Oakland, Ca. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – A California District Court hearing on was held on Wednesday, December 17, over an injunction sought by plaintiffs represented by the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) against a new law, California AB 715, which is supposedly intended to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism. But it no more does that than does that than convicted felon Donald Trump’s Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, to which many mainstream Jews object. Rather, it demonizes and criminalizes teachers who dare to be candid about the realities of Israel and Palestine.
The hearing ended without a decision or timeframe for one. The bill is set to go into effect on January 1, and there’s no way to know if Judge Noel Weiss will render a decision before then. Positioned and disguised as a bill to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism expressions, it is really an attack on academic freedom, teachers’ freedom to teach, and freedom to criticize a foreign government, which happens to be the Jewish state. It was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom, though his signing statement expressed reservation and reluctance.
The ADC Attorney Jenin Younes represented the plaintiffs, including Berkeley middle school history teacher Andrea Prichett, who is the lead plaintiff. Two years ago, she was subjected to an investigation by the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD), after a student complained about her citing Israel as a modern-day example of colonialism. In her American History class, she posed a question to her students about “whether colonization happens in modern times.” Without her direct prompting, a student mentioned Israel and Palestine as an example. That led to a visit by a BUSD investigator, and thrust her into leading the legal challenge to AB 715.
During the hearing, there was discussion about the objectionable vagueness of California AB 715. One question posed was, “Who’s doing the enforcement?” The school districts, the California DOE, or a yet-to-be-appointed state authority? AB 715 bestows unconstitutional powers on a district superintendent, and stipulates that teachers can’t challenge the law under the First Amendment. This language is that of the disturbing “sovereign immunity” concept, which shields the government from the legal challenges, unless it waives its immunity under the Federal Tort Claims Act.
The ADC issued the following summary statement: “This week, we stood in federal court in San Jose to stop California’s Assembly Bill 715, a law that threatens to criminalize the First Amendment right to speak freely. At its core, AB 715 is not about protecting students. It is about state-enforced silence. If allowed to take effect on January 1, this law would give the government broad and vague authority to punish teachers for discussing Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East.” Arguments presented by Ms. Younes included that “AB 715’s vague definition of antisemitism opens the door to suppressing lawful speech.” Judge Weiss “acknowledged how difficult and dangerous it would be to draw these lines.” Among the objections to AB 715 are that “Teachers are not government mouthpieces. Classrooms are not censorship zones. And freedom of speech does not disappear at the schoolhouse door.” By representing Ms. Prichett and other teachers, “ ADC is fighting to protect the First Amendment rights of teachers, students, and the spaces where learning and growth must be free from political intimidation.”
To an honest observer, Israel’s calculated genocide in Gaza and settler attacks, abetted by the Israeli military, on Palestinians in the West Bank, are brazen examples of colonialism. Denial of obvious travesties has become part of the Zionist Zeitgeist and underlies the propaganda campaigns under Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud governments, since he took office in 1996. History teachers teach facts and timeline of histories, along with the evolution of ideologies, and the consequential developments that follow.
The worlds of secondary education, higher academia and museum interpretation are under unprecedented assault by obscurantist forces led by Trump. This attack includes Trump’s efforts to re-write American History by blackmailing the Smithsonian Institution, to whitewash the ugly realities of the nation’s founding and evolution since the Civil War. The popularity of Trump’s MAGA rhetoric illustrates how many Americans weren’t happy with the results of the Civil War and WWII. Now they seem on path to normalize this gross dialectic, and to criminalize teaching the truth about racism in the US.
Netanyahu, his Likud Party ministers and their even more extreme allies have moved aggressively and violently to do the same in Israel. Because Trump and Netanyahu are so closely allied, they have supported one another’s efforts to expand executive authority, and usurp delegated powers from the legislative and judicial branches.
California state laws already prevent discrimination in education. AB 715 is a threat to academic freedom and 1st Amendment protections for teachers, administrators and students. It’s a scattershot attempt to protect Zionist sympathizers from guilt or shame, as it defines “anti-Semitism” as any criticism of Israel. Zionism is not Judaism, but rather; a political ideology that arose in reaction to the pogroms, and was strengthened by the Holocaust. AB 715 seeks to protect a genocidal Israeli government from criticism in American education and academia.
California Capitol, Sacramento. Photo by E R on Unsplash
Berkeley is a uniquely Jewish city – there are over 20,000 Jews in a population of 124,000. The large Jewish presence in this college town is a defining characteristic of the historic and current dynamics. There is a vast spectrum of loyalties and ideologies, including “crunchy granola Jews,” with progressive sentiments and affiliations, and “red meat Jews,” who adhere to rigid orthodoxy and unquestioned support of Israel. Many are not Zionists. Some are only “cultural Zionists” in the humanist tradition of Martin Buber, a pacifist who felt a connection to the Holy Land but insisted on fairness to Palestinians. Others fully support the current government in Israel. No Jewish conspiracy could possibly arise in Berkeley, because we can’t agree on anything! Jews in the similar university town of Ann Arbor, Michigan are just as conflicted, as “58% of respondents reported feeling some level of emotional attachment to Israel,” while about 50% of respondents “feel their views about Israel are not welcome in Jewish settings.”
But because Berkeley is Berkeley, liberal ideology holds sway with the Berkeley Unified School District, a misguided liberalism that holds that Jewish students beholden to the MAGA-Likud ideology must be protected from guilt and shame. That’s what AB 715 enforces: Protecting the wrong people for the wrong reasons, and demonizing teachers who teach critical thinking.
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