Three Out of 800 Graduating Students Refused to Shake Hands With a Jewish Professor

The reality of the past 20 months at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) made me suddenly anxious when I chose to wear a blue and white Jewish star sash over my faculty robes for commencement this year. I was excited to celebrate my students’ successes as I have for the past 27 years of my academic career. However, as I stepped out into the screaming throng on the quad, I felt my heart quicken, just as it did months ago when a keffiyeh-wearing colleague accosted me. I feared insults or worse being thrown down, and the LAPD snipers on the rooftop nearby did little to ease my distress.

The CSUN campus continues to be a place where Jewish students, staff and faculty have not felt welcome since Oct. 8, 2023. So it was not surprising when three out of 800 graduating psychology students refused my handshake at this commencement ceremony in front of nearly 10,000 family members, university administrators and faculty.

These snubs did not occur on the ceremonial grand stage and were not broadcast on the screens on the quad; rather, the refused handshakes occurred unseen, off to the side of the stage the students crossed, after shaking hands with the university administrators who have remained unresponsive to the rampant antisemitism on campus.

Up until Oct. 8, 2023 my freedom to be openly Jewish had never been threatened. Since then, countless Jewish students, staff and faculty members across the globe have learned that universities are not safe places for Jews.

Over the past 20 months, hostage posters on my office door have been repeatedly vandalized.  Other individuals scrawled hateful antisemitic comments on my nameplate and other parts of my door. A colleague in my own department filed an unsupported complaint alleging I had weaponized the word “antisemite” against them. Months later, this faculty member berated me in connection with this frivolous complaint in a meeting while many of my colleagues watched silently. This bullying was later deemed “protected speech” by a university Equity and Compliance officer.

So, at commencement, when graduates from the Psychology Department began to cross the stage, I stood up with my colleagues to meet the new graduates as their names were called. As in prior years, I shook hands and shouted, “Congratulations” to our incredibly diverse students who were wearing all types of attire and symbols on their robes and mortarboards.

After dozens of uneventful handshakes, a student walked toward our line of hand-shaking faculty members and clearly caught sight of my sash. He shook his head in disagreement, he pulled his hand away and walked on. I felt anxious again and looked behind me to confirm that this was intentional. His handshakes with my colleagues behind me confirmed the snub. Two other psychology students made similar refusals that night as well.

Oddly enough, the snubs were only briefly distressing. At one point, the distress was replaced by shared joy as a woman with an Israeli flag sewn onto her sash yelled, “Thank you!” in Hebrew when shaking my hand. Four other students commented positively when noticing my Jewish symbols. The six-pointed star is a Jewish symbol, not necessarily an Israeli symbol; it is millennia-old and not Israeli but Jewish in origin. The willful misrepresentation and conflation of the star with Israel—and the war being waged against Hamas—clearly presented a reason for some students’ dismissal of my handshake. Israel hatred and Jew-hatred are conflated these days on campus as elsewhere.

The willful misrepresentation and conflation of the star with Israel … clearly presented a reason for some students’ dismissal of my handshake.

While my anxiety about wearing the Jewish stars never dissipated, I was happy to share moments of joy with so many graduating students at commencement. I was also glad that I could bring comfort to the unseen and constantly threatened Jewish students.

This commencement night was the same night that Yuval Raphael, a Jewish Israeli woman and survivor of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, took second place in this year’s Jewish-hostile Eurovision Song Contest. Graduation 2025 was a lot like Yuval’s song, “New Day Will Rise” and indeed, a lot like Israel’s national anthem “Hatikvah,” or “The Hope.” My own hope for the new days that rise is that others in academia will push to create college campus climates that feel safe for Jewish students, staff and faculty.

Gary S. Katz is Associate Professor of Psychology at California State University, Northridge; a proud member of Matadors Against Antisemitism (MAA); and the incoming International First Vice President of the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs.