JVP Academic Council Statement on Pomona College Complying with the House Education and Workforce Committee Request

31 March 2025

Congressman Tim Walberg 
Chairman, Committee on Education and Workforce
2266 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515

Congressman Burgess Owens
Chairman, Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development
309 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Walberg and Congressman Owens:

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace has read your letter of 27 March addressed to Pomona’s president, acting president, and Board Chair.  

We have reviewed your letter’s reported cases of “antisemitism” at Pomona College, and as your letter presents these cases, there is not a single instance of antisemitism among them. The charges are baseless and reflect a profound and materially harmful misunderstanding of antisemitism. Antisemitism is hate against Jews and/or Judaism. Your examples are, differently, criticisms of the Israeli state and/or its policies, specifically criticisms that recognize and oppose that state’s denial of Palestinian freedom and equality. 

This misunderstanding of antisemitism smears and chills the rights of individuals and institutions who use their protected First Amendment rights to advocate in solidarity with the urgent struggle for Palestinian freedom and equality. It also distracts from actual antisemitism, such as the reprehensible support of MAGA leaders for Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD party, as well as those leaders’ Nazi salutes and puns.

Put succinctly, your misunderstanding of “antisemitism” both supports the oppression of Palestinians and makes Jews less safe. Pomona College cannot protect its students from the “campus antisemitism” you allege, because the accusations listed in your letter are unmoored from reality. 

Your ill-founded charges of antisemitism at Pomona College are an affront to our Jewish values of opposing oppression and seeking to repair the world (Tikkun Olam). We demand you cease this attack and call upon Pomona’s administrators and trustees to reject your letter’s baseless claims of antisemitism at Pomona College. 

Sincerely, 

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace

JVP is a national, grassroots organization working towards Palestinian freedom and Judaism beyond Zionism. With roughly 750,000 members, supporters, and participants in the last year, JVP is the largest such organization in the world. The Academic Council is a network of scholars within JVP with a shared commitment to JVP’s core values.