The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has launched an investigation into the University of Southern California after a Jewish student council leader resigned in 2020 after facing harassment over her alleged “Zionism.”
Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people have the right to political self-determination and that the State of Israel has a right to exist. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) describes denying Israel’s right to exist as antisemitism.
President Donald Trump changed U.S. education policy in 2019 to include antisemitism on campus as a civil rights violation, and to adopt the IHRA’s definition of antisemitism, to include denial of the right of Israel to exist as a violation of civil rights.
Rose Ritch, who was the newly-elected vice president of the student council, wrote in Newsweek after her resignation:
This past week, I resigned as vice president of the undergraduate student government at the University of Southern California (USC) after being harassed and pressured for months by fellow students because they didn’t like one of my identities. It wasn’t because I am a woman, or identify as queer, femme or cisgender. All of these identities qualified me as electable when students’ votes were cast last February. But because I also openly identify as a Jew who supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state—i.e., a Zionist—I was accused by a group of students of being unsuitable as a student government leader. I was told my support for Israel made me complicit in racism, and that by association, I am racist. Students launched an aggressive social media campaign to “impeach [my] Zionist a**.”
Let’s be clear: This is anti-Semitism.
My Jewish and Zionist identities have helped shape every part of who I am, and they cannot be separated from one another. Nearly 96 percent of American Jews support Israel as the Jewish state, inherently connected to our religious history and communal peoplehood. An attack on my Zionist identity is an attack on my Jewish identity. The suggestion that my support for a Jewish homeland would make me unfit for office, or would justify my impeachment, plays into the oldest and most wretched stereotypes of Jews: accusations of dual loyalty and holding all Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.
The USC Trojan newspaper described Ritch’s resignation as a reaction to a sustained campaign by left-wing activists:
Ritch’s resignation comes after the monthslong efforts of student activist Abeer Tijani, a rising senior majoring in global health. Tijani circulated a petition calling for the resignation of USG President Truman Fritz, who resigned July 7, and filed a formal impeachment complaint against both Fritz and Ritch with Speaker of the Senate Gabe Savage. Her actions were supported by the Black Student Assembly.
Now, the Times of Israel reports, a formal federal investigation is taking place, indicating that the charge is very serious:
The Department of Education’s investigation is a response to a complaint, filed on Ritch’s behalf, that alleged the university allowed a hostile antisemitic environment on campus in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in programs that receive federal funding. Antisemitic discrimination was included as a Title VI violation in 2019.
The Times of Israel, which has adopted an anti-Trump editorial line, failed to note Trump’s role in changing the U.S. policy.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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