ANTI-SEMITISM SPREADING EVEN IN SMALL CORNERS OF CALIFORNIA

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 30, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ANTI-SEMITISM SPREADING EVEN IN SMALL CORNERS OF CALIFORNIA”

 

As a group, Californians have never been known as a significantly bigoted bunch. But world events may be changing that.

 

Yes, openly expressed prejudice against blacks, Latinos and most other minority groups is not tolerated on any public school or university campus in the state.

 

Without prompting, administrators clamp down on such incidents, whenever and wherever they pop up.

 

Few attending classes on any public campus would dare openly employ the N-word against black fellow students or use other derogatory terms like “wetbacks” or “gooks.” At the very least, suspensions would result.

 

But things have been very different with open anti-Semitism, or Jew hatred, the world’s oldest form of racist discrimination.

 

Elite public campuses with top admission standards from UC Irvine to Berkeley, UCLA and Davis have seen incidents where Nazi symbology like swastikas were openly painted on walls, with few or no consequences. Top private colleges, too, including Stanford University, have seen similar incidents. Until the current academic year and a concerted Trump administration campaign against it, little or nothing was done to fight such open displays of racial/religious hatred.

 

Now, however, the Justice Department has a task force examining whether some new anti-bias rules are effective. The approximately $400 million in federal funding withdrawn this spring from New York’s Columbia University served as a stern first warning to officials of other schools.

 

Legal actions by the Washington, D.C.-based Louis Brandeis Center first called federal attention to unsafe conditions for Jewish students on some large California campuses.

 

Now the newest filings from the Brandeis center and a few associated groups indicate anti-Semitism in California extends to even some obscure corners of the state.

 

Dramatic stories of harassment, insults and threats from some little-watched locales show this is far from isolated on large campuses, as it often is portrayed.

 

No one blinked very hard when allegedly anti-Semitic behavior and lack of significant administrative responses to it were charged at Berkeley’s public schools in a Brandeis center complaint, down to the junior high level.

 

That was Berkeley, after all, long celebrated for extreme behavior. What, then, about the Etiwanda school district in a corner of San Bernardino County including parts of Rancho Cucamonga?

 

Here’s what a federally filed claim from the Brandeis center says happened there to a 12-year-old girl subjected to repeated anti-Semitic bullying and harassment who allegedly got no help from her school leaders and teachers. “Outdoors on school grounds,” says the document filed with the Department of Education, “a student struck her repeatedly with a stick and then with bare hands.” When the victim called out for help, she was allegedly told to “shut her stupid Jewish ass up.” Then she was pinned against an outdoor table and choked until she escaped, red-faced and coughing. 

 

The same girl later allegedly endured more insults in her classroom based on her Jewish identity. Bullying by other students, says the complaint, lasted weeks and one student told the Jewish girl “This wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t Jewish.”

 

This stuff had nothing to do with Israel or Zionism, two causes often reviled on many campuses. It was pure Jew hatred.

 

The Brandeis complaints also take up anti-Jewish harassment at Cal Poly Humboldt, the former Humboldt State University outside Eureka. Instead of addressing openly anti-Semitic talk and behavior there, the document charges, administrators encouraged Jewish students to hide their Jewish identity to avoid being targeted.

 

Brandeis also details anti-Semitic activity at the private Scripps College, part of the Claremont College consortium near Pomona.

 

There, the complaint says, Pomona College, another consortium member, banned Scripps students who had vandalized buildings and disrupted classes during a demonstration idealizing the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacres, but “Scripps bent over backward to ensure Pomona’s bans would have as limited an impact on (those students) as possible.”

 

The complaint also notes that a student-run coffee house on campus closed for a day "in memory of a Hezbollah terrorist.” It adds that the coffee house refuses to hire "Zionist" students and refuses to let Jewish groups hold meetings there. Meanwhile, pro-Hamas groups are reported to meet there weekly.

 

All these events occurred in relatively less prominent academic environments than those recounted in previous complaints. Taken separately, they would be isolated events, but together they suggest that anti-Semitism has somehow embedded itself in many parts of California.

 

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net