We organize protests at anti-Israel and antisemitic events such as the now infamous UNC/Duke Gaza conference. This conference claimed to be organized to provide a balanced, intellectual view of the situation in Gaza. However, there was not a single speaker providing the Israeli perspective, and the speakers’ remarks were often antiSemitic, designed to delegitimize, demonize, and hold the Jewish State of Israel to a double standard. Furthermore, efforts to openly record the symposium, held at a taxpayer-funded state university, were quashed by the program organizers, and questions from the Israeli perspective were openly mocked or ignored.
As a result of efforts by our group, our mobilized community, and the highly active Twitter and Facebook groups that took up the cause, UNC is now under close scrutiny by the federal Office of Civil Rights. Protests such as these, and the wider national awareness that was generated regarding the problem of antisemitism on our college campuses, led to the recent Executive Order by President Trump that provides Jewish students with the protection of Title VI coverage at their schools.
