This article is a submission to our Letters to the Editor section. For any questions or submissions please email Opinion@thedailyaztec.com.

March 10, 2025

Dear President de la Torre,

This past week, I was summarily removed by the co-chairs of the task force for missing three consecutive meetings. I write this letter to express my reasons for both non-attendance and leaving the task force. I had long hoped it would serve as a forum for inclusive deliberation on addressing antisemitism and contributing to wider engagement at SDSU and San Diego more broadly. Unfortunately, my hopes have not been realized, and I see no prospects for change.

I write as a long-time faculty at SDSU who has devoted much of my professional and personal life to Jewish affairs, including the contentious topic of Israel-Palestine. At SDSU, I have taught classes on Israel-Palestine, organized and presented multiple events, and encouraged wide dialogue. In 2016, for example, I organized a lecture series entitled “Dissent in Zion,” which brought in a range of Israeli and American Jewish voices. While that lecture series featured dissenting Jewish voices, I have also facilitated broader discussion by bringing in prominent Israelis defending Israeli government policies (including Josef Olmert, the brother of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert), and advising the SDSU chapter of the well-regarded Olive Tree Initiative, which promotes robust dialogue across the ideological spectrum and features experiential learning in Israel-Palestine. One academic year, at the invitation of a few students, I served as the faculty advisor for the “pro-Israel” student organization, then called Aztecs for Israel. The students and I both agreed to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and organize a range of forums on Israel-Palestine.

Over the past decade, my scholarship has focused on Israel-Palestine, dissenting Jewish Zionist voices, and the challenges faced by contemporary American Jewish dissenters. My 2023 book, “Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and other Pariahs,” marks my most extensive effort to bring out the rich diversity of Jewish views, past and present, on Zionism.

Given my interests and scholarly pursuits, I was honored to be invited to the Presidential task force on antisemitism in 2021. I welcomed collaboration with people holding a range of views on how to confront antisemitism and enrich Jewish life at SDSU. Originally, under the leadership of Luke Wood and Jessica Nare, the experience was rewarding. Luke and Jessica actively facilitated collegiality and acceptance of opposing views. I presented at the first teach-in on Antisemitism in America, brought in a local Klezmer band and co-organized a conversation with Kenneth Stern, a leading authority on free speech, hate speech, and antisemitism. 

Unfortunately, the mood of the task force dramatically deteriorated after Oct. 7, 2023. It turned to aggressive denunciation of critics of Israel’s offensive. Both myself and task force member, Susanne Hillman suffered vicious attacks for taking part in a teach-in. Notwithstanding that we condemned the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians, task force members charged us with brainwashing students, giving comfort to antisemites, and coercing students to attend the event. At the later teach-in convened by the task force, the visiting Israeli professor called us “idiots” who should be sanctioned for our remarks. The task force participants on the panel applauded him. Subsequently, task force members continued these attacks. One even doxed me by filming me at a campus protest and circulating the footage to the listserv. 

The hostile climate has now prompted the resignation of five original task force members, including a lead initiator of the task force, Norah Shultz. Last fall, an SDSU administrator observed inappropriate behavior from the task force and brought in two professionals to assess the situation. They learned that the former representative for the President, had become increasingly troubled by the aggressive stance of the task force and had indicated that she would not return as the president’s representative.

I stayed on the task force in hopes that Dr. Manning’s efforts at reconstituting would be successful. Having attended two recent meetings in which I was again attacked by multiple members, I concluded that the task force will continue to reflect exclusively the hardline Israel-advocacy segment of the American Jewish community. The revised rules have further discouraged the airing of dissenting views. I tried to express my concerns directly to you and to the Inclusive SDSU forum but received no response. 

I suspect you will be pleased at my leaving the task force given your lack of interest in inclusiveness or academic expertise. You continue to praise the task force and ignore my documented concerns of hostile actions. Notably, the two original members of the task force – myself and Susanne – with scholarly expertise on antisemitism, Israel-Palestine, and Zionism – were regularly maligned within the group. You have chosen to prioritize the input of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Hillel and other Israel-partisan voices. Such deference is even more alarming given the aggressive and xenophobic crackdowns of the new Trump Administration on campus protesters and the ADL’s defense of such actions and even of Elon Musk. 

I can understand the broader political forces that lead you and other university presidents to accommodate these reactionary forces rather than “rise and defy.” For a compelling assessment of the country-wide politicizing of task forces on antisemitism, see this essay by Peter Beinart. His assessment applies well to the task force you have overseen. Tellingly, neither the task force nor the SDSU leadership promoted the two talks I organized this academic year from two of the outstanding contemporary Jewish experts on Israel-Palestine, Nathan Thrall and Peter Beinart. Both events educated the public on the richness of the American Jewish community and the vitality of informed, Jewish dissent. If left to the discretion of the task force, such crucial characteristics of the Jewish experience will remain hidden. 

I hope you come to realize that your safe political stance chills speech, marginalizes Palestinian and other Arab faculty, staff, and students, and validates the efforts of hardline Jewish groups to exclude dissenting voices. In a meeting I attended back in 2021, you rightly criticized “narrow identity politics.” Yet the task force you praise does precisely that and indicates that only certain Jewish voices are welcomed. The result is the promotion of a monochromatic and close-minded Jewish narrative. I urge you to rethink this one-sided position going forward. I would be delighted to help in that cause.

Jonathan Graubart