‘Toxic and hostile environment for Jewish students’ at UC Irvine, students claim

For those unwilling to condemn Israel in the harshest terms, he said, the UC Irvine campus has become a hostile and dangerous place.

“When Jewish students say something is hurtful or problematic, they’re told, ‘You’re crazy,’ ‘territorial,’ called ‘racist,’ ‘Islamophobic,’ ” said Rabbi Daniel Levine of Hillel in Orange County. “It’s not just here. This is part of a much wider trend.”

Turns out that Levine’s contract to teach History 18A — Jewish Texts — as a lecturer was not renewed at UCI in late May.

The university says that’s because it has hired two new, full-time, tenure-track faculty members to beef up offerings in Jewish studies — a very good thing.

But dozens of students who adore Levine say it’s a cave-in to demands for an “academic boycott” of Israel and the scrubbing of “Zionist programming” from campus life. Those two new faculty members have expressed public dismay over Israel’s conduct in the war with Hamas, they say, as have professors in the position to weigh in on Levine’s contract renewal.

“(T)he History Department, which oversees Jewish Studies, has become a toxic and hostile environment for Jewish students,” says the students’ protest letter to UCI’s Humanities Department. “(W)e urge the university to transfer the Jewish Studies discipline to a different department outside of Humanities.”

The students are ardent, sincere in their passions and organized. They sing Levine’s praises to the heavens, saying they’ve never had a better professor, that he helped them better understand themselves and their culture, that his knowledge of the subject material is impeccable. “(N)ot a single question was asked in the class that he did not know the answer to,” one wrote. “History 18A with Daniel Levine played such an important role in my educational experience at UCI and I think it would be a shame for future students not to be able to take it.”

From the students’ perspective, and Levine’s as well, ideological bias certainly played a role in all this. They suspect decisions on Levine’s contract were made before the new Ph.D. hires accepted their positions, and that UCI professors who would have supported Levine were frozen out of the discussion.

It’s worth noting that Levine is still slated to teach medieval Jewish thought in UCI’s School of Social Sciences next year. He lectures at Cal State Fullerton and Cal State Long Beach as well.

It’s also worth noting that a “Wanted” poster of a political science/Jewish studies professor, complete with picture, was posted online Thursday. The professor’s “crimes” included “complicity in genocide,” “misinformation,” “receiving grants from US DOD & US Military Academy,” and “actively funding Israeli genocide and colonial settlement in the West Bank and Gazan Strip.” A “cash reward” was listed, and the background print said, “Divest Our Tuition Fees.”