Why hasn’t UC Davis done more to fix a campus ‘hostile’ to Jewish students? | Opinion

For the past few years, I had the honor of teaching Jewish students at UC Davis Hillel. I always start a class with a simple question: How has your week been?

Too often, the answers were painful.

One spoke of being harassed while crossing the quad. Another described taking detours to avoid protests where chants glorified Hamas. A third recalled a professor’s open hostility toward Jews.

These are the lived realities of Jewish students at UC Davis, realities that leave them feeling unsafe, unwelcome, and unprotected in the very place where they should feel most at home.

Making matters worse, UC Davis has allowed one of its own professors to remain listed as faculty, and presumably on the payroll, after her violent words shocked the community.

Just three days after the October 7 massacre in Israel, UC Davis Assistant Professor Jemma Decristo posted threats on social media aimed at Jewish reporters and their families. Her words were chilling, punctuated with emojis of blood, a knife, and a hatchet:

“One group of ppl (sic) we have easy access to in the US is all these Zionist journalists who spread propaganda & disinformation / they have houses w addresses, kids in school / they can fear their bosses, but they need to fear us more.”

This was not a slip of the tongue. It was a targeted call to violence against Jews.

In response, I wrote to UC Davis Chancellor Gary May and urged him to take bold action. I asked: “How could a faculty member who openly called for violence against Jews remain on the payroll of a public university? How could Jewish students feel safe knowing a professor at their own university had threatened Jewish lives?”

Campus officials responded politely, promising to “refer the matter to the appropriate departments” and pledging that UC Davis “rejects all forms of violence and discrimination.”

Two years later, nothing has changed. According to the university, Decristo is not teaching, yet stays listed as faculty at the university. The investigation, I’m told, is still a “confidential personnel matter.”

The Los Angeles Times has reported earlier this year that the Decristo incident “has been a driving force in the push for reform” of the faculty discipline process for the entire University of California faculty discipline process.

If this is true, the UC is driving very, very slowly.

Inside the UC, the faculty are given great freedom to police themselves. The Times detailed how UC academic senates are in charge of investigating cases of potential faculty misconduct and recommend the appropriate response.

At the UC, its Board of Regents is supposed to be in charge of setting policies like this. Faculty leaders in January urged the regents to avoid forcing a hasty resolution of any investigation into a professor.

Fair enough. Sometimes, justice takes time. But we are approaching nearly two years since the Hamas massacre and the ugly words from Decristo from its aftermath. Two years! As the saying goes, justice delayed is justice denied.

UC Regent Jay Sures was right when he questioned this method of faculty self-policing altogether. “The current process, in my mind, is unacceptable,” he said. “The concept of having faculty perform self-governance is not working. Nothing about this system is working now.”

The foot-dragging by the faculty and administration at UC Davis has prompted the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to launch a formal investigation after receiving a complaint that UC Davis failed to address harassment of Jewish and Israeli students, including Decristo’s threats.

This unnecessary delay to resolve this matter only serves to perpetuate the hostile environment for Jewish students on campus.

Jewish students themselves are saying that life on campus feels “pervasively hostile.” Last November, UC Davis was added to a list of the 25 most antisemitic campuses in the United States, a designation that resonates in the day-to-day experiences of the students themselves.

UC Davis’s own mission statement pledges to “exercise integrity in all that we do” and to“build community by embracing our diversity.” After two years of silence, it is time for Chancellor May to act decisively.

Not next month. Not next year. Today.

Reuven H. Taff is rabbi emeritus of Mosaic Law Congregation in Sacramento, California