April 21, 2025

The University of California’s proposed ethnic studies admissions requirement—known as the Area H proposal—has sparked widespread concern, and rightly so. At the center of the controversy is a faculty-driven effort to use the requirement as a backdoor for introducing into every California high school an ethnic studies curriculum likely to incite virulent antisemitism. This effort reflects a serious breakdown in faculty governance and raises urgent questions about the university’s ability to uphold educational standards and protect students. This week, the UC Faculty Assembly will vote on whether to adopt the proposal—a decision that will either further erode the integrity of shared governance or take a necessary step toward restoring it.

For nearly a century, UC’s admissions framework has remained remarkably stable, focused on core academic subjects: English, math, science, history, foreign language, and college-preparatory electives. If adopted, Area H would mark only the second addition to the A–G requirements since the 1930s, following the inclusion of Visual and Performing Arts in 1994.

But the version of ethnic studies being advanced by the UC faculty responsible for drafting Area H is not broad or inclusive. It promotes a narrow ideological framework that casts Jews as “privileged” oppressors and portrays Zionism—a movement central to the identity of most Jews—as inherently evil. Leading proponents of Area H have declared anti-Zionism a foundational principle of ethnic studies, condemned UC administrators for labeling Hamas’s October 7 massacre as terrorism, and demanded the retraction of statements mourning Israeli victims.

These same faculty leaders—who co-chaired the UC working group that drafted the Area H course criteria and co-founded the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council—have long championed academic boycotts of Israel and worked to normalize anti-Zionist rhetoric in classrooms and curriculum frameworks across the state. Their efforts echo previous attempts to insert similar ideology into California’s high school ethnic studies curriculum—proposals that were widely condemned by Jewish organizations, civil rights advocates, and elected officials as discriminatory, dangerous, and exclusionary.

That same agenda has now found a new pathway through UC’s internal decision-making process. The Area H proposal is the Trojan horse, and shared governance is the gate it’s passed through.

Shared governance is a defining feature of the UC system, granting faculty significant authority over core academic matters, including admissions criteria. It is built on the premise that decisions about curriculum and standards should be shaped by academic expertise and insulated from political pressure. But shared governance also relies on trust—on the assumption that faculty will wield their authority responsibly, and in service of students and scholarship.

The Area H proposal has tested that trust.

When the proposal was first introduced—via a UC Berkeley student petition to the Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (BOARS) in October 2020—it lacked academic justification and offered no clear educational rationale. Given BOARS’s charge to uphold academic standards and ensure students are prepared for UC admission, the proposal should have been summarily rejected. Instead, BOARS voted unanimously to approve it. That vote launched a years-long campaign by activist faculty to institutionalize their vision of “liberated” ethnic studies—an extreme version of the discipline that elevates anti-Zionism and BDS promotion as central tenets—using the language and mechanisms of shared governance to shield the process from scrutiny.

Since then, the proposal has faced mounting criticism from faculty, Academic Senate committees, and even from within BOARS itself. In November 2023, BOARS reversed course and voted to reject the Area H proposal—an outcome that should have closed the door on the proposal for good. Instead, the Academic Senate Chair overrode BOARS’s decision and pushed the proposal forward, triggering a systemwide review.

That review generated 79 pages of feedback from dozens of Senate committees—most of it critical—highlighting the proposal’s fatal flaws, including its lack of academic rigor, its ideological bias, and the unfair burden it would impose on school districts across the state.

Yet rather than abandon the proposal, Senate leaders continued to press ahead. When it became clear during the December 2024 UC Assembly meeting that the proposal lacked the support to pass, activist faculty moved to table the vote until April 2025.

Meanwhile, the rationale behind Area H has continued to unravel. Supporters initially claimed it would align with AB 101, the 2021 state law mandating high school ethnic studies. But that law has not taken effect. According to UC’s State Governmental Relations and the State Board of Education, it remains unfunded and inoperative—no implementation funding has been appropriated. Even the UC Faculty Assembly’s own April 2025 agenda acknowledges this.

In other words, Area H is no longer supporting a mandate; it is attempting to create one—through UC’s internal governance process.

This week, the UC Faculty Assembly still has the chance to reject the Area H proposal and reaffirm its commitment to academic integrity, fairness, and inclusion. But if it passes, the consequences won’t stop at UC. Every high school classroom forced to adopt this requirement will carry the weight of a decision driven not by academic merit, but by a politicized ideology—one that has already shown hostility toward Jewish students and disregard for the values a university should uphold. And if that happens, we’ll be left asking: Who is shared governance really serving?

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Rossman-Benjamin serves as executive director of AMCHA Initiative, a non-profit antisemitism watchdog, and was a University of California faculty member for twenty years. 

Eighty years ago this week, Hitler blew his brains out. It was twelve years too late. On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in a Berlin bunker as Allied forces closed in. It marked the fall of the Nazi regime, the defeat of fascism’s most horrifying form, and the symbolic end of one of history’s darkest chapters. Yet while Hitler perished that day, evil did not. It simply changed its name, its flag and its face.

Today, the world faces a similar threat in the form of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — a tyrant whose ambitions mirror those of Hitler. Like the Führer before him, Khamenei seeks global domination, annihilation of the Jewish people, and the destruction of Western civilization, especially the United States. He chants “Death to America,” arms terrorist proxies across the Middle East, and races toward achieving what Hitler could only dream of: nuclear weapons capable of mass murder on an unthinkable scale.

This is not mere rhetoric. This is reality. And the world must wake up.

Iran, under Khamenei’s theocratic dictatorship, is not a misunderstood state acting out of insecurity. It is a radical empire-building regime hellbent on bloodshed, expansion and destruction. The regime has crushed its own people under the boot of authoritarianism, silenced dissent with death squads, and propped up terrorism through groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis. Their hands are drenched in blood from Syria to Iraq, from Gaza to Lebanon. And all the while, they inch ever closer to a nuclear bomb.

Iran, under Khamenei’s theocratic dictatorship, is not a misunderstood state acting out of insecurity. It is a radical empire-building regime hellbent on bloodshed, expansion and destruction.

History has taught us what happens when the world waits too long. When the West appeased Hitler, millions perished. Diplomacy failed, red lines blurred, and evil marched forward, unopposed, until it was almost too late. But then came a turning point — a moment when America, under the leadership of FDR and with the courage of Winston Churchill by his side, chose not to negotiate with monsters, but to destroy them. That choice saved the world.

Now, once again, we stand at a turning point. And only one man has the strength, the vision and the unshakable will to rise to this moment: President Donald J. Trump.

President Trump, you have already proven to the world that you are a leader unlike any other. You alone finally ended the vile and embarrassing abomination of our elite universities being taken over by Hamas terror supporters as they burned down buildings and libraries. You are also wise enough to know that you cannot negotiate with fanatics who lie without blinking, who use diplomacy as delay, and who would gladly shake your hand with one while holding a dagger in the other. They also hired professional assassins to literally murder you. Iran’s regime does not seek compromise. It seeks conquest. And it sees every moment of American hesitation as an opportunity to advance its deadly goals.

When the West appeased Hitler, millions perished. Diplomacy failed, red lines blurred, and evil marched forward, unopposed, until it was almost too late.

You cannot reason with a regime whose supreme leader has publicly called for the annihilation of Israel, a vibrant democracy and our closest ally. You cannot sign treaties with tyrants who violate every word the moment the ink dries. The JCPOA — the so-called Iran nuclear deal — proved this. It was built on wishful thinking and dangerous illusions. Iran took the billions, enriched its terror machine, and continued its nuclear work under the table, all while the West congratulated itself for “peace in our time.”

But peace never comes from appeasing evil. It comes from crushing it.

President Trump, you know this better than anyone. You withdrew from that disastrous deal. You reimposed crippling sanctions. You eliminated Qassem Soleimani, the butcher of Baghdad and the architect of Iranian terror, sending a clear message that American strength still mattered. That was leadership. That was moral clarity. That was the kind of resolve that history remembers and applauds.

Now the time has come again to act — not just to talk tough, not just to hope things will work out, but to choose: Will America lead the world in confronting the next great evil, or will we let another Holocaust happen under our watch?

The stakes could not be higher.

There are only two options left:

1. Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear program — every centrifuge, every hidden facility, every last bolt and screw. Not one wrench can remain.
2. Or America must strike militarily and obliterate their nuclear infrastructure completely and utterly before it’s too late.

There is no third option. Delay is not strategy. Sanctions alone won’t stop a regime that views martyrdom as a virtue and apocalypse as a path to glory. The time for endless diplomatic circles is over.

President Trump, the world looks to you now because it remembers who you are. You are not just a former president — you are a global figure of strength, determination and incredible resolve. You stood up to China. You brought North Korea to the table. You redefined peace in the Middle East through the Abraham Accords. You recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital when others were too afraid to act. You never let the swamp tie your hands — and you never let America be bullied.

You also understood that real friends stand by each other. They don’t abandon allies when the going gets tough. They don’t tie Israel’s hands behind its back while missiles rain down on Tel Aviv. Friends don’t sell each other down the river to buy another six months of “quiet.” No — real leaders protect their friends. They draw red lines and mean them. They say, “Not on my watch.”

Israel is not just another country — it is the moral frontline in the war against radical Islamism. It is the only democracy in a sea of tyranny. It is America’s brother-in-arms and our forward operating base of freedom. And it is under siege, every day, from Iranian rockets, Iranian proxies and Iranian hatred. To abandon Israel now — to pressure it into concessions, to delay its right to defend itself — is to invite another Holocaust.

Israel is not just another country — it is the moral frontline in the war against radical Islamism. It is the only democracy in a sea of tyranny. It is America’s brother-in-arms and our forward operating base of freedom. And it is under siege, every day, from Iranian rockets, Iranian proxies and Iranian hatred.

President Trump, you know what others refuse to admit: Iran does not want peace. It wants victory. It doesn’t want coexistence. It wants conquest. And if it ever gets a nuclear weapon, the world as we know it will change forever. No amount of containment, no missile shield, no paper treaty will be enough. The only answer is total prevention. The only deterrent is strength.

You once said that weakness invites aggression. You were right then, and you are right now. The world needs an American leader who is not afraid to speak the truth, who is not paralyzed by political correctness, and who understands that when America leads, tyranny retreats.

We are now at a crossroads, just as the world was in the 1930s. The difference is that this time, we know where appeasement leads. We’ve seen the gas chambers, the charred cities, the bodies in the streets. We don’t have the luxury of ignorance. We cannot say, “We didn’t know.”

President Trump, history is calling again. And it is offering you the chance to do what only the greatest leaders have ever done — to stare evil in the eye, and stop it. You are no fool, and you will not be played for one. You know better than to trust a regime that celebrates American deaths and funds the murder of innocents.

The world is watching. Iran is watching. Israel is watching. The stakes are nothing less than the survival of freedom, the defense of civilization, and the future of millions of innocent lives.

You, President Trump, stand on history’s unforgiving stage. And only you have the strength, the courage, and the moral compass to do what must be done.

Tyranny dies when America leads.

Tyranny wins when America waits.

Let us not wait. Let us not waver. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the past. Eighty years ago, we defeated a monster. Today, we must do it again.

The time to act is now.

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Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi,” is the international best-selling author of the newly published guide to fighting back for Israel “The Israel Warrior,” “Holocaust Holiday,” and “Kosher Hate.” Follow him on Instagram and Twitter @RabbiShmuley.