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Aaron Bandler Profile picture
@bandlersbanter
May 8 • 5 tweets • 4 min read • Read on X
This week's Campus Watch in @JewishJournal: 🧵

Jewish UCLA Student Assaulted on Campus
A Jewish student at UCLA was assaulted on campus April 30 during an unauthorized event promoted by the suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter.

The university said in a May 1 statement that it told SJP “that moving forward with the unauthorized event would violate campus policy and the terms of the suspension” and that “when individuals set up a projection screen and audio equipment and began to project a film going against campus directives, within approximately six minutes, the UCLA Police Department (UCPD) seized the unauthorized sound and video equipment.” The university estimated that around 150 people gathered at the event, during which “a student and a police officer were physically assaulted … The student also had his personal belongings stolen from him.” The student, Eli Tsives, told Fox News host Trace Gallagher that he came to the event with his Israeli flag to show Jewish students to not be afraid of anti-Israel protesters. “One protester grabbed my flag and ran away. I went after them to retrieve my flag, and then around six, seven, eight of them circled around me and started throwing punches,” Tsives said. “One person tried to punch me in a headlock.”

The university’s statement added that university police “arrested three individuals and issued stay-away orders. We are sorry for what this student experienced, and we have already been in touch with him to offer support. This is unacceptable and UCLA will not tolerate it.”Image
Georgetown Students Vote for Anti-Israel Divestment Measure
Georgetown University’s student body voted in favor of an anti-Israel divestment measure, with around 68% in favor and 32% against.

The Georgetown Student Association election commission announced the results on April 29; the referendum only needed a simple majority to pass and 25% of the student body to vote, according to The Georgetown Voice student newspaper. Twenty-nine percent of the student body voted on the referendum.

Interim President Robert Groves sent out an email shortly after the results were announced stating that the university would not be implementing the referendum “based on our institutional values and history and existing university resources and processes that address our investments.” He added that there are “a wide range of opinions on the conflict in the Middle East within our community. We have numerous events to present different perspectives on the conflict. Guided by the University’s Policy on Speech and Expression, we will continue to protect the right of members of our community to freely express their views.”
Harvard Law Review Awards $65,000 Fellowship to Student Charged with Assaulting Israeli
The Harvard Law Review awarded a $65,000 fellowship to a student who is facing charges of allegedly assaulting an Israeli classmate.

According to @FreeBeacon @CAndersonMO, citing reporting from @irastoll at “The Editors” Substack, the fellowship is a stipend to fund recent graduates’ work “in a public-interest related role at a government agency or nonprofit organization.” The student, Ibrahim Bharmal, will be working at the Council on American-Islamic Relation (CAIR)-Los Angeles affiliate and is set to graduate this year. The Free Beacon reported that the assault took place during a protest in Oct. 2023 in which Bharmal, who is a Harvard Law Review editor, and another graduate student “were shown shoving and accosting their Israeli classmate in a video.” Bharmal and the other graduate student who are being charged with misdemeanor criminal assault have been ordered to participate in a pretrial diversionary program that, if successfully completed, would prevent the criminal conviction from being added to his record.
Michigan AG Drops Charges Against Anti-Israel Protesters Involved in UMich Encampment
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) dropped all charges against seven anti-Israel protesters involved in an encampment at the University of Michigan in May 2024.

The seven protesters had faced charges of resisting and obstructing a police officer and trespassing when police cleared out the encampment. Defense lawyers had filed a motion requesting that Nessel recuse herself from the case, alleging that she was biased against Arabs and Muslims. The Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor had sent a letter to the court defending Nessel from the allegations. “These distractions and ongoing delays have created a circus-like atmosphere to these proceedings,” Nessel said in a statement. “While I stand by my charging decisions, and believe, based on the evidence, a reasonable jury would find the defendants guilty of the crimes alleged, I no longer believe these cases to be a prudent use of my department’s resources, and, as such, I have decided to dismiss the cases.”

Nessel added that the “impropriety” of the letter “has led us to the difficult decision to drop these charges.” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, director of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, told the Michigan Advance nonprofit news outlet that the letter was public and only sent to the court administrator to ensure that “appropriate communications personnel” were informed. “It was not intended in any way as a communication to the judge nor to influence the court. We regret any misunderstanding.”
@FreeBeacon @CAndersonMO Link to Campus Watch: jewishjournal.com/community/3812…

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More from @bandlersbanter

Aaron Bandler Profile picture
Apr 24
This week's Campus Watch in @JewishJournal: 🧵

Harvard Sues Trump Administration Over Freezing Federal Funding
Harvard University President Alan Garber announced on April 21 that the university is suing the Trump administration over freezing billions of dollars to the university.

The administration initially froze more than $2 billion from the university; the government had at first demanded that the university ban masks and rescinds its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program and subsequently issued more demands that, among other things, the university revoke recognition of anti-Israel student groups and auditing its academic programs to ensure that they’re adhering to viewpoint diversity. The Trump administration is reportedly planning on freezing an additional billion dollars after the university publicized the administration’s letter despite the administration’s request it be confidential, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Garber contended that the government’s actions put critical research at risk, including research into cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. Further, he argued that “the law requires that the federal government engage with us about the ways we are fighting and will continue to fight antisemitism. Instead, the government’s April 11 demands seek to control whom we hire and what we teach. Today, we stand for the values that have made American higher education a beacon for the world.”Image
Georgetown Student Gov’t Postpones BDS Vote Initially Scheduled During Passover
Georgetown University’s student government postponed a vote on a nonbinding campuswide referendum that was initially scheduled during Passover calling for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel and sever all academic ties with Israeli universities.

The vote was moved from April 14-16 to April 26-28; it requires a majority vote to pass and at least 25% voter turnout by the undergraduate student body. The Georgetown University Student Association (GUSA) said in a statement posted to social media that it “made this decision after hearing concerns about the placement of the election during a religious holiday.” According to The Hoya, a student newspaper at the university, 16 of the 28 student senators voted anonymously to bring the referendum to the student body for a vote, which the paper described as being “a departure from standard GUSA procedure.” @J_Insider @HaleyCohen19 noted that other student government business continued during the Passover holiday. University Director of Jewish Life Rabbi Ilana Zietman told the outlet that this “inadvertently [singled] out Jewish student groups for favoritism or bias as some are claiming, which is not the case. Jewish students would have been happier with postponing all student government matters until after the holiday.” She did say that postponing the vote “was the right move in terms of religious inclusion and a fair process.”
CA Education Dept. Says San Jose Ethnic Studies Curriculum Discriminated Against Jewish Students
The California Department of Education concluded on April 4 that the ethnic studies curriculum at Branham High School in San Jose discriminated against Jewish students, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reported.

The Bay Area Jewish Coalition filed a complaint to the department in September alleging that the 12th grade ethnic literature curriculum was biased against Israel; the department concluded that a teacher did not provide a pro-Israel viewpoint during a lesson if Israel is a “settler colonial state.” The department also concluded that a teacher failed to address a group project that featured a slide about the “Genocide of Palestinians.” The teacher’s failure to comment “could have been interpreted by the student audience as approval of the presented thesis.”

“To correct the discrimination found in the San Jose investigation, English language arts and social studies teachers at the school will be required to do a one-hour training before the next school year, and to discuss instruction on “controversial topics” as part of their anti-bias training,” JTA reported.
Read 5 tweets
Aaron Bandler Profile picture
Apr 16
By me in @JewishJournal: 🧵

Complaint: Bay Area School District Failed to Handle Antisemitic Incidents
Complaint alleges that “Jewish and Israeli students are continuously being denied equal access to their educational program.”Image
The complaint was filed to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) on April 3 alleging that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) failed to properly address reported antisemitic incidents on their campuses. It was filed by the @StandWithUs Saidoff Legal division and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, represented by David Rosenberg-Wohl of the Hershenson Rosenberg-Wohl, P.C. law firm.
The complaint alleges that “SCUSD applies its policies and procedures regarding freedom of expression, controversial matters and civility in blatantly different ways depending on the impacted student group … SCUSD repeatedly disregards the concerns of Jewish students and suppresses their procedural and substantive rights, all while bolstering the voices of other members of the SCUSD community. This disparate treatment created a hostile environment where SCUSD’s Jewish and Israeli students are continuously being denied equal access to their educational program.”Image
Read 10 tweets
Aaron Bandler Profile picture
Apr 3
This week's Campus Watch in @JewishJournal: 🧵

UCLA Indefinitely Bans SJP
UCLA has issued a preliminary ban for the campus Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter and a preliminary four-year suspension for the Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine (GSJP) chapter on March 28.

Back in February, Chancellor Julio Frenk announced that the two student groups were suspended after “individuals affiliated with the student groups harassed Mr. Sures and members of his family outside his home” and that “individuals vandalized the Sures home by applying red-colored handprints to the outer walls of the home and hung banners on the property’s hedges.” The Los Angeles Times reported that the student groups can appeal the decision, which has not yet been finalized. Additionally, the Times noted that the sanctions “do not prevent them from protesting on campus. As a public institution, limited parts of UCLA’s grounds are open to anybody to demonstrate at most times of day. But the moves prevent the organizations from registering for campus event space, applying for student activities funds and otherwise representing themselves as UCLA organizations.”

The university said in a statement, “UCLA is committed to fostering an environment where all students can live and learn freely and peacefully … We will continue to uphold our policies to ensure UCLA remains a safe and respectful learning environment for all members of our Bruin community.”Image
Katrina Armstrong Resigns as Columbia President
Katrina Armstrong resigned from her position as president of Columbia University on March 28.

The university announced that Armstrong will be leading the Irving Medical Center at the university; Claire Shipman, the co-chair of the university’s Board of Trustees, will be taking over as the interim president. Armstrong’s resignation comes after reports from The Free Press and Washington Free Beacon came out stating that Armstrong told faculty members privately that the agreement with the Trump administration’s demands to address campus antisemitism wouldn’t change much on campus; per the reports, Armstrong told faculty that there would be no ban on masking or change in admissions procedures despite both being demands from the administration. Provost Angela Olinto also reportedly told faculty that the school’s Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department would not be under an “academic receivership” for five years despite that also being a demand from the administration. The agreement was part of an effort to begin talks for the administration to restore $400 million in funding to Columbia.

“Dr. Armstrong accepted the role of interim president at a time of great uncertainty for the University and worked tirelessly to promote the interests of our community,” Board of Trustees Chair David Greenwald said in a statement. “Katrina has always given her heart and soul to Columbia. We appreciate her service and look forward to her continued contributions to the University.”
New Columbia President Reportedly Referred to Congressional Hearings on Campus Antisemitism “Nonsense”
Claire Shipman, the new interim of Columbia University, reportedly referred to the congressional hearings on campus antisemitism as being “nonsense.”

According to Fox News and The New York Post, Shipman wrote in a Dec. 2023 text message to then-University President Minouche Shafik that a New York Times article stating at the time that the school handled anti-Israel protests better than other Ivy League universities “heavily inoculates us for a while from the capital [sic] hill nonsense and threat.” The purported text was discovered in a 325-page House Committee on Education and the Workforce report in October. She also reportedly wrote in a text to Shafik at the time that “we should think about unsuspending the groups before semester starts to take the wind out of that,” referring to anti-Israel groups that the committee report claimed violated university policy with the protests. A university spokesperson told Fox News, “We are focused on doing what is right and honoring our commitments to create a Columbia community where students are safe and able to flourish.”
Read 5 tweets
Aaron Bandler Profile picture
Apr 2
My latest in @JewishJournal: 🧵

An event featuring two former Israel Defense Force (IDF) lone soldiers was cut short due to security concerns posed by anti-Israel protesters at CSU San Marcos (CSUSM) in North San Diego County on March 25. Image
The event was hosted by the university’s Students Supporting Israel (SSI) chapter and was part of SSI’s “Triggered, the Tour: From Combat to Campus” featuring IDF soldiers speaking at 25 campuses across the United States and Canada. The two soldiers who spoke at CSUSM had both served in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, according to a post on the SSI chapter’s Instagram page. Hillel San Diego Executive Director Karen Parry wrote in a March 27 letter to community members that “Hillel staff supported student organizers and worked with the University to confirm that safety measures were in place.  We had received information prior to the event that several external non-student organizations as well as on-campus student organizations were leading a protest to seek canceling the event.”
According to Parry, the event itself began without incident, as “police created a blockade to prevent protesters from physically disrupting.” As the event went on, anti-Israel protesters could be heard “screaming and attempting to get a police reaction outside,” which Parry said was “disruptive” and intimidated attendees. Miriam Gershenson, an Israeli-American writer, wrote in the San Diego Jewish World on March 26 that she and her husband attended the event and that one of the organizers said “that they deal with this on a weekly basis.” At one point, an organizer commented on the “hundreds of protestors” surrounding the building. “I’m not sure if this was an exaggeration or a fact. We didn’t really see the protestors,” Gershenson said. She added there was a police presence which she presumed kept people away from getting too close to the building and when they were evacuated from the back to avoid the protestors. “So, we never had a clear visual of the amount of protestors.”
Read 9 tweets
Aaron Bandler Profile picture
Apr 2
My latest in @JewishJournal: 🧵

Michael Kaminsky, a third-year student at DePaul University, a private Catholic school in Chicago, spoke to me on March 1 about when he and another Jewish student were assaulted in November while tabling for Israel. Kaminsky, a @StandWithUs Emerson Fellow, was an attending the 2025 StandWithUs International Conference at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport and spoke to me there.Image
“On Nov. 6, 2024, myself and another student, who’s also an IDF [Israel Defense Force] reservist, were tabling for Israel,” he said. “We do this every single week on Wednesdays right around 1-3 pm on our campus trying to engage people in conversation about Israel, about misconceptions that people might have about the Jewish people or about Israel. And two people wearing ski masks physically attacked us. One person came from the front and was talking to us simply to distract us, while another person came from behind and started the assault. They battered us, and then eventually got up [and] ran away. We were left with pretty harsh injuries.”

Kaminsky, a tall, thin but solidly built 22-year old whose left arm was in a black sling at the time of the interview, said he suffered a wrist injury from the assault. He was recovering from an operation the previous week that required stitches. The other assaulted student, who has been publicly identified as Max Long, suffered a “pretty bad concussion and some other head injuries,” according to Kaminsky. “To this day, no one’s been arrested.”
Kaminsky claimed that there was a public safety officer — a person of color — who watched the attack unfold from “a few feet away” and didn’t do anything until the assailants left. “I ask myself, if I was a person of color, would this guy resemble more with me because he could see himself in my shoes?” Kaminsky said. “He knew that I was Jewish because we were there every single week, he knew that we were Zionist, and is it because of that he decided not to act? That’s a question that remains unanswered.”
Read 9 tweets
Aaron Bandler Profile picture
Mar 25
My latest on @Wikipedia in @JewishJournal: 🧵

Wikipedia editors decided to blacklist The Heritage Foundation’s website after a report came out that the conservative think tank is working on a plan to unmask various editors that the think tank believes are promulgating antisemitic content on Wikipedia.Image
The Forward reported in January that it had obtained documents purportedly outlining Heritage’s plan to “identify and target” the editors, which included the use of “facial recognition software and a database of hacked usernames and passwords in order to identify contributors to the online encyclopedia… The Heritage Foundation sent the pitch deck outlining the Wikipedia initiative to Jewish foundations and other prospective supporters of Project Esther, its roadmap for fighting antisemitism and anti-Zionism. ” A spokesperson for Heritage told The Forward that they couldn’t comment on the matter. Mike Howell, executive director of the think tank’s investigative arm, was in The New Yorker on March 4 that Heritage’s “investigation” of Wikipedia will be provided to “the appropriate policymakers to help inform a strategic response.”
In response to The Forward article, Wikipedia editors launched a discussion known as Request for Comment (RfC) on Jan. 8 how editors should treat the think tank’s reliability going forward. In RfCs, editors put in their “!votes” explaining their stated position on the best way to handle an issue in regards to site policy; a closer (an uninvolved Wikipedian in good standing) is often needed to render a verdict on the discussion based on the numbers and strength of the arguments presented. In this RfC, the closer, administrator “Dr vulpes,” concluded on Feb. 8 that there was consensus in favor of blacklisting the think tank; one editor explained to me that this means any links to Heritage’s website on Wikipedia will “be automatically flagged by an edit filter that will treat it like spam” and thus will be blocked from site the altogether.

“Although blacklisting is more often used to deal with spam or disruptive links it was noted that there is a possible risk to editors and the community by allowing such links to stay on the site,” Dr vulpes wrote. “As reported such links could be used to track users and editors which raised the option of blacklisting the Heritage Foundation. Several participants argued that blacklisting is the only sure way to block the direct use of heritage.org links in citations, which would prevent anyone from inadvertently clicking them. Many editors pointed out that blacklisting is not just a reliability decision but a security measure that is similar in nature to blacklisting malicious domains that track or harm our users.”

Dr vulpes also noted that myriad editors in the discussion had cited instances in which Heritage “has promoted false claims about election fraud and published unsupported scenarios about election interference. Academic sources like ‘Climate Change Counter Movement’ note Heritage Foundation’s pattern of misinterpreting evidence and promoting climate skepticism. The research cited by [another editor] shows Heritage has published disinformation about various policy matters including FDA regulations.”

The closer also noted that editors had pointed out in the discussion that blocking links to Heritage’s website would not necessarily prevent its views from discussed on Wikipedia, as any of the think tank’s views mentioned by third-party sources could be cited in articles.

“In conclusion, this discussion revolved around balancing Wikipedia’s need for reliable sources against protecting editors from a group whose published work is regarded as misleading and which appears willing to exploit links on Wikipedia to target those members of our community,” Dr vulpes added. “The pattern of misinformation, threat to our community, and the apparent ineffectiveness of lesser sanctions lead to a rough consensus that the Heritage Foundation should be blacklisted.”Image
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Read 8 tweets

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