Sunday, September 25, 2016

Antisemitic posters at UC Berkeley

Last week, Associate Chancellor Nils Gilman sent the following email to the UC Berkeley campus community:

Dear Campus Community:
This week a number of posters have appeared on campus that include anti-Semitic rhetoric. The language used violates our Principles of Community, as well as the Regents’ Principles Against Intolerance.
In accordance with our well known 'time, place, and manner' rules, we have instructed that the posters be removed. We urge all in our campus community to use this opportunity to reinforce our values as a campus, and to report any further incidents.
We will continue to do everything in our power to ensure we have a campus climate that is safe, welcoming, and respectful for all. 

Nils Gilman
Associate Chancellor-Chief of Staff

The Daily Cal, the UC Berkeley newspaper was uncharacteristically silent on the incident.
It took an article in Algemeiner to fill in the blanks for concerned community members

An antisemitic poster at UC Berkeley. Photo: Nanette Asimov/Twitter.

From Algemeiner

The posters began cropping up when UC Berkeley announced it was reinstating “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” decried by a campus watchdog group as “a classic example of antisemitic anti-Zionism.”

One such poster referred to a coalition of 43 Jewish, civil rights and educational organizations that had written an open letter expressing concern about the course and disappointment in UC Berkeley’s vetting process, calling them “advocates for a foreign state” who “seek to control our freedom of speech and academic expression.”

It also claimed that the Israeli government was directly involved in the suspension of the course.

Another poster underscored the large US military-aid deal with Israel, snidely telling “non-Jews” that they had better “pay up and shut up” in the face of “Jewish bullies.”

No group has claimed responsibility for the posters

UPDATE

The Daily Cal weighs in on the posters here

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