UC Berkeley Law School Dean Talks About Antisemitism on Campus

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, never expected to see a caricature of himself on a poster resembling antisemitic Nazi propaganda from WWII: a  drawing of him with bloody lips, holding a bloody knife and fork, and the text: “No Dinner With Chem While Gaza Starves!”

“I was shocked, I was saddened, I was upset as anybody would be,” Chemerinsky told the Journal. “To have a bloody knife and fork and blood over my lips is the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel.“ 

“I was shocked, I was saddened, I was upset as anybody would be,” Chemerinsky told the Journal. “To have a bloody knife and fork and blood over my lips is the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel. It’s not subtle. I haven’t defended the Israeli government. My field is United States Constitutional Law.”

Chemerinsky said there was no attack against anything he said, because he has said nothing about the war publicly. The only explanation was that students made the poster because Chemerinsky is Jewish. Despite some Jewish and non-Jewish students telling him the poster made them feel unsafe, he said the poster was protected by the First Amendment and did not call for it to be removed from a bulletin board.

But protesting on private property is not protected as free speech, he said. He hosted dinners for graduating law students over three nights. On Tuesday, he said he served chicken, rice, lentils and tofu. A group smiled at him and he smiled back. Then, after people took their food from the buffet, someone pulled a microphone and amplifier out of her backpack and began to speak. It was a student, Malak Afaneh, and she started to make a speech demanding the school withdraw investments in companies that allegedly support Israel.   

CNN’s Jake Tapper reported that the student was co-president of a group called “Law Students for Justice in Palestine,” which put up the poster. Tapper also noted the student claimed she was assaulted. A video shows the student claiming she has a First Amendment right to speak and shows that Chemerinsky’s wife, Berkeley Law professor Catherine Fisk, momentarily put her arm on the student in an attempt to take the microphone.  

Chemerinsky explained the home is not connected to the university and he asked the student to leave. He explained that with the popularity of social media, these kinds of activities become prevalent. “They were all set and ready to film it,” he said.  

The ADL’s report card on antisemitism gives the school a “D.” Asked if he thought this was a fair grade, Chemerinsky said he could not comment on it as he had neither read the report nor seen the criteria used to establish how the grades were given. But he said he felt safe and thought the administration was doing its best.

“I’ve been at Berkeley for seven years,” he said. “I think the campus administrators care deeply about the Jewish students and about creating a conducive learning environment for the Jewish students. Our chancellor and our provost care so much about campus climate, including Jewish students. I can’t fault them at all.”

The noted constitutional lawyer, who has argued before the Supreme Court, said students told him there would be protesters if the dinner took place. He said he had not thought of canceling the event. 

“I can’t give in to that kind of intimidation,” he said.

He said one irony was that he had a security person come as a precaution. “We had someone there in case anything happened, and we expected picketing in front of the house,” he said. “The person was in the front and the house is in between so you can’t hear what’s happening the backyard.”

In an Op-Ed in The Los Angeles Times on Oct. 29, Chemerinsky wrote that “Nothing has prepared me for the antisemitism I see on college campuses now.”  

He added that someone at the university tweeted that he had taken a sabbatical to join the IDF. This was his opening paragraph: “I am a 70-year-old Jewish man, but never in my life have I seen or felt the antisemitism of the last few weeks. I have heard antisemitic things from time to time in my life. I remember as a child being called a ‘dirty Jew,’ and my friends and I being called ‘Christ killers’ as we walked to Hebrew School … I had an incident in a class I was teaching about the ethics of negotiations, where a student matter of flatly said, ‘the other side will try to Jew you down,” without the slightest sense of how that was a slur.”

He also wrote that a student told him what would make her feel safe would be to “get rid of the Zionists.” He was stunned that students across the country and at Berkeley celebrated the Hamas terrorist attack of Oct. 7, and noted that Students for Justice in Palestine (a national organization with chapters at numerous colleges) called it a “historic win.”

Chemerinsky said he is a fervent supporter of free speech and is the author of “Free Speech on Campus” which he wrote with Howard Gillman.