Earlier this month, Vice President JD Vance delivered a blistering speech to Europeans that questioned whether the other half of the West adheres to a commitment to free speech or is embracing censorship and a suicidal embrace of mass migration. In Europe, these issues have been at the forefront of the leadup to Germany’s election. Here in the U.S., similar fights and tensions have been bubbling on college campuses where leftwing university administrations frequently turn a blind eye to anti-Semitic student mobs intimidating and harassing Jewish students and outside authorities seem unsure of how to intervene. At UC Berkeley, a clash between civil rights, free speech, union politics, and a standoff between the new Trump administration and administrators is coming to a head over anti-Semitism. How it plays out could determine how academia handles these fights in the future and the influence of unions in higher education.
College campuses across the country have proven to be epicenters of academia’s identity politics run amok since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. Campus anti-Semitism form student encampments and activist faculty are well-known to the public eye. Less-understood by outside onlookers is the role played by graduate student worker unions and their ability to sway campus organizations and influence administrators. At UC Berkeley, a slow-rolling crisis is unfolding that places the school’s United Auto Workers (UAW) student worker union against administrators, administrators against Congress and the Trump administration, and Jewish students against the whole of the university.
[RELATED: The Return of Campus Encampments: Ideological Echo Chambers]
In January, Karin Yaniv, an Israeli microbiologist studying at Berkeley as a postdoc, filed a lawsuit against UAW, claiming it violated both Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. According to the allegations, the UAW encouraged a hostile and threatening environment based on race, religion, and national origin when it established a “union village” in a pro-Hamas student encampment and refused to sanction union members for mocking the relative of an Israeli hostage held by Hamas.
Both the UAW and Berkeley have come under fire recently for anti-Semitism. In the case of UAW, the organization has a history of supporting campus anti-Semitism both at the campus and national levels. For its part, Berkeley notably came under withering criticism from Congress’s House Education and Workforce Committee last year when it noted that the flagship campus of the University of California (UC) system failed to protect Jewish students from rioting pro-Palestinian protestors and selectively enforced campus regulations to curtail ongoing harassment of Jewish students. Congress also noted that Berkeley violated its own UC policy when multiple faculty and teachers’ assistants openly used classes and coursework to encourage campus activism and political organizing against Israel. Congress noted that repeated pleas from Jewish students for Berkeley administrators to come to their defense were met with silence, while Jewish faculty began resigning from committees and staging their own “sit-in” protests over the school’s inaction.
Shortly after the filing of Karin Yaniv’s lawsuit, the new Trump administration issued an executive order (EO) to combat anti-Semitism in education that explicitly mentions exploring how the Federal government can deport or remove noncitizen students and staff who engage in anti-Semitic activities. With timing right out of a Hollywood movie, Berkeley issued its own terse reply several days later, stating that it has an “unwavering commitment to confronting antisemitism” and supports a “campus community where all can feel safe, respected, and welcome regardless of their origins, identities, beliefs, or perspectives.” Rather than radical, the Trump administration’s EO is indicative of how college administrators’ tepid campus governance has enabled academia’s anti-Semitism to reach a boiling point. Suffice it to say, Berkeley students did not take Trump’s EO well.
After Trump issued the order, the UC Student Association and the UC Graduate and Professional Council reframed the anti-Semitism debate as a matter related to “undocumented and international students,” a “threat to free speech,” a violation of “transgender rights,” and demanded that the president of the UC system and its regents to take immediate legal action. At the UC system level, an official email in response stated that the “University of California is unwavering in its commitment to free speech, a bedrock principle at the University.” UC Berkeley’s Assistant Vice Chancellor of Communication, Dan Mogulof, tried to appease all sides, stating again that the campus is committed to “confronting antisemitism,” and that it is going to “comply and cooperate” with any forthcoming investigations.
[RELATED: Anti-Semitism Growing on America’s Campuses]
While the Berkeley campus administration finds itself at the center of a growing fight on anti-Semitism, Berkeley’s UAW chapter could hardly be accused of being balanced in its position.
In January last year, UAW chapters 2865 and 5810 passed a resolution “Committing to a Labor Strategy towards Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions at the University of California.” The UAW’s explicit resolution included a commitment to protecting UC workers “facing harassment or retaliation for their Palestinian identity or advocacy,” and an initiative to set up a “program of mass anti-imperialist political education and labor organizing” that may include “direct actions,” and “advocacy with local elected leadership.”
Added up, Berkeley sits in the center of a convergence of opposing political and social forces that it helped create. Like so much of academia, Berkeley’s lopsided ideological leanings have fostered an environment of identity politics that turns a blind eye to anti-Semitism and the violent ideologies of groups like Hamas on the one hand while hollowly claiming to provide a safe environment for Jews and free speech on the other. Thanks to the confluence of Trump, an openly pro-Hamas sentiment among faculty and the UAW, and incoming civil rights lawsuits, Berkeley is set to lose the upcoming legal fights.
For a place with no moral compass or sense of North, it might as well travel the road to hell.
Follow Minding the Campus on X for updates, and explore more on campus anti-Semitism here.
Image: “Pro-Palestinian Protest in front of Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley” by Kefr4000 on Wikimedia Commons
This is an ongoing issue that has been going on for 30 years — these organizations are both student groups *and* recognized unions and hence are able to be either depending on which benefits them more in any particular situation.
After the September 11th atrocity, and in its infinite wisdom, the UMass Campus Activities Office decreed that there would be no student rallies related to September 11th. Constitutionally questionable, but at least they were consistent, student organizations could not have rallies relating to September 11th.
However, since UAW Local 2322 was a “union”, it could have a rally — and hosted the most vile anti-American event imaginable. This on a campus where over 90% of the student body had supported the Gulf War a decade earlier — two separate surveys showed this, the second one commissioned to confirm the first because the people taking the survey didn’t believe the results they had received.
Conversely, when it runs afoul of the labor laws — and Local 2322 did so egregiously that the UAW itself sent a “monitor” to babysit them, they become a student organization that is exempt from all labor laws. Building takeovers thus become “student actions” and not “unfair labor practices” that unions aren’t supposed to engage in.
The problem is that most of the graduate “employees” have a visceral hatred of the US and everything it stands for. They hate Israel too because they hate Western Civilization, and we need to realize what Israel already knows — they’re first but we’re next.
Israel is only the “Little Satan” — the US is the “Big Satan” and they intend to destroy us as well. Regardless of politics, American labor unions were once patriotic entities, they were proud to be Americans and were proud to support what America stood for.
Not anymore — and the real solution to this problem lies in the IRS Code.
If one already has a BA or BS degree, any tuition waiver that one receives as the result of employment is considered taxable income. HOWEVER if one is a “student”, a tuition waiver is not considered taxable income — and hence these “unions” aren’t paying their fair share of taxes.
Hence on a $40,000 stipend, using Massachusetts as an example, they pay $2,816 to the IRS and $1,560 to the Commonwealth. As students, they are exempt from paying $3,060 in FICA (Social Security).
However if you add in $50,000 in waived tuition for a $90,000 annual income, they now pay $11,641 to the IRS and $4,060 to the Commonwealth, and may or my not be exempt from paying $6,885 in FICA.
Value the waived tuition at $70,000 — not unreasonable for a private university — and you have an annual income of $110,000. That means $13,841 to the IRS and $4,560 to the Commonwealth — for a total of $18,401 or 46% of the $40,000 stipend!
Somehow, I think this would be the end of the union, and that would be a good thing.
And all it would take is a ruling that those “students” represented by a state recognized barging unit are “employees” and hence their tuition waivers are taxable.
One other thing — reading the Jerusalem Post article, it appeared that she was a member of the UAW bargaining unit, i.e. that the UAW represents Post Docs, of which she is one.
If that’s true, she has a second suit she wants to file — against the union for (a) discrimination and (b) breach of fiduciary duty. The EEOC is clear — https://www.eeoc.gov/coverage-labor-unions-and-joint-apprenticeship-committees — but I am not sure if she wants to go that route or with the NLRB.
Bottom line — in addition to being generally bigoted schmucks, if the UAW is supposed to be REPRESENTING her, she and the other Jewish employees have a legitimate complaint against the union — one I suspect that the grownups in the National UAW will quickly realize.
Or not. These are the folk who drove the US Auto Industry into the ground, after all…