The dean of Berkeley Law School is known as a staunch supporter of free speech, but things got personal for him when pro-Palestinian students disrupted a gala dinner for about 60 students at his home.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school, hosted the dinner Tuesday night in the backyard of his home in Oakland, California. The party was supposed to be a community-building event, open to all third-year law students, with no speeches or formal activities.
But a third-year law student and Palestinian activist, Malak Afaneh, stood up at the event, holding a microphone, and began a speech.
As he began to speak, Mr Chemerinsky, a renowned constitutional scholar, appeared to shout: “Please get out of our house! You are invited to our home!”
Catherine Fisk, another Berkeley law professor and Mr. Chemerinsky’s wife, can be seen with her arm around Ms. Afaneh, trying to pull the microphone away and pulling the student a few steps.
Ms. Afaneh and other student protesters described Ms. Fisk’s fight for the microphone as a disproportionate and violent response. The students, they said, had the right to speak at a university rally.
Mr Chemerinsky said the dinner was paid for by the university. But he said the students, who brought their own microphone and amplifier, had no such free speech rights in a private home, at a dinner without scheduled remarks.
In the past, Mr. Chemerinsky has supported free speech rights for pro-Palestinian students, including the right to prevent Zionists from speaking to their groups. But this latest incident shows how the Israel-Hamas war has intensified and complicated the free speech debate. As pro-Palestinian students stage sit-ins and disrupt events on college campuses across the country, some administrators, pressured by donors and politicians, have cracked down on unruly behavior by arresting and expelling students.
The moment was particularly difficult for the University of California, Berkeley, long a hotbed of left-wing activism and the home of the Free Speech movement of the 1960s. As protests continue there over the conflict in the Middle East, some Jewish students and alumni have criticized university officials, saying the school has tolerated activism that turns into anti-Semitic discourse.
On Thursday night, about 15 protesters returned to Mr. Chemerinsky’s home for another student dinner, this time staying outside the house for about 90 minutes, Mr. Chemerinsky said.
“They carried signs and had drums,” he wrote in an email. “They stood in front of our house shouting (some quite offensive) and beating their drums.”
In February, an event at Berkeley featuring an Israeli speaker was canceled after a crowd of protesters broke down the doors, which the chancellor, Carol Crist, said was “an attack on the university’s fundamental values.” Last month, Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the House Education Committee investigating anti-Semitism on campus, sent a letter to university officials requesting documents and information about Berkeley’s response to anti-Semitism.
Mr Chemerinsky said he was the subject of an anti-Semitic leaflet, released earlier in the week, which featured a cartoon image of him holding a bloody knife and fork, with the words “No Dinner With Zionist Chem while Gaza starving”.
“I never thought I would see such blatant anti-Semitism,” he wrote in a statement to the law school community after the first protest, “with an image that invokes the horrendous anti-Semitic trope of the blood libel and attacks me for no apparent reason other than . I am a Jew.”
The Berkeley chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine, where Ms. Afaneh is co-president, did not respond to requests for an interview. But Camilo Pérez-Bustillo, the executive director of the local chapter of the National Bar Association, said Mr. Chemerinsky was not singled out because he is Jewish.
“He was targeted because he failed to take a public position on an urgent issue,” Mr. Pérez-Bustillo said, “which is US complicity in the unfolding genocide.”
In the video, Ms. Afaneh said, the National Lawyers Guild “informed us that this is our First Amendment right.”
The Chemerinsky dinner on Tuesday fell on the last day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. As Ms Afaneh and Professor Fisk both took the microphone, Ms Afaneh said: “We refuse to break our fast on the blood of the Palestinian people” and accused the university system of funneling billions of dollars to arms manufacturers.
“I have nothing to do with what UC is doing,” Ms. Fisk said. “This is my house.”
Mrs. Fisk threatened to call the police but did not. After he dropped the microphone, Ms. Afaneh and about 10 other law students left peacefully and the dinner continued, Mr. Chemerinsky said.
“I am very saddened that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, my yard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda,” Mr. Chemerinsky wrote. Through Mr. Chemerinsky, Ms. Fisk declined to be interviewed.
Many pro-Palestinian advocates say this is not the time for decorum, as the death toll from Israel’s shelling of Gaza tops 30,000, according to Gaza health officials. The protesting students wanted Mr. Chemerinsky, who describes himself as a Zionist, to denounce what they described as an unfolding genocide and to demand that the university divest from companies that aid Israel’s military campaign.
After the dinner controversy, the chapter of Law Students for Justice in Palestine called for the resignations of Mr. Chemerinsky and Ms. Fisk and called for a Palestine curriculum that would focus on “resistance and the right of return in a settler context – colony. “
Richard Leib, the chairman of the board of trustees of the University of California system, and Ms Christ, the chancellor of Berkeley, have supported the couple.
“I am horrified and deeply disturbed by what happened at Dean Chemerinsky’s home last night,” Ms. Christ said in a statement on Wednesday. “While our support for Free Speech is unwavering, we cannot allow a social occasion in a person’s private home to be used as a platform for protest.”
Mr. Chemerinsky said he invites first-year law students to a welcome dinner in his backyard to create a sense of community. That dinner — split over three nights with about 60 students each — was for third-year students whose traditional welcome dinner was canceled because of Covid, Mr. Chemerinsky said.
The dean said he believed in the tradition so much that when he bought a house in 2017, he made sure the backyard could hold a crowd.
“I never could have imagined that this would be divisive or a flashpoint,” he said, adding, “It’s a bad time.”
