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Editor’s note: Since the barbaric Hamas attacks against Israel on October 7^th, American universities have become an undeniable locus of Jew hatred within our nation. Much attention has deservedly been paid to the radical campus groups like Students for Justice in Palestine who call for the genocide of the Jews and cheer the terrorists of Hamas. What has received less attention—but should in fact rank as the universities’ worst offense—is the Jew hatred promoted by official departments and institutes of the universities themselves. In the case of our campuses, Jew hatred is “the call coming from inside the house.” 

The Freedom Center is exposing these academic institutes and programs as “The Top Ten Jew-Hating Academic Departments” in a new report. We will be publishing one school per day as a series on Frontpage. The Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado-Boulder is #7 on our list.  

The Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Colorado-Boulder has demonstrated its Jew hatred by demonizing the world’s only Jewish state as a perpetrator of ethnic cleansing and genocide and ludicrously claiming that Israel is guilty of the worst violence in its conflict with Hamas.

In a statement released barely two weeks after Hamas’s barbaric slaughter and mutilation of over 1200 innocent Israeli citizens, the Department absurdly attempted to argue that Israel was the aggressor in the conflict with Gaza and that Hamas’s actions should not be labeled “terrorism.”

The Ethnic Studies Department’s narrative of the conflict is so entirely inverted from the truth of the matter, that while reading it one could be forgiven for thinking one had plunged down Alice’s rabbit hole.

“Unfortunately, starting October 7, 2023…we witness another unprecedented genocidal attack on the Palestinian people, an intentional collective punishment and forced displacement with unprecedented levels of air bombings on civilians,” begins the statement, which attributes no responsibility for the conflict to Hamas or the Palestinians whatsoever. Reading the statement in a vacuum, one could be persuaded that Israel, rather than Hamas, had launched an unprovoked attack on an innocent party.

Labeling Israel’s military response as “war crimes,” “collective punishments,” and “genocide,” the Department questions Israel’s “supposed ‘right to defend itself,’” arguing that this critical freedom of all nations is a mere excuse “to ethnically cleanse Palestinian peoples (with support of the ‘west’) through constant bombardment driving them southward away from their homes and communities to free up more land for the ongoing Israeli settler colonialist occupations.”

Instead of condemning Hamas’s barbaric acts of terrorism, the Department takes issue with the use of that term, writing, “We also reject the language of ‘terrorism’ used by the US and Israel to justify the Israeli state killing machine.”

While acknowledging in a single sentence that “historically, Jews have been victims of genocide”—without mentioning that they continue to be the targets of genocidal rage from Hamas and much of the Muslim world—the Ethnic Studies Department “caution[s] against false equivalences between the settler colonial violence of disproportionately powerful militarized states on one hand and colonized peoples on the other,” adding that, “The state of Israel’s violence against Palestinians in Gaza and other parts of occupied Palestine is not a ‘conflict’ that is equally violent ‘on both sides.’”

The Department’s statement here is so ludicrous that it invites ridicule. Does the Department really mean to claim that Israel—the only Jewish nation in the world, attacked on the day of its founding by five Arab neighbors, which witnessed the murder, rape, mutilation and torture of over 1200 innocent men, women, and children by Hamas terrorists—has been disproportionately violent?  Israel, which hinders its own military impact by warning Palestinian civilians to vacate before air strikes? Israel, whose offers of a ceasefire in exchange for the return of all hostages were summarily rejected by Hamas? The pure gall of the Ethnic Studies Department in arguing that Israel is the more violent party and the aggressor in this conflict illustrates the absolute ideological corruption and desecration of the truth in academia.

Given the Department’s inverted narrative of the conflict, it is no surprise that “The Department of Ethnic Studies stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination. Full stop.”  Nor that the Department denies the right of Israel to exist, stating, “We join the Palestinian call for liberation in every corner of Palestinian lands, adding our voice to the protests that have been taking place across the world, including in Colorado, in support of Indigenous Palestinians’ right to life, land, and return.” The reference to “every corner of Palestinian lands” is clear—it is a call for the dismantling of all of Israel, a call for the destruction of the homeland of the Jewish people.

So egregious and counter-factual was this statement, that even in the far-left echo chamber of academia, it proved controversial. In a statement released just three days later on October 26, CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip DiStefano distanced the university from the Ethnic Studies Department’s statement. “While the principles of academic freedom and freedom of expression protect the speech of University of Colorado Boulder faculty, staff and students, that does not mean their points of view represent the perspectives of the university—nor that we endorse them,” he wrote. “The statement recently posted on the Department of Ethnic Studies website is not an official CU Boulder position on the Israel-Hamas War. The University of Colorado president and chancellors shared a joint leadership statement on Oct. 11.”

In an interview given later in December, DiStefano went further, admitting that he thought the Department’s statement was anti-Semitic. This statement is seemingly at odds with DiStefano’s insistence that the statement was protected by academic freedom. Individual faculty members are granted academic freedom in determining what topics to study and what papers to publish. Academic freedom does not entitle an official department of the university to use university funds and resources to promote Jew hatred.

A week after it was posted, the Ethnic Studies department removed the statement from its website—although the removal was not meant to convey that its sentiments were in error. Instead, the Department claimed that it was pulled due to “intersectional oppression and attacks” which allegedly put its faculty and students in danger. In an ironically-titled “Statement for Peace” issued on October 30^th, the Department explained: “Because the Department of Ethnic Studies and our faculty, staff, and students find ourselves under attack for the statement we had previously shared on our website, we are removing the statement because we do not wish anyone in our community to feel unsafe. As scholars and academics, we remain committed to our research and teaching mission,” and adding, “This removal should in no way be seen as a lack of commitment to our mission statement.”

For its heinous refusal to acknowledge Hamas’s acts of terrorism against Israel and its blatant demonization of Israel through a contorted narrative that denies the Jewish state the right to its own defense, the Ethnic Studies Department at CU-Boulder deserves its place among the top Jew-hating academic departments in the nation.

Previous articles in series:

[1] ‘Jew-Hating’ Asian American Studies Program Exposed at Northwestern University.

[2] UIUC’s Department of Latino Studies Endorses ‘Jew Hatred’.

[3] U. Maryland Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies: A Case Study in ‘Jew Hatred’.