On July 15, 2025, City University of New York Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Robert M. Groves, Interim President of Georgetown University, and Rich Lyons, Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley testified before the House Committee on Education and Workforce at a hearing on “Antisemitism in Higher Education: Examining the Role of Faculty, Funding, and Ideology.”

As Jewish faculty at the three campuses, we call on universities not to comply with any and all policy directives from local, state, and national governments that equate the critique of the Israeli state with antisemitism. The first is a political viewpoint protected by free speech. The second is a form of discrimination that should be opposed as any form of racism should be. The tactical expansion of the very idea of “antisemitism” to authorize repressive measures manipulates the history of repression under which Jews suffered and forgets the ethical and political grounds for opposing forms of state repression that criminalize legitimate viewpoints and chill free speech.

We write to affirm that there is no rampant crisis of antisemitism on our campuses, despite prolonged attempts by the current administration to persuade the public that there is one. This campaign of repression and censorship, including deportation and detention, is evidence of an Islamophobic and racist campaign against political dissent. The public opposition to Israel’s genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people in Gaza is based on firm legal and ethical principles, and should not be mistaken for antisemitism.

In fact, the repression and censorship now levied against faculty and students, for their alleged antisemitism targets Muslim, Arab and other students of Middle East heritage confuses the public, as it conflates critique of and opposition to the State of Israel with antisemitism. It is also an antisemitic campaign, including attacks on Jewish faculty and students who criticize Israel, making use of conspiracy theories such as those advanced in the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther,” and propagating the belief that all Jews feel the same way about the State of Israel, denying the complex history of Jewish views, including those critical of Zionism, state violence, censorship and racism. This campaign to smear political dissenters as antisemites draws on histories of state repression and violates fundamental standards of academic freedom in universities and freedom of speech within constitutional democracies. Further, the crisis it creates draws attention away from the most threatening form of antisemitism today, namely, the antisemitic convictions of white, Christian nationalism, which have been repeatedly expressed by powerful actors in government, media, and centers of social life.

It is imperative to oppose antisemitism, but to do so, we need to have an informed idea of what it is. The Congressional hearings are part of a broader campaign of fear-mongering, forfeiting the responsibility we all have to identify any and all forms of racism according to the criteria that rightly governs such judgments and instead weaponizing spurious accusations of antisemitism to advance a far-right authoritarian attack on higher education. Precisely because antisemitism and numerous forms of racism continue to exist, none of us can afford to have the charge of antisemitism cheapened. The charge becomes meaningless when it becomes a blunt instrument on the part of political powers, increasingly authoritarian, to repress political dissent and evacuate the obligation we all have to use language responsibly to fight the interlocking oppressions in society.

To defend the lives of Palestinians against obliteration is to defend life and oppose state powers that now wield death-dealing powers without restraint. It is the embodiment of the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh. To defend the Palestinian right to live is to defend the shared life of all people to survival, persistence, and flourishing. It is the embodiment of the Jewish principle of tzedek (justice). These are principles that can be called ethical, religious, or legal. In each case, they are not antisemitic. To say otherwise is to imply that Jewish people as a whole support the horrific death-dealing of the Israeli state, a false and antisemitic idea advanced by the current administration and those organizing this Congressional hearing. Such a claim is not only offensive, but untrue.

Institutions listed for identification purposes only.

Signed,
Judith Butler, UC Berkeley
Alexandra Juhasz, CUNY
Lois Wessel, Georgetown University
Brooke Lober, UC Berkeley
Keith P. Feldman, UC Berkeley
Laura Tanenbaum, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Rosalind Petchesky, CUNY (emerita)
David Arnow, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Naomi Schiller, Brooklyn College, CUNY ok
Maddy Fox, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Jean Halley, College of Staten Island and the Graduate Center, CUNY
Michelle Fine, Graduate Center, CUNY
Yana Kuchirko, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Naomi Braine, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Corey Robin, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Stephen Rosenbaum, UC Berkeley
Tony Platt, Center for the Study of Law & Society, UC Berkeley
Rutie Adler, Lecturer, Coordinator Hebrew Language Program, UC Berkeley, Retired (UC Berkeley Alum)
Estelle Tarica, Professor, UC Berkeley
Sarah E. Chinn, Hunter College, CUNY
Charles Hirschkind, UC Berkeley
Beth Evans, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Sarah Levin, UC Berkeley
Diane Auslander, Lehman College, CUNY
Nicholas Baer, UC Berkeley
Hannah Zeavin, UC Berkeley
Geoffrey G. O’Brien, UC Berkeley
Damon R. Young, UC Berkeley
Ramsey McGlazer, UC Berkeley
Roni Masel, UC Berkeley
Jonathan Cornick, Queensborough Community College, CUNY
Douglas A. Medina, Guttman Community College, CUNY
Ernest Ialongo, Hostos Community College, CUNY
Larissa Swedell, Queens College, CUNY
Kathleen Barker, Medgar Evers College, CUNY
Jason Young, Hunter College, CUNY
Jeffrey Skoller, UC Berkeley
Wiilliam Drummond, UC Berkeley
Philip A. Pecorino, Queensborough Community College, CUNY
Elya Piazza, PhD, UC Berkeley
Laurel Kallen, Adjunct Assistant Professor of English, Lehman College, CUNY
Yulia Grinkrug, UC Berkeley
Jacob Segal, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY
Rae Blackbird, UC Berkeley
Nathaniel Wolfson, UC Berkeley

Supporters:
Harriet Friedmann, Emerita,, University of Toronto (BA, university of Michigan, PhD Harbour University.)
Victor Silverman, Pomona College (BA, MA, PhD UC Berkeley)
Rebecca Alpert, Temple University
Terri Ginsberg, Rutgers University (formerly CUNY faculty)
Laura Goldblatt, University of Virginia
Beth Ribet, UCLA & UC Law San Francisco
Elyse Crystall, UNC-Chapel Hill (BA CUNY)
Alice Rothchild, MD, Harvard University (retired)
Melissa Levy, University of Virginia
Emmaia Gelman, Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Irene L. Gendzier, Professor Emeritus at Boston University
Michael Drexler, Professor of English, Bucknell University
Benjamin Robinson, Indiana University Bloomington
Bernadette Brooten, Professor emerita, Brandeis University
Daniel Segal, Professor Emeritus, Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges
Leigh Kimberg, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
Max Greenberg, Goucher College
Sam Shuman, University of Virginia
Lynne Joyrich, Professor of Modern Culture and Media, Brown University
Barry Trachtenberg, Rubin Presidential Chair of Jewish History, Wake Forest University
Charles Manekin, Prof of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Maryland
Jonathan H. Grossman, University of California, Los Angeles
Marla Stone, Professor of History, Occidental College
Margot Weiss, Wesleyan University
Alan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis College Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan
Mark LeVine, PhD, professor of History UC Irvine, Hunter College alumnus and adjunct lecturer, Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara
Susan Slyomovics, Distinguished Professor, UCLA
Beth Stephens, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University (J.D., UC Berkeley School of Law).
Sherry Linkon, Professor of English, Georgetown University
Ly Xīnzhèn M. Zhǎngsūn Brown, Assistant Teaching Professor of Disability Studies, Georgetown University
Miller Oberman, The New School
Michelle I. Gawerc, Professor of Sociology, Loyola University Maryland
Daniel Hirschman, Associate Professor of Sociology, Cornell University
Shimon Edelman, Professor of Psychology, Cornell University
Orian Zakai, Associate Professor of Hebrew/Israeli Literature and Culture, George Washington University
Elisabeth Anker, Professor of American Studies, The George Washington University
Shira Robinson, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, The George Washington University
Chloe Ahmann, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Cornell University
Jennifer Spitzer, Associate Professor, Literatures in English, Ithaca College
Dara Orenstein, Associate Professor of American Studies, George Washington University
Melissa Finell, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Rachel Rubin, Adj Assistant Professor of Public Health, University of Illinois Chicago
Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara
Jeff Share, School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA
Julia Greenberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Joel Beinin, Donald J. McLachland Professor of History, Emeritus, Stanford University
Jessamyn Conell-Price, Associate Clinical Professor, UCSF
David Letwin, Rutgers University
Troy Shinbrot, Rutgers University
Lealah Pollock, University of California San Francisco
Beverly Voloshin, Professor Emerita, San Francisco State University
Beth F. Baker, Professor Emerita, California State University, Los Angeles
Howard Swerdloff, Rutgers University
Anne Wolf, Senior Adjunct Professor, California College of the Arts (UC Berkeley Alum)
Noga Wizansky, Retired Adjunct Professor, California College of the Arts (UC Berkeley Alum)
Shira Klein, Associate Professor of History, Chapman University
John Willoughby, Professor of Economics, American University
Susan S. Lanser, Professor Emerita, Brandeis University
Marjorie N. Feld, Babson College
Philip N. Cohen, University of Maryland
Jodi Melamed, Professor of English, Marquette University
Jonathan Feingold, Boston University School of Law
Katie Biello, Brown University School of Public Health
Margaret Litvin, Boston University
Alex Gourevitch, Brown University
Dan Froot, UCLA
Elsa Auerbach, University of Massachusetts Boston
Lynne Layton, BIDMC, Harvard Medical School
Rachel Rosenbloom, Northeastern University School of Law (UC Berkeley Alum)
Michael Birenbaum Quintero, Boston University
Laura Green, Northeastern University (PhD, UC Berkeley)
Paul Fess, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY
Keely McCarthy, Chestnut Hill College
Julia Shatz, California State University, Fresno (MA, PhD, UC Berkeley)
Daniel Kleinman, PhD, Boston University
Julia Halperin, Emerson College
Lisa Rofel, University of California, Santa Cruz
Nina Silber, Professor Emerit, Boston University
Paul Marchese, Queensborough Community College, CUNY
Susan D. Bernstein, Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Aaron Berman, Professor Emeritus, Hampshire College
Joan Meier, NFVLC Professor of Clinical Law, George Washington University Law School
Jeffrey Gutman, George Washington University Law School
Steven J. Heyman, Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, Illinois Tech
Caroline Levine, David and Kathleen Ryan Professor of the Humanities, Cornell University
Caroline Kahlenberg, University of Virginia
Beatrice F. Manz, Tufts University, Emerita
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, University of New Hampshire
Elisha Cohn, Cornell University
David Rohrlich, Boston University
Viva R. Horowitz, Hamilton College
Naomi Guttman, Hamilton College
Jeffrey Melnick, UMass Boston
Cynthia Franklin, University of Hawai’i
Jonathan Graubart, San Diego State University
James Schamus, Columbia University
Melanie Wall, Columbia University Irving Medical Center (non-Jewish ally)
Nina Berman, Professor of Journalism, Columbia University
Michael Harris, Professor of Mathematics, Columbia University
J. Blake Turner, Columbia University Irving Medical Center (non-Jewish ally)
Masha Raskolnikov, Associate Professor Cornell University (UC Berkeley alum)
Melissa Weininger, California State University, Northridge
Rhonda FLevine, professor of Sociology, emerita, Colgate University
Penny Rosenwasser, instructor, City College of San Francisco
Susan Bernofsky, Columbia University
Daniel Friedrich, Teachers College, Columbia University
Maggie Hennefeld, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Sharon Schwartz, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University
Emily Saltzman, Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver
Julie Carr, Professor, University of Colorado, Boulder
David Kurnick, Rutgers University
Dan Berger, University of Washington Bothell
Cynthia Kaufman, De Anza College
Fred Block, Research Professor, UC Davis
Leonard Sklar, Emeritus Professor, San Francisco State University
Judith Surkis, Professor of History, Rutgers University
Michael Rothberg, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, UCLA
Carlos Davidson, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Studies, San Francisco State University
Seth L. Sanders, Professor Emeritus of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies, UC Davis
Steve Leikin, Lecturer Emeritus of U.S. History, San Francisco State University
Grace Cho, Professor of Sociology, College of Staten Island, CUNY
Jacob Remes, Clinical Associate Professor, New York University
Daniel Brooks, Associate Professor of Epidemiology, Boston University
Joseph Howley. Associate Professor of Classics, Columbia University
Manijeh Moradian, Assistant Professor, WGSS, Barnard College, Columbia University