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Although college campuses are much quieter this fall than they were last spring, some of the anti-Israel language at some schools is frightening in its celebration of Hamas’s violence. What feels different is the repeated glorification of the Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 people last year on Oct. 7 in a surprise attack.
About 1,000 people attended a rally on Oct. 8 commemorating the first anniversary of the Hamas attack at the University of California, Berkeley, where I am the dean of the law school. About half appeared to be students. Many of the protest signs were explicit in their endorsement of the violence on that day a year ago: “Israel deserves 10,000 October 7ths,” one said. “Long live Al-Aqsa Flood,” another said, using the Hamas name for the attack.
At the clock tower at the center of the Berkeley campus, a large banner was hung proclaiming “Glory to the resistance.” It displayed a red triangle used by Hamas to mark Israeli targets.
Across the country at Columbia University, the group Apartheid Divest posted an essay calling the Hamas attack a “moral, military and political victory.” The group also rescinded its criticism from last spring of Khymani James, a student who had said in a disciplinary hearing that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.”
Indeed, in its statement, the group declared, “We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance.” It also said, “Where you’ve exhausted all peaceful means of resolution, violence is the only path forward.”
In Rhode Island, the Brown University chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted this on Instagram: “Al-Aqsa Flood was a historic act of resistance against decades of occupation, apartheid, and settler colonial violence.”
These were not isolated occurrences. The Anti-Defamation League estimated that similar protests and language marred life at over 100 campuses in the United States. “At many of these events,” the group said, “protesters’ signs, clothing, flags, chants and speaker comments explicitly venerated Hamas’s deadly attack.”
The Oct. 7, 2023, attack was the deadliest on Jews since the Holocaust. Women were raped and sexually mutilated, babies were slaughtered, and whole families were burned alive. About 250 hostages were taken; more than 60 are thought to remain in Hamas’s hands.
Certainly, there is an important conversation to be had about Israel’s actions over the past year, which has led to so much devastation and loss of life in Gaza. However, these demonstrations on campuses were not that conversation. They were largely the celebration of the coldblooded murder and torture of innocent civilians. Regardless of one’s views on the conflict in the Middle East, the celebration of mass murder can only be condemned.
This support of violence is deeply disturbing. But so is the silence of school officials. Does anyone think the officials would be silent if there was a Ku Klux Klan gathering on a college campus celebrating white supremacist violence?
We should expect — and demand — that campus officials respond to a celebration of Hamas in the same way they would to a Klan rally praising racist violence. The speech of those celebrating Hamas is protected by the First Amendment on public university campuses and at private universities that choose to adhere to free speech principles, because there is a right to express all ideas, even very offensive ones. But that does not mean universities can or should do nothing.
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits colleges receiving federal funds from discriminating on the basis of race, color or national origin. This includes prohibiting harassment, including when there is a hostile environment. Such an environment exists where there is conduct that is sufficiently severe, pervasive or persistent that it interferes with individuals’ ability to participate in or benefit from their college experience. The Education Department has made clear, as have the courts, that this conduct includes discrimination against Jewish students.
Colleges can be in violation of Title VI if they determine that a hostile environment exists but don’t take steps to end the harassment or prevent it from recurring. The Education Department has identified several steps universities can take, including providing counseling and support to students affected by harassment and establishing “a welcoming and respectful school campus.”
Perhaps more important, university officials can also fulfill their obligation under Title VI by using their own speech to express the values of their community and condemn hateful expression.
As I listen to my Jewish students and their reaction to celebrations of Hamas, I have no doubt that they perceive a hostile environment. They do not feel comfortable walking across a plaza in the middle of campus where a sign says, “Israel deserves 10,000 October 7ths.” They understandably fear that the celebration of violence can too easily lead to violence.
I understand the reluctance of university officials to speak out or take other actions. It is easier to do nothing than to say something that will upset some campus constituencies.
But silence, too, is a message. And it is more. In the eyes of the law, doing nothing can be viewed as deliberate indifference, which violates Title VI and can lead to action by the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education.
At the very least, campus officials must issue a simple message: “Those who have praised the terrorism of Hamas on this campus have the right to express their views. But we, as campus officials, have the duty to say that celebrating murder, rape and taking hostages is deeply offensive and fundamentally inconsistent with what this university stands for.”
Saying so should not take courage.
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California and the author of the book “No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States.”
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