Gov. Newsom Should Meet With Brave USC Student Leader

Sometimes all it takes is a coincidence on the calendar to help us see the bigger picture.

Less than 24 hours after USC student body Vice President Rose Ritch resigned from office after months of harassment for her pro-Israel and Jewish identities, the state moved a step closer to adopting a mandatory ethnic studies program that doesn’t include a serious examination of anti-Semitism. Both stories are outrageous in their own right. However, their confluence provides a stark reminder that the Jewish community’s struggle against anti-Semitism is failing, and we are long overdue for a serious round of self-examination as to how we have allowed this to happen.

How does a courageous young leader like Ritch conclude that the best way to bring necessary and overdue attention to the bigotry directed toward Jewish and other pro-Israel students on her campus is to resign from student government? Because the Jewish community has been content to allow a group of brave teenagers and early 20-somethings to fight to defend their identities on the front lines of college campuses while we remain at a safe distance from the fray. 

We mourn the tragedies of Poway and Pittsburgh and Charlottesville, Va., which occur after hatred mutates from invective and insult into violence and murder. But we are much less attentive when the daughters and sons of Israel are treated contemptuously every time they stand up on their college campuses on behalf of a Jewish homeland. When other types of racism surface, we join the rest of the populace to demonstrate our outrage and defend those who have been targeted. But when our young leaders are similarly vilified, we lack even the feeblest of strategies to enlist support for them from those outside the Jewish community.

Similarly, how could we allow an ethnic studies program to be developed for California high school students that has no meaningful reference to the Jewish experience? Because we have allowed our bonds with other underrepresented communities to atrophy to the point where they no longer see anti-Semitism as a type of bigotry that should be included in a discussion regarding ethnic-based oppression. 

California is deciding that prejudice against Jews is not worth prioritizing in a mandated class on ethnic studies.

Thanks to the admirable work of the Jewish Legislative Caucus, the worst of the examples of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic sentiment in the original draft curriculum were removed. But the final version won’t include a significant discussion of discrimination against Jews. There is even an appendix that groups the Jewish experience with that of Irish Americans, which refers to how both groups have been “gaining racial privilege.”

At a time when anti-Semitic hate crimes dramatically have increased in the U.S, Great Britain, and Europe, it appears that the California Department of Education is using a markedly different standard for defining “racial privilege” than you or I might. California is deciding that prejudice against Jews is not worth prioritizing in a mandated class on ethnic studies, and doing so at the same time such bigotry has prompted a young woman to resign from her university’s student government. 

Gov. Gavin Newsom moved further in this direction on Aug. 18 when he signed legislation to create a required ethnic studies class for Cal State University students that specifically doesn’t address the Jewish experience, and the legislature is preparing to vote on a similar mandate for the state’s high schools. If Newsom and our legislators were truly interested in an educational experience for California high school students that taught them the dangers of bigotry and intolerance, they should meet with Rose Ritch and other Jewish student leaders to learn what they have endured. The legislators pushing this bill will do no such thing, of course, because they believe that our young people benefit from “racial privilege” and have no need for protection from ethnic-based hatred. But Newsom should take time to listen to Ritch before he worsens this mistake.

Today’s students are tomorrow’s legislators, so the work that Ritch and her colleagues take on to fight anti-Semitism and to build multi-ethnic coalitions on their campuses is critical for not only their safety, but for our future. They deserve our support. We owe them that much.

Dan Schnur teaches political communications at UC Berkeley, USC and Pepperdine.