A student walks past the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University in Orange on Thursday, September 5, 2019. (Photo by Kevin Sullivan, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Scrawled in colorful chalk in front of Chapman University’s library last year: “(Expletive) Israel.”
Vulgar. Crude. Highly objectionable.
But…
Is it harassment? Anti-Semitic? Should the university be held responsible for it, and similar iterations?
Folks who passionately believe in the “I may hate what you say, but I’d die for your right to say it” take on the First Amendment may find themselves gob-smacked these days. The federal government strong-arms universities over ideas it doesn’t like — and often prevails. Officials denounce unflattering news reports as lies. Raucous protests — which college campuses are famous for — morph into collisions of politics and religion where the line between free speech and harassment can get fuzzy, spurring expensive lawsuits that either a) seek to protect Jews from antisemitism or b) seek to stifle criticism of Israel.
Mild-mannered Chapman finds itself in the crosshairs of this culture war, alongside the likes of mighty UCLA, Columbia, Harvard and the rest.
Two Jewish Chapman alumni filed a federal lawsuit against the university last month, claiming Chapman allowed anti-Semitic bullying by pro-Palestinian activists on campus after the horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, and failed to take action against a “hate group.”
Three Jewish professors — and several students — are pushing back, even as they’re denounced by some as “bad Jews” for doing so. Members of the alleged hate group take great umbrage at being described as such. There have been threats and “doxing” on all sides.
Left: People rally in support of Israel outside the Federal Building in West Los Angeles in May 2021 in response to the fighting between Israel and Hamas, a militant group in Palestine. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Right: A Palestinian supporter waves a Palestinian flag during a demonstration at the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles in May. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)
One might argue it boils down to one question: Is opposing Israel’s war in Gaza, and its control over the Palestinian people, the same as hating Jews?
“There’s a desire to equate anti-Zionism and antisemitism,” said Michael Daniels, outreach coordinator for Students for Justice in Palestine at Chapman. “Antisemitism is a baseless racism negating a person because of their born ethnic background, which we know to be ridiculous. Zionism is an ideology. You can oppose an ideology, and there are perfectly logical and moral reasons to oppose Zionism.”
‘Ethnic and racial intimidation’
Eli Schechter and Talya Malka graduated from Chapman in 2024. They’re “Jewish Americans and Zionists, in that their identities includes a deeply rooted connection to the land of Israel, their ancestral homeland as Jews,” the suit says.
What, exactly, is Zionism? “Zionism can be broadly defined as the national movement for the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel,” the suit says. “Since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Zionism has come to include the movement for the development of the State of Israel and the protection of the Jewish nation in Israel through support for the Israel Defense Forces.”
About 200 Chapman University students take part in a walkout and protest on Monday, March 17, 2025, against Trump’s policies, including immigration, DEI, and Palestine. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
The lawsuit references scripture: “The Jewish religion is predicated on the belief that God promised Abraham that he and his descendants shall live in and maintain sovereignty over the land of Israel, and much of the narrative portions of the Torah and greater Jewish Bible, or Tanakh, detail the tribulations Jews experience when they do not have sovereignty over this land and their resulting struggle to achieve and maintain such sovereignty.” Supporting Israel is a religious imperative for Schechter, Malka and Jews in general, the suit asserts.
After Hamas’ attack on Israel took 1,200 lives on Oct. 7, 2023 — the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the lawsuit notes — a memorial to the victims was erected on campus by Jewish students and organizations. An Israeli Defense Forces flag appeared as well.
Soon, a large Palestinian flag was hung above the memorial’s small Israeli flags “in an act of ethnic intimidation and domination,” the suit said. Members of Students for Justice in Palestine “openly and publicly desecrated the memorial by stealing and removing flags.”
Schechter emailed Chapman officials asking for protection. In that email, the suit says, Schechter wrote: “A lot of Jews in our community are scared and have reported individuals ripping Israeli flags from the ground and giving them mean looks.”
Also, flyers posted by Jewish student groups were ripped down and replaced with flyers affiliated with Students for Justice in Palestine, which the suit described as “colonizing the space… a systemic pattern of ethnic and racial intimidation.” Also, according to the suit, Jewish students were barred from a Students for Justice in Palestine meeting and shouts of “(Expletive) Jews” were heard on campus, as well as instances of Nazi salutes, homosexual innuendo, calls for Intifada, death threats, and even a dead squirrel.
“I really don’t feel safe on campus,” Malka told authorities, according to the suit. “The Jewish community does not feel safe on campus…. I don’t want to have to keep saying I am scared until it is too late ….”
Chapman’s leadership knew about anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination yet failed to adequately respond by disciplining student organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, which the suit branded a hate group and “the discrimination and harassment’s driving force.”
Arabs and Muslims received preferential treatment, the suit continued, “so as to not fuel what Chapman’s DEI officers viewed as ‘negative stereotypes’…. Malka experienced emotional distress so great … that her eyes often swelled shut to the point where it obstructed her vision to such a degree it was unsafe for her to drive and she needed to walk to school.”
The Jewish students were expressing their race, religion and national origin as inseparably connected to Israel while Chapman “sustained an atmosphere of racial harassment and discrimination” that deprived them of the educational experience they paid for, the suit said. It seeks class action status for Chapman’s Jewish students, as well as compensatory and punitive damages, pre-judgment and post-judgment interest, costs and attorneys’ fees.
An op-ed by the three Chapman professors saying that “Suing Chapman University does not make Jews safe” is outrageous, said attorney Matthew Mainen.
“One of my clients was specifically subjected to personal death threats because of an aspect of her Judaism while all Jewish students were collectively threatened with chants calling for their lynching,” he said by email. “The Dean of Students specifically enforced policies banning people with Jewish sounding last names from entering one portion of campus and those with sincerely held Jewish beliefs from another. In response to all of this, the Op-Ed basically says ‘but who cares, because some undefined transgender population also experiences discrimination.’ The fact that Chapman has such faculty whose “All Lives Matter” death threats against Jews speaks to the University’s underlying animus towards Jews.
“I eagerly await their next Op-Ed encouraging everyone to stop talking about the Holocaust because a lot of Polish Christians also died.”
‘You don’t give bullies your lunch money’
It might be a stretch, though, to brand Shira Klein an anti-Semite.
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Klein is an Israeli citizen. She’s an associate professor of history and department chair at Chapman, a scholar of antisemitism (“Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism,” Cambridge University Press, 2018), and a National Jewish Book Award finalist.
Her colleague, Richard Ruppel, is professor of English and Peace and Justice Studies at Chapman.
Their colleague, Fred Smoller, is associate professor of political science at Chapman.
All three are Jewish. All three agree that antisemitism is real and dangerous. But all three said they haven’t encountered anti-Semitic harassment on Chapman’s campus, and together penned the scathing op-ed arguing that the lawsuit “has nothing to do with keeping Jews safe and everything to do with silencing criticism of Israel.”
The harassment claim rests on a faulty premise, they write: that criticism of Israel, or of Zionism, is inherently anti-Semitic — i.e., hatred of Jewish people.
“Using that logic, to reject Zionism or oppose Israel is to discriminate against Jews. This is the same tired canard that President Donald Trump’s administration is using to defund universities it claims are inadequately tough on antisemitism. The conflation between antisemitism and anti-Zionism is wrong,” they write.
“Anti-Zionism is opposition to a political ideology, and there is nothing anti-Semitic about it,” they continue. “Indeed, anti-Zionism has a rich history among American Jews. And criticism of Israel, however scathing, is not a hatred of Jews. Contrary to the lawsuit’s unfounded claim that ‘supporting Israel is a religious imperative,’ many Jews, including we three authors, see a Jewish imperative in opposing Israel. All the more so after Israel’s destruction of Palestinian life these last two years. According to a recent Washington Post poll, over 60 percent of American Jews say Israel has committed war crimes, and about 4 in 10 say it is guilty of genocide.”
Some of the behavior described in the lawsuit is unacceptable, they agreed, such as the cry, “(Expletive) Jews.” “But Jews are not special in the bigotry they face,” they wrote. “In 2024, nearly half of Muslim students surveyed at California colleges faced harassment on campus, and an estimated 40% of transgender and questioning students were bullied during high school.”
Anti-Semitism connects to other forms of oppression and can’t be confronted alone, they argue: Making anti-Semitism exceptional, as this lawsuit does, harms Jews and belittles the bigotry suffered by other groups.
This shows a mural in Tel Aviv on Friday, Jan. 17, 2025. Israel’s security cabinet approved a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release agreement. (Avishag Shaar-Yashuv/The New York Times)
“The impression people get from this sort of lawsuit is that campuses are these cesspools of anti-Semitism and it’s just not true, not backed by any data,” Klein said. “Jews face discrimination, but so do many other groups, some even more than Jews. Chapman has been the most supportive place to work in as a Jewish person. I have never experienced any antisemitism on campus.”
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the alleged “hate group,” has had many Jewish members over the years, said Daniels, the student. The people not allowed into the SJP meeting weren’t barred because they were Jewish, but because they were known disruptors, he said. “If anything, I’d say the campus is far less welcoming to the anti-Zionist ideology,” he said.
A Jewish student, who asked not to be identified for fear of hostility, confirmed that. “I was there during protests. There was never a time I felt endangered. In fact, the board of SJP has historically had Jewish people on it. There was never a moment where I questioned if anything being said was anti-Semitic rhetoric.
“What SJP does is fight for Palestinians and the national ambition of people who are under occupation by Israel. It has nothing to do with Jewish identity. It’s not a religious war.”
Don’t cave
The professors want Chapman to fight until the suit is dismissed, and not do what Harvard and others did in the face of similar suits: Cave, settle the suit before trial, pay out millions, and agree to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that sweeps in criticism of Israel (called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance or IHRA definition).
Smoke billows over Gaza Strip following an Israeli bombardment, as seen from southern Israel, Sunday, Oct. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)
“They’re saying that there’s only one way to be Jewish, and if you threaten that, you’re anti-Semitic,” Klein said. “Over the last several years, we’re seeing the law wielded more and more as a tool…. What we need is a commitment from campuses everywhere to equality, equity and fighting all racism, not just anti-Semitism.”
Ruppell, the professor, said that partnerships with the federal government have produced so much (think Manhattan Project to the polio vaccine), resulting in patents, discoveries, engineering and advances that powered the “American Century.” Now, however, foreign universities are luring scientists away. Research grants are being terminated. The attack on universities threatens the nation, and America stands to lose its edge.
“All voices need to be welcome on campus,” Ruppell said. “Conservative, progressive, liberal, social democratic voices, athiests, people of faith – diversity is part of what made the United States a great nation. Diversity of thought so important. Universities are the antidote to the lies and propaganda that are so rampant.”
If these conversations don’t happen on college campuses, where else can they happen? Smoller asked. “This lawsuit would have a chilling effect on that conversation. It would put us in political science out of business. You have to fight these guys. You don’t give bullies your lunch money.”
Chapman will be filing its answer to the suit in Orange County Superior Court soon. Spokesman Bob Hitchcock said, “we stand by our strong record of supporting Jewish students and continuing to do so is a priority and commitment for us, consistent with our mission and founding.”
Standing up to the pressure may not be easy, but it’s right thing for the university to do, the professors said.
“It’s a modern day Red Scare. The lawyers see an excellent opportunity to shake down the university. It amounts to extortion,” Smoller said. “I am Jewish. I am pro-Israel. I am absolutely anti-the Netanyahu government. There is a difference. If I learned anything in Hebrew school, it’s that you don’t be silent in the face of injustice.”