[Order David Horowitz’s new book, America Betrayed, HERE.]

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 Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department at UC-Santa Cruz is #2 on our list. 

 The Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department at UC-Santa Cruz has utterly abdicated its responsibility towards political neutrality and academic freedom, instead choosing to side with Hamas terrorists and their Jew-hating allies on the left in blatant disobedience of university policy.

On October 11, 2023, just four days after Hamas’s massacre left over a thousand innocent Israeli civilians dead and hideously mutilated for the sole crime of being Jewish, the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department issued a statement titled “CRES Statement of Support for the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism.” This inflammatory piece, according to the Amcha Initiative, a group that tracks campus anti-Semitism, “condoned the massacre and maiming of thousands of Israeli civilians by completely negating any mention of the civilian death, torture, rape and kidnapping of Jews by Hamas and instead blaming Israel.”  The statement also “denigrated a former Jewish faculty member, and in doing so, jeopardized her safety, [and] denigrated Jewish organizations.”

Instead of expressing outrage over the murder of innocent Jews, the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department urged the public to understand that “What we are witnessing needs to be understood in the context of 75 years of settler colonial displacement, military occupation, and enclosure” and expressed that “The study of Zionism in the context of power is more imperative than ever.”

On October 20, 2023, the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies department again made their clear position on the Israel/Hamas war known, siding with Hamas. On its official university webpage, CRES posted that “As a department, we are observing the Palestinian-led Global General Strike and will not conduct university business as usual on 10/20/23. We are in full support of the strike to stand against Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza, itself an extension of the ongoing Nakba Palestinians have experienced for over 75 years.” Instead of condemning the literal genocide that Hamas attempted to perpetrate on the Jewish people (a genocide called for explicitly in the Hamas charter), CRES chose to accuse Israel of genocide for daring to respond in self-defense to the worst terrorist attack in its short history.

As part of this “Global General Strike” CRES blatantly defied the authority of UC-Santa Cruz by refusing to hold classes or conduct university business. Moreover, they urged students and other faculty at the university to do the same, and to express support and solidarity with Palestine, and therefore, with the party elected to run Gaza, Hamas.

“This is a call for civil disobedience” declared the notice posted by CRES.

“To all workers and students: We ask that you take Friday off to participate in the general strike. To all businesses: Do not open on Friday, October 20. To all citizens: Wear a symbol of international solidarity on this day. This day is a day of solidarity with Palestinians in Palestine and around the world. This day is a day of protest against repressive state terror against Palestinians worldwide. Solidarity with Palestine!”

Not content to just issue statements condoning Hamas’s barbarism, the Department followed up on this statement on October 24^th by co-hosting an event with the notorious Hamas-funded campus hate group, Students for Justice in Palestine. Titled, “The Genocide in Gaza in our Classrooms: A Teaching Palestine Workshop,” the event description makes its biases clear, promising to “contextualize the unfolding genocide on Gaza and offer resources for facilitating these discussions in your classrooms.”  The Amcha Initiative, a pro-Jewish watchdog group, described the workshop as “an egregiously one-sided event at which CRES faculty presented Hamas talking-points and offered graduate instructors resources for facilitating classroom discussions around the ‘unfolding genocide on Gaza.’”

On the same day that this event took place, flyers were discovered on campus that falsely accused Israel of bombing a hospital in Gaza, thus invoking ancient blood libel tropes against the Jews, an age-old form of anti-Semitism. In fact, as was quickly established and confirmed by numerous mainstream media outlets, it was a rocket launched by another Palestinian terror group, Islamic Jihad, that was responsible for damaging the hospital parking lot. Despite the clear facts of the situation, the poster made hyperbolic claims against Israel, declaring: “ON OCTOBER 17 THE STATE OF ISRAEL BOMBARDED A HOSPITAL IN GAZA KILLING OVER 500 PEOPLE,” “OVER 3000 PALESTINIANS MASSACRED THIS MONTH MOSTLY BY US FUNDED AIR STRIKES,” “THIS IS GENOCIDE.”

Just a few weeks later, on November 7^th, CRES again posted on its official university webpage that “The department will be observing the November 9 all-day sit-in at the base of campus. Skip school and work. Do not look away from the genocide. No business as usual! Education, food, art, vigil and ofrenda, and more.” The link for the event directs users to the UC-Santa Cruz Students for Justice in Palestine Instragram page, yet another instance of CRES openly affiliating with the Hamas-funded SJP hate group.

Nor is CRES’s pro-Hamas activism anything new. As the Amcha Initiative revealed in a new report, “the evidence we document dates back to May 2021, when CRES pledged departmental allegiance to ‘the struggle for Palestinian liberation’ and the academic boycott of Israel,” although “incidents involving CRES’s anti-Zionist political advocacy and activism have increased in frequency and intensity since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel.”

In a letter signed by over 400 University of California faculty members addressed to the UC Board of Regents, and printed in the Jewish Journal, CRES at Santa Cruz is singled out for particular opprobrium for its use of the University of California’s resources and reputation to promote anti-Semitism.

“CRES’s commitment to anti-Zionist political advocacy and activism, as a department and as part of its core mission, harms the University in many ways: it corrupts the most basic standards of scholarship and tarnishes UC’s reputation as a world-class research institution; it coerces the consciences of students and fellow faculty by chilling dissent and marginalizing anyone who disagrees with CRES’s political orthodoxy; it deprives students of accurate and crucial knowledge about a complex topic of global importance and violates their fundamental right to be educated and not indoctrinated; and, as Chair Leib has already noted, it incites animus and harm toward Jewish members of the campus community,” declared the letter.

The faculty missive to the UC Board of Regents also noted CRES’s flagrant refusal to follow university policy and excise pro-Hamas rhetoric from official university spaces: “Tellingly, less than a week after receiving a clear warning from the UCSC Provost highlighting UC policies prohibiting faculty from engaging in political advocacy in educational spaces, an invitation to join Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), a group wholly devoted to anti-Zionist advocacy and activism in collaboration with SJP, was posted to the CRES homepage and linked to the FJP’s founding manifesto, which was signed by more than 60% of CRES’s principal faculty.”

For its abhorrent support of Hamas and its repeated use of university resources to share pro-terrorist and Jew-hating progaganda, the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Department at UC-Santa Cruz deserves to be named one of the worst Jew-hating academic departments in America.

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