate, as are concerns about further impeding access to the UC from already low-sending regions of California. The motion to transmit the proposed Area H requirement, voted on by BOARS in June, to Council for systemwide review was seconded. In an anonymous vote, six members voted against transmitting the proposal, five voted in favor, and one member abstained,” they added.

 

Further discussion about making it a recommendation instead of a requirement was tabled.

The UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council has made clear that its aim is activism, not objective scholarship, sponsoring an “Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism” conference to “share insights and organizing tools to support resistance… It will highlight victories, successful strategies, and paths of ongoing organizing.”

Unlike academic fields, a central tenet of ethnic studies is the quest to make it mandatory for everyone to be subjected to it, whether they like it or not. Much of what happens in ethnic studies classes is encouraging students to become activists demanding mandatory ethnic studies, with the adults then citing the wishes of children to pressure policy-makers.

Anti-semitism has been inextricably linked to their advocacy from the beginning. As some in California misunderstood that it is an inherent feature of the discipline, and thought Jews should simply be added to it as an oppressed ethnicity, prominent Californian ethnic studies teachers lashed out.

“Adding Jewish people to the model curriculum makes no sense. They were never in the original areas of study and as a group did precious little to help bring ES to our university and college campuses. And now they believe they have some say in the matter?” wrote Matef Harmachis, a teacher who remained on the payroll after grabbing a boy for wearing an Israel shirt, until he assaulted a Hispanic girl and blamed racism for his prosecution.