A recent University report on antisemitism is getting pushback from faculty groups.
Created in 2025 after multiple antisemitic attacks on Jewish students, Pitt’s Working Group on Antisemitism released a report in July containing recommendations for how the University should combat antisemitism on and off campus. Some faculty groups say they believe the report’s process did not follow the principles of shared governance and that some of its recommendations would impinge on academic freedom.
According to the eight-page report, the group was established to make “actionable recommendations” to prevent and respond to antisemitism. In its background section, the report cites reports of antisemitic activity after Oct. 7, 2023, including the physical assaults of three Jewish students on or near campus.
Its recommendations address categories like institutional capacity to respond to antisemitism, institutional policies, incident response, and training and education.
“We want campus democracy, ultimately, and this report basically is not going in that direction,” sociology professor Mohammed Bamyeh said.
Concerns over shared governance
One major concern among faculty is that the working group process did not follow the principles of university shared governance, and that partly because of this, too few community members were consulted.
Pitt’s Staff Council website explains that shared governance enables discussions amongst members of upper administration, faculty and students and key campus groups before decisions are made.
Many faculty members pointed towards University Senate deliberations in 2024, when it was ultimately decided that work to address antisemitism on campus should shift from a University Senate ad hoc committee to a university-level working group.
Ruth Mostern, history professor and vice president of Pitt’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said she believes the process of writing the report would have followed shared governance if the proposal to create a Senate ad hoc committee went through the Senate Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Discrimination Advocacy Committee.
“Instead of permitting this deliberative process to take its course in accordance with Pitt Senate rules and practices — that is, through Pitt’s shared governance bodies and their bylaws — some deliberation occurred that has never been made public, which resulted in the administration forming its own [working group] with no further faculty input,” Mostern wrote in an email.
Michael Goodhart, political science professor and president of the AAUP, is skeptical about how much Chancellor Joan Gabel and the working group are open to altering the report in response to feedback.
“And even if they are, it’s that draft that shapes the conversation,” Goodhart said. “If a professor comes to class with a ‘draft’ syllabus and then says, ‘Let’s discuss this, I want your input, it’s a shared class,’ that draft still shapes the conversation, and you might be reluctant to say, ‘This stinks’ knowing that it’s the draft that your professor, who will be grading you, prepared.”
Pitt’s AAUP chapter penned a letter of opposition calling for the report’s withdrawal. Pitt spokesperson Jared Stonesifer told The Pitt News that the University does not intend to withdraw the report, adding that the university is taking next steps on a number of the working group’s recommendations.
“Recommendations involving matters that are appropriately addressed through shared governance will proceed accordingly,” Stonesifer said.
Kristin Kanthak, president of the University Senate and political science professor, wrote in an email that she thinks some of the pushback is based on a “fundamental misunderstanding of what shared governance is and how it works.”
She said she believes shared governance does not preclude the chancellor from asking for or receiving advice, and that shared governance does not mean the Senate is a gatekeeper of access to the chancellor. She believes that shared governance comes into play when considering policy implementation, and she does not see any dramatic policy changes in the chancellor’s response to the report.
“The Senate ought to play a role in determining how the university as a whole responds to the report and to the chancellor’s take on the report,” Kanthak said. “Shared governance means the report is the start of the conversation, not the end.”
Three authors of the report — Kathleen Blee, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and Paul Wallach — did not respond to a request for an interview.
“I didn’t know anybody on that committee”
Mohammed Bamyeh, sociology professor and a member of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, called the report’s process “completely undemocratic and nontransparent,” believing it subverts the shared governance process where faculty are supposed to be consulted about important policies.
“What we want to do essentially is go back to 2024, when this discussion in the Faculty Senate began, pick up where we left off, and actually have the process take its course within the committee,” Bamyeh said.
Students for Justice in Palestine at Pitt released a statement condemning the report and the Chancellor’s response to it, referencing the 2024 University Senate deliberations and saying they believe it conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Vicky Davide, president of the faculty affinity group Pitt Jewish Community, said many of her colleagues were concerned that the group did not consult enough Jewish perspectives in the community. She noted that there were no faculty members from the Jewish Studies program in the working group.
“As the Jewish community president, I would have known somebody on that committee, but I didn’t know anybody on that committee,” Davide said.
Davide said she and her colleagues had trouble receiving information about getting involved in the working group, after inquiring about it through Staff Council and other avenues.
“A lot of my colleagues were really disappointed when the report came out. They didn’t feel like it was nuanced enough or didn’t have enough conversations,” Davide said. “It’s not all bad. It’s a good start to it. But it needs to be improved.”
Daniel Marcus, executive director and CEO of Hillel JUC of Pittsburgh, explained in an email that Hillel welcomes the report’s recommendations and that it hopes there will be consideration given to adopting a policy definition of antisemitism such as the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
“We very much appreciate the time, dedication, and effort that the Working Group on Antisemitism has dedicated to this important task,” Marcus said.
Chabad Rabbi Shmuli Rothstein said he generally supports the report, pointing toward its call to maintain regular outreach with Hillel, Chabad and the Jewish Studies Program.
“I think it’s a wonderful step for the University to take,” Rothstein said.
He also commended the section about incident response and enforcement mechanisms.
“Threats should be taken seriously. There’s nothing wrong with a threat being taken seriously,” Rothstein said.
Andrea Goldschmidt, an associate professor of psychiatry in the School of Medicine and a member of the Pitt Jewish Community, said she is concerned that the report does not document any listening sessions, focus groups or interviews with Jewish faculty, staff and students, except for including the then-president of Hillel in the working group.
Acknowledging that Hillel and Chabad may have been consulted, she said she felt that individuals should have also been consulted.
Goldschmidt said that after reading antisemitism reports from other universities, she often noted direct input from the community, including quotes from interviews with community members.
“It would [have added] a sense that you’re actually basing your recommendations on the communities that are affected by the recommendations,” Goldschmidt said.
Potential threats to academic freedom
Faculty members also believe some of the report’s recommendations might lead to a restriction of academic freedom by equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Mostern highlighted, among other concerns, a line from the report that reads, “In our recommendations, it is understood that antisemitism may be expressed as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist bias.”
Some people consider criticism of Israel antisemitic while others don’t, and debate over the definition is extensive, including within academic circles.
Daniel Heifetz, religious studies professor and co-author of a letter from Jewish faculty presenting an alternative to the report, noted the same line Mostern referenced about antisemitism and anti-Zionist bias, believing it implicitly conflates the two.
“The concern is that it could be used to limit the ability of people to express anti-Zionist political philosophy or criticisms of Israel,” Heifetz said.
Harry Hochheiser, associate professor of biomedical informatics in Pitt’s School of Medicine and member of the group of Jewish faculty who penned an alternative to the report, said he thinks this line is the closest there is to a definition of antisemitism in the report, which could be problematic.
“It’s a very interesting and crafted statement, because to say that antisemitism may be expressed as anti-Israel or anti-Zionist bias — that’s not really falsifiable. But when you don’t define antisemitism otherwise, it almost seems as if this is the closest we’re going to get to giving you a definition.”
Heifetz is concerned that this line may be easy to apply too broadly.
“if you don’t have any other rubric for thinking about antisemitism, and you say, ‘This is the way antisemitism is expressed,’ then it lets people make the move [in] the opposite direction of saying, ‘Well, here’s anti-Israel sentiment, and therefore we’re going to go to antisemitism from that, or we’re going to assume it’s antisemitic.’”
Hochheiser said his biggest concern is the working group itself, believing it sets antisemitism apart from other forms of discrimination and the work of the University Senate’s committee on DEI.
He said he believes the report does not accurately represent what antisemitism is and might provide “fire” for a common antisemitic view that Jews are treated in special ways.
“I don’t think that protects us,” Hochheiser said.