University of Washington Grapples with Anti-Semitism

UW leaders decided on a thoughtful, non-confrontational strategy to combat protests on campus. Some faculty and students are fed up with what they see as inaction.

Liv Fowler will graduate from the University of Washington this spring, “God willing,” she says, because she’s not sure if she’s going to be able to get through it on time.

The Jewish studies major-history minor who interns in the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies office had to drop a class to deal with the emotional toll of October 7th and its aftermath. “I ended up dropping a class this quarter that I really wanted to continue taking, but I was worried that I wouldn't pass it,” she says. “That’s really atypical for me. I’m not that kind of student.”

The University of Washington has seen anti-Israel demonstrations in Red Square consistently since immediately after the attack with an intensity that seems to be mounting.

Students have staged walkouts and sit-ins and protests. The campus and surroundings, including Thomson Hall, where the Stroum Center lives, were spray painted with anti-Israel messages. A protest the first night of Hanukkah at which activists chanted in Arabic “from the water to the water, Palestine will be Arab” caused the public menorah lighting to have to change locations.

Jason Rantz/X

Jason Rantz/X

SUPER UW, a branch of a national organization whose mission statement is to “educate and raise awareness of the Isreali [sic] occupation of Palestine,” has presented a list of demands to President Ana Marie Cauce, including recognizing that Israel is an apartheid state that practices discrimination, calling for a ceasefire and condemnation of “Israel’s occupation of Palestine,” ending study abroad to Israel and ending courses that “promote Zionist ideology,” and denouncing the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism.

But it was a late November “learning and reflection week” about Gaza held by “concerned faculty” that set Stroum Center Interim Assistant Director Brendan Goldman over the edge.

The three-day event, which incidentally included November 30th — the day that commemorates the 850,000 Jews who were expelled from Arab lands (and incidentally the same day as Thomson Hall was tagged) — included a reading of “The Gaza Monologues” and a session called “Colonialism and Catastrophic Violence: Framing and Organizing in our Current Moment” that featured a “student activist discussion.” No faculty members were listed on the flyer, but according to a November 7th letter obtained by The Cholent, more than 100 faculty members, mostly from Arts and Sciences disciplines and the School of Public Health, asked UW President Ana Marie Cauce and Provost Tricia Serio for support for the events, like waiving room costs, help with room reservations, and publicizing the events. Cauce did not lend support to the event according to sources close to the issue.

In a letter to President Cauce, Jackson International School Director Daniel Hoffman, and Arts and Sciences Dean Dianne Harris, Goldman writes:

I am writing to ask you to condemn and disassociate our university from the “week of learning and reflection” on the Gaza War that would explicitly tie our faculties’ scholarship to furthering a specific agenda of anti-Israel student activism. Even a cursory glance at the titles of the presentations makes clear this is a political rally masquerading (poorly) as a pedagogical endeavour. If you subscribe to the premise that academic institutions are supposed to teach people how (not what) to think, then these events are antithetical to everything a university is meant to represent.

What bothered Goldman more than the activist-scholarship was that since October 7th, the administration had urged the Jewish Studies Department to stay quiet.

“In the aftermath of 10/7, top UW administrators discouraged Jewish Studies from holding public events based on the notion that this would provoke conflict on campus,” he writes. “Stroum Center leadership refrained accordingly, acting in good faith as a partner to the administration.”

While other university departments went rogue, issuing their own, sometimes problematic public statements, in Goldman’s view the Stroum Center followed the lead of the university and agreed not to rock the boat. In return, the campus climate has become unstable and downright scary for some Jewish students. (Goldman did not want to speak on the record due to his employment circumstances but provided background.)

An official response from UW spokesperson Victor Balta pushed back on the claim that university leadership discouraged the center from holding events:

President Cauce has not discouraged Jewish Studies from holding public events. President Cauce’s position has consistently been that the response to offensive speech is more and better speech, and that we want speech to bring light, not heat, to the issue at hand. My understanding is that faculty in the Jackson School of International Studies and the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies chose to focus on their teaching and serving as resources for their students and the broader community, rather than focusing on large, public events in the fall quarter. The Stroum Center and the Jackson School are developing well-planned events in the winter quarter with the active support of the president’s office, dean’s office, and other campus units, as well as other partners within Seattle. 

Stroum Center for Jewish Studies director Mika Ahuvia shared the context that since October 7th, the center has been focused on support, given that one of their own PhD students, Hayim Katsman, had been killed at his home in Kibbutz Holit. In an email, she wrote, “Our priority has been to honor Hayim’s memory and offer space for our students, faculty, and staff to mourn together. As we continue to navigate our personal grief amidst this global conflict, we remain committed to the mission of our center and partnering with all University resources and institutions to support our students.”

According to Fowler, the question of whether the school was urging the Stroum Center to keep a low profile is complicated. Historically, Jewish studies as a discipline has tried to be neutral and focused on academics. But also, the Stroum Center has its own internal disagreements about Israel. The center got itself into hot water when several faculty members signed a statement condemning Israel after the May 2021 Israel-Hamas war. The fallout between the institution and its community supporters led to the loss of a $5 million endowment.

Fowler’s frustration goes straight to the top. She feels that President Cauce is caught in the same trap that Penn’s Liz Magill and Harvard’s Claudine Gay got ensnared. And now UW, along with Whitman College in Walla Walla, are in the crosshairs of a Department of Education investigation into discrimination.

Having started at UW in 2020, Fowler remembers all the efforts the school went to to elevate racial justice and ensure students of color felt safe. “Three years later, I find that the president of the university is going out of her way, bending over backwards, to make sure that people feel totally safe and comfortable calling for an intifada, or calling for destruction of the state of Israel, denying rape allegations,” she says.

Fowler also claims that the university discouraged the Stroum Center from soliciting donations this fall. “Advancement wanted us to limit our contact with the donors in the aftermath of October 7th, because they thought that contact with our donors would be perceived as us ‘preying’ on the donors, which, you know, that assumption alone has a lot of anti-Semitic tropes wrapped up in it,” she says.

Balta responded that advancement only wanted them to avoid fundraising in Katsman’s name. “Advancement recommended against sending a fundraising solicitation specifically in the name of Dr. Hayim Katsman so soon after his death,” he explained via email. “There was no broad recommendation against fundraising in any capacity.” 

With protests showing no signs of petering out or getting shut down and Jewish students and faculty feeling increasingly unsafe, will the university be able to turn the ship — and avoid a viral congressional hearing?

Amee Sherer, director of UW Hillel, is confident in Cauce’s leadership and believes the Stroum Center’s approach of working alongside the administration will be beneficial. Cauce has publicly distanced herself from protests, expressed disgust at the Hamas attacks and sympathy for everyone affected, and condemned bigotry and harassment. Sherer says her office is quick to respond to all graffiti issues and that she’s looking forward to an anti-Semitism task force that will pick up this winter. Campus DEI initiatives may come to include Jewish concerns as well. “We’ve had a lot of incidents in the residence halls recently where people just really don’t understand what it means to put a swastika up on a Jewish student’s dorm room,” Sherer says.

Sherer is hopeful the winter quarter will bring more stability. According to Ahuvia, the Stroum Center has robust programming lined up, including events with Professor Sara Hirschhorn and former Knesset Member Alon Tal.

“The thinking is really to be thoughtful and intentional and not simply throw something together so that we can counter what they’re doing,” Sherer says. “It’s not that Jewish studies has been silenced; Jewish studies has been asked to work along with the office of the president to really create a very thoughtful and intentional educational series winter quarter, which I believe they’re doing.”

Sherer has also seen how protestors have marched through university buildings chanting slogans and prefers that Hillel stay out of the spotlight. Hillel, she says, is a place to feel safe, to get a bowl of matzoh ball soup. She’s upped security for the increased number of students now finding refuge in the building.

Under the surface, however, she expresses a deeper fear. “It’s very, very triggering if you are of a generation, which many of us are, where your parents are Holocaust survivors, and you’re hearing the same kind of rhetoric happening today,” she says. “You know, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that when we said ‘in every generation they rise up against us’ in the Passover Haggadah every year, did I think that I would experience that in my lifetime. I really, truly, naively perhaps, thought that it was a historical statement.”

Fowler seeks solace at Hillel, too, where she has stopped asking people how they are, instead opting for “good to see you.”

“I think that on the whole, there’s this sense of exhaustion and defeat and disappointment with regard to like our relationship to university, but also kind of a sense of hope and belief in our own resilience,” she says.

In spite of her displeasure with how the school has handled Jewish concerns over the past three months, she also believes that now is the time to invest in education, not divest. Even classes she’s taken in Jewish studies with non-Zionist professors have left her stronger and more committed. “I feel better equipped to handle the anti-Semitic instances that happen outside of those classrooms because of the experiences that I’ve had inside them.”

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