“Safe person, safe space.”
The sign – in English and Hebrew – graces the door of my brother-in-law, Ethan Miller, a professor of Computer Science at University of California, Santa Cruz. When he first told me about it – and the sanctuary he wanted to create for Jewish students on campus – I didn’t realize quite how brave a statement posting the sign was.

Prof Ethan Miller
On Thursday, March 24, 2016, the University of California's governing board adopted a statement condemning the anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. In doing so, they admitted that the University of California system has a problem with intimidation of Jewish students.
In an Aish.com exclusive, faculty members on the front line of battling anti-Semitism have shared the magnitude of the task they face and how entrenched anti-Semitic and anti-Israel attitudes are in some campuses.
In some cases, harassment of Jewish students has resulted in physical attacks. That was the allegation made by University of California, Berkeley, student Jessica Felber, who protested her campus’ annual “Apartheid Week”, sponsored by Students for Justice in Palestine and the Muslim Students Association.
Facing Apartheid Week’s activities, in which students would dress up as soldiers, man mock checkpoints around the school, and ask students to state their religion before letting them go, and in which Jewish students were sometimes spat on, Felber – along with other Jewish students – decided to set up a counter-protest, called “Israel Wants Peace Week.” As Felber stood outside holding a sign saying “Israel wants peace”, she was rammed with a shopping cart by an Apartheid-Week student activist with a long history of intimidating Jewish students. (The university eventually concluded the 2011 ramming incident “did not constitute actionable harassment.”)
Another form of intimidation is the disruption of events sponsored by Jewish organizations, now routine on some campuses. “If it’s something that has to do with Jewish students or Israel, it will just get shut down routinely." explains UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin to Aish.com.

Jewish students are also sometimes shunned for leadership positions because of their Jewishness. In 2015, a University of California, Los Angeles student, Rachel Beyda, applied to be on the school’s student judicial board – and was asked if her Jewishness could be a “conflict of interest.” The following year, Stanford undergraduate Molly Horwitz was asked how her Jewishness would affect her voting on boycotting Israel when she ran for the Student Senate.
At the University of California, Santa Cruz, members of the student government sent a message to member Daniel Bernstein, who was also president of the campus Jewish society, when the student government was debating boycotting and divesting from Israel.

Daniel Bernstein
“The implication that I, as a Jewish student and leader in the Jewish community, should not be allowed to vote on an issue that so deeply impacts the Jewish community, and that I should abstain because I cannot be trusted due to an alleged, ‘Jewish agenda,’ echoes the racism Jews have faced all over the world throughout our history,” Bernstein posted on Facebook. “I am calling on the leadership at UC Santa Cruz, from the student level on up to start taking concrete action to get the anti-Semitism at this campus under control.”
Attacking Jewish Faculty
Yet it’s not always easy for staff to confront the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish atmosphere pervading campus.
In 2011, lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin was fed up. She was tired of students telling her they felt unsafe. “Jewish students are in a real bind,” she explained to Aish.com. “They don’t want to walk – they feel unsafe – walking to Shabbat dinner at Hillel or Chabad. The sorority girls (in a traditionally Jewish sorority) were told by their leaders not to wear their letters on sweatshirts during Israel Apartheid Week.”

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin
The year before, the Obama administration had expanded the remit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include investigating anti-Semitic acts. Ms. Rossman-Benjamin decided to file a Title VI complaint under the Act, alleging “intellectual and emotional harassment and intimidation” of Jewish students. Her complaint included two specific instances: a university-sponsored conference that was “replete with lies, distortions and gross misrepresentations of the facts” about Israel and which called for Israel’s end – and a class taught by a self-described anti-Israel activist who repeated gross lies about Israel, incited hatred against the Jewish state, and encouraged students to protest outside the Israeli consulate in San Francisco.
“As a result of their experiences with such university-sponsored, anti-Semitic expression, Jewish students at my university have expressed feeling emotionally and intellectually harassed and intimidated by their professors, isolated from their fellow students and unfairly treated by administrators. Some have even reported leaving the university, dropping classes, changing fields of study and hiding symbols of their Jewishness,” Ms. Rossman-Benjamin explained at the time.
As a result, “I was attacked and viciously defamed.”
A student who had studied Hebrew with Ms. Rossman-Benjamin for a couple of years – a “very nice girl” – Ms. Rossman-Benjamin recalls – was head of Students for Justice in Palestine, and began “a campaign to undermine me and attack the complaint and attack me personally and make an example of me.”

“They really scoured the web to find something they could hang me on,” Ms. Rossman-Benjamin explains. Students for Justice in Palestine found a video of a talk she’d given at a synagogue in Massachusetts. Seeking to explain the nature of anti-Zionism that students experience on campus, Ms. Rossman-Benjamin had pointed out that some student activists hail from countries with state-sponsored anti-Semitism. Students for Justice in Palestine “took this two minute clip and claimed that I was calling all Muslim students terrorists – which I obviously wasn’t….I was really attacked.”
Soon, campus was awash in posters claiming Ms. Rossman-Benjamin called all Muslim students terrorists. Dozens of Youtube videos were made calling for her to be fired. Students at University of California Santa Cruz – and also at Irvine, Davis and Santa Barbara – put forward resolutions calling for her censure.
“It was a nightmare,” Ms. Rossman-Benjamin recalls, noting “It was not directed at me, it was directed at everyone else. Look at what happens at someone who speaks out against us, who speaks out for Jewish students and Israel…. And it was very effective.” Pro-Israel students feared being slandered as well, and, Ms. Rossman-Benjamin recalls, they "stepped back. No one stood by me. Really no one did….It’s very toxic, that label of racist and Islamophobic. And they knew that and it worked well” in damaging her credibility.
(Ms. Rossman-Benjamin is currently on a leave of absence from UC Santa Cruz, and is working on Amcha, an organization she helped found that tracks anti-Semitic incidents on American campuses.)
Jewish Students are Intimidated
According to University of California, Santa Cruz Computer Science Professor Ethan Miller, Jewish students are intimidated.
“I’ve had students where – because they know I’m Jewish – they talk to me. One student was concerned about going on birthright and wondered if they should go because that would have identified them as Jewish,” he recalls. (He encouraged the student to go; they did, and had a very positive experience.)
When UC Santa Cruz voted on boycotting and divesting from Israel in the past two years, Prof. Miller recalls, “I had students and faculty members tell me they felt threatened in the room…. How often do you feel threatened in a debate?” he asks.
After witnessing Jewish students being afraid of going to Hillel, Prof. Miller printed off his “Safe person, safe space” sign and affixed it to his office door. A fellow (Christian) Computer Science professor, Darrell Long, also put up the sign on his office door. Both professors have faced harassment. Prof. Long recalls someone criticizing him for supposedly implying that he wants only Jews to be safe.
Last Hanukkah, Prof. Miller decided to make a new addition to his office door and affixed a mezuzah. When he came in to put up the mezuzah he noticed that the sign had been torn. There was little official reaction. “Imagine if that had been a ‘Black Lives Matter” sign or related to other minorities Prof. Miller points out; “that would be a big deal. But it’s Jewish so it’s ‘who cares’.”
Given this atmosphere, some Jewish students at Santa Cruz are emboldened, proclaiming their identity loudly. "Hillel is booming,” Prof. Miller notes. A hundred students turn up for Shabbat dinners. But that’s less than a tenth of Jewish students overall. For many, the pervasive anti-Zionism leads students to hide their Jewish identity.
(7) Deborah, August 28, 2016 11:56 PM
I'm Shocked and Disgusted
Wow. Speechless.
(6) eugene mazzilli, April 5, 2016 3:02 PM
Can't we all just have Peace
You seem to always portray the poor Jew being discriminated against by everyone else when it is only a very small percentage of ignorant people causing the hatred. Then your readers respond and inflame the situation and perpetuate the problem further. So let's see if you print this and maybe show your even-handedness and impartiality. Let me go on to say, that it is time that you listened up to tolerance and reality. Please stop spreading hidden hatred messages and start spreading peace and love for all. Reach out to these people who discriminate, and then it is up to us to show the goodness of the Jewish person. A true and compassionate Jewish person has that love in their heart and that love transcends all bigotry, discrimination and hatred. That is what we should do to show the world that we accept all and, if someone doesn't appreciate us, just move on to something better. But please, let's just try and help extinguish the fires of hatred. We should also look inwardly and be truthful about some of us in the first place. We Jews have always been discriminators of all other races, creeds, and religions since God said we are the "Chosen Ones". Well, I have news for all of us, we are no more "Chosen" than the next person. God sees through to our hearts and judges accordingly.....And let me also say, How many times have I seen Jews secretly harbor and say terrible things of others, such as Schvatcher for Blacks, Shitka for Christians, Chinks for Orientals, Spics for Spanish, and all manner of name calling for Muslims. So please, let's stop the name calling and reach out to everyone in peace and love. (per Rabbi Noah Weinberg, of blessed memory). We are no better than others when we "secretly" harbor discriminate thoughts of others. Remember, God is truly watching us.
Berel Dov Lerner, April 5, 2016 7:13 PM
Study up before pretending to be Jewish
"Schvatcher"? "Shitka"? I suggest you brush up on your Yiddish before trying to pass for a Jew. As for "hidden hatred messages" they must be so well hidden that only people suffering from a special state of mind are capable of noticing them.
Anonymous, June 6, 2016 5:45 PM
Makes a good point
While I think it is beyond legitimate, absolutely vital, for Jews to stand up against any and all expressions of anti-Semitism, the article makes a very important point. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, echoing other sages over the millennia, used to cite the dictum that one who finds fault in others should look especially closely to see whether he or she has the same fault. Has Aish truly been free of the same type of prejudice, of excessive tarring an entire people with the sins of a few, of seeking to limit or ban the legitimate expression of entire religious groups over the actions of a small number of unrepresentative fanatics, of failing to recognize sufficiently the righteous gentiles in our midst and beyond? More pointedly, where in the voluminous pages of Aish can one find such inwardly directed soul searching? To rephrase Hillel in the plural, if we are not for ourselves [as Jews], who will be for us? But if we are only for ourselves, what are we? And if not now, when?
(5) Stephanie Alber, April 4, 2016 1:37 PM
Yasher Koach to a brave woman!
I want to commend Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. She is brave woman for standing up to the bullies among faculty and students alike, while risking her standing with students, peace of mind and possibly her employment. I am an alumna of UC Santa Cruz and anti-Zionism was just beginning to rear its ugly head. What a horrifying change has occurred. On the plus side, maybe it is bringing Jewish students together. One hundred students at a Hillel Shabbat dinner is a lot for UC Santa Cruz. In my time, not more than 20 would come on a Friday night. It's not a big enough plus to send my own kids there. My kids are going to yeshiva and staying away from BDS supporting, Jew-hating American colleges.
(4) Nancy, April 3, 2016 8:33 PM
I will continue to stand tall every day
When we stand tall we win.
(3) Anonymous, April 3, 2016 7:47 PM
Santa Cruz & 1948 my memory
My parents lived in Carmel, grandparents & others in Capitola & Santa Cruz & San Jose. At 7 I remember the parade of honking cars, joyful people, going both ways from & toward the Boardwalk & all the faces smiling & waving...people running up & down Ocean Ave..proclaiming it happened...Israel is a Nation in one day!! What happened to the Santa Cruz I knew? I will tell you...they let go of G-D!!!!
(2) Jonathan Silver, April 3, 2016 2:50 PM
Standing tall
It is so important for Jewish students and faculty to stand up publicly as Jews and to stand together as Jews. The advice to hide jewish symbols, I believe, is misguided. Stand up, stand tall, fight back.
(1) Anonymous, April 3, 2016 2:11 PM
Don't worry
Islam's only raisin d'être is anti semitism. Any belief or culture that focuses soley on hatred and what it does not like will implode. Judaism has survived due to compassion and self help being central to it's core. Islam will self destruct as it's core is hatred and total reliance on others.