New episode of antisemitism at the University of California, Berkeley. A pro-Palestinian student took advantage of a dinner invitation from a Jewish dean on Tuesday to protest the war between Israel and Hamas. The demonstration took place in the backyard of Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky's home.
He hosted a dinner with his wife, law professor Catherine Fisk, to celebrate spring and impending graduation. He invited about 60 students to the evening but he never imagined that one of them, Malek Afaneh, would turn the event into a protest against him, as he himself recounted in a statement posted by the Berkeley Law School:
While guests were eating, a woman stood up with a microphone, stood on the top step in the yard, and began a speech, including about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop and leave. The woman continued. When she continued, there was an attempt to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her that you are a guest in our home, please stop and leave. About 10 students were clearly with her and ultimately left as a group.
The students did not leave immediately, and that caused Fisk to try to grab the microphone from Afanek while, Chemerinsky explains, they both tried to get the student to leave the dinner. "Please, leave. No. Please, leave. Please, leave. It's not your house. It's my house. And I want you to leave," says the teacher in a video that quickly circulated on social media and where also the dean is seen trying to end the protest:
A group of Berkeley law students accepted an invitation to dine at the private home of dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife, a law professor, then disrupted the event and refused to leave. Bizarrely, this student claims her conduct is protected by the 1st Amendment. Activists are… pic.twitter.com/8lvh3lWQDP
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) April 10, 2024
UC Berkeley chancellor 'disturbed' by the events
The incident went viral and, in this way, reached the ears of the U.C. Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ. She, through a statement accessed by The Los Angeles Times, condemned the student's actions and assured that she was "disturbed" by what happened:
I am appalled and deeply disturbed by what occurred at Dean Chemerinsky’s home last night. I have been in touch with him to offer my support and sympathy. While our support for free speech is unwavering, we cannot condone using a social occasion at a person’s private residence as a platform for protest.
Antisemitism is not something new for the dean. He assured that, before the dinner, posters and messages against him began to appear on campus and on social media attacking him "for no apparent reason other than I am Jewish":
Last week, there was an awful poster, on social media and bulletin boards in the law school building, of a caricature of me holding a bloody knife and fork, with the words in large letters, ‘No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves.’ I never thought I would see such blatant antisemitism, with an image that invokes the horrible antisemitic trope of blood libel and that attacks me for no apparent reason other than I am Jewish.
