I came to the University of Illinois at Chicago as head of sociology, expecting to spend the rest of my career here. Committed to the university’s social justice mission honoring diversity, equity and inclusion, I co-chaired the universitywide committee on faculty equity for more than a decade. UIC has been my beloved academic home.
Then came Oct. 7. Across the country, support for Palestinians quickly escalated into ripping down posters of hostages and committing hate crimes against Jews. Members of Congress held hearings about antisemitism at Ivy League schools. Lawmakers spotlighted bias at elite institutions, but I’d bet UIC could compete with the Ivies for ranking in the top 20 for antisemitism.
As an adamant defender of free speech. I support the right of everyone on campus to voice opinions about Israel. To critique the Israeli government isn’t antisemitic at all. Israelis do it often and loudly, even during war.
Individual free speech and university programs declaring their political positions using state resources, however, are radically different. When university resources are used to support some and alienate others, a hostile environment is bound to emerge.
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Just days after Hamas’ terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, the faculty in women and gender studies and Black studies posted a joint statement on their websites to assure Palestinian and Muslim students that they were valued and that faculty members were concerned for their welfare. I share that concern, deeply.
Glaringly absent from the statement was concern for Jewish and Israeli students. The faculty claimed to “mourn the loss of life in southern Israel” but went on to “denounce the ongoing escalation of settler colonial violence.” The statement ends in solidarity with those “targeted by colonialism, racism, heteropatriarchy, ableism and state-sanctioned violence” with no mention of antisemitism, the terrorist killings or the hostages. The global Asian studies program posted a similar statement, but only a short statement of concern for Arab, Palestinian and Muslim communities remains at this point.
Even worse, several student support centers, including the Disability Resource Center and the Women’s Leadership and Resource Center, put out a statement of solidarity with the Palestinians. While concern for students who are worried about loved ones in Palestine is important and necessary, why are Jewish and Israeli students rendered invisible? Are Jews of no concern to those at the centers designed to support student success?
Even when the United Nations provided evidence of sexual violence during the Oct. 7 attack, the Women’s Resource and Leadership Center remained silent on Israeli women’s suffering. In a Zoom meeting with some Jewish students, I learned that some no longer feel free to use the state-supported resources available at these centers because the political rhetoric makes them unwelcome. This feeling of being “othered,” of not belonging at UIC, runs counter to our mission of inclusivity.
Most disturbing, our administration has allowed these statements to remain on UIC websites. Perhaps there is some legalistic “context” that allows for political rhetoric to support one group of students even while excluding others, at least when the “others” are Jews. Such statements signal to Jewish students that they’re not entitled to take advantage of the same resources and services as their peers, though these are supposedly available to them from their tuition payments.
Timothy Killeen, president of the University of Illinois system, is now requiring each campus to craft policies for the appropriate use of issuing statements on university websites that use state resources. UIC is a public university using tax dollars to educate future citizens; public comment on these issues must be allowed, even welcomed. We shouldn’t allow anyone with an anti-Zionist agenda to make UIC a hostile environment for Jewish, Israeli or Zionist faculty and students.
There are, of course, anti-Zionist Jews, so perhaps this is a political issue, not an ethnic or religious bias. But even if this were merely about politics, do we want a campus where university websites deny community members a welcoming environment because they hold different political views?
I will retire before I intended to because UIC is no longer an institution comfortable for me, as a Jew who believes Israel has a right to exist. And to be clear, more than 80% of Jews in America share that belief. When university departments and programs publish statements implying support for the destruction of the state where more than half of all Jews alive today live, they have crossed the line from simple micro-aggressions against Jewish students and faculty to outright institutional antisemitism.
The time has come for UIC to create policies prohibiting departments and programs from using state resources to issue political statements that expressly alienate students because of their religious or ethnic identities or even their political beliefs. We need a task force on antisemitism in order to understand the scope of the problem and to recommend policies to alleviate it. We must incorporate antisemitism into our diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
At its core, so much of higher education’s purpose in society is about tikun olam, a Hebrew expression for repairing and healing the world. There is no better time than now to start that healing process, right here at UIC.
Barbara J. Risman is a College of Arts & Sciences distinguished professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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