JVP Academic Council Condemns CSU Decision to Turn Over Personal Information to EEOC

October 2025

TO:
CSU Board of Trustees: ​​[email protected]

President Vernon B. Harper, Jr. CSU Bakersfield
President Susan A. Andrzejewski, CSU Channel Islands
President Steve Perez, CSU Chico
President Cathy A. Sandeen, CSU East Bay
President Ronald S. Rochon, CSU Fullerton
President Saúl Jimenéz-Sandoval, CSU Fresno
President Michael E. Spagna CSU Humboldt
President Andrew Jones, CSU Long Beach
President Berenecea Johnson Eanes, CSU Los Angeles
President Vanya Quiñones, CSU Monterey Bay
President Thomas A. Parham, CSU Dominguez Hills
President Iris S. Levine CSU Pomona
President Adela de la Torre, CSU San Diego
President Britt Rios-Ellis, CSU Stanislaus
President Lynn Mahoney, San Francisco State University
President Cynthia Teniente-Matson, CSU San José
President Luke Wood, CSU Sacramento
President Erica D. Beck, CSU Northridge
President Emily F. Cutrer, CSU Sonoma
President Jeffrey D. Armstrong, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
President Tomás D. Morales, CSU San Bernardino
President Ellen J. Neufeldt, CSU San Marcos

Nidavone Niravanh, HR AVP
Kristina Strottman, Counsel
Marc Mootchnic, Counsel

Dear California State University  Chancellor Mildred Garcia, Board of Trustees, and Presidents of CSU campuses: 

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace condemns the California State University (CSU) decision to send personal information of faculty, staff and students to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with regard to alleged charges of antisemitism. Their demand for personal information is a systemwide request to all campuses. This investigation is not an honest effort to combat antisemitism. It is a McCarthyite witchhunt to silence opposition to the genocide in Gaza and will serve as a pretext for the dismantling of the protections that academics and higher education institutions value greatly. 

This witch-hunt is taking place in the absence of meaningful communication with Jewish faculty, staff, and students – a significant portion of whom identify as anti-Zionist – on CSU campuses to understand our experiences. There have been no documented instances of antisemitic behavior or Jew hate by pro-Palestinian faculty, staff, or students on CSU campuses. Indeed, many of the participants in pro-Palestinian speech are Jewish members of our campus communities. Misconstruing criticism of Israel as antisemitism only plays into authoritarian overreach by actual antisemites who wish to stifle political speech and opposition. 

This is a grave violation of free speech and a threat to the academic enterprise.  Your choice to collaborate with these investigations places all faculty and staff at risk, and places our universities in grave danger of losing autonomy and academic freedom amidst rising authoritarianism.

Despite this threat, your email dated September 26, 2025 to the CSU faculty states that “we will cooperate fully” with the EEOC request for all CSU contact information for employees and staff. As such, the CSU administration is putting their workforce, their institutions, and the values that are central to democracy– free speech, academic freedom, and personnel privacy and confidentiality– in jeopardy. It infringes on the privacy of employees and has a chilling effect on freedom of speech. Furthermore, given the brazen attacks on immigrants, it exposes immigrant employees to potential enforcement actions should they be identified.  This repression is meant to chill speech of those speaking out against genocide and, in this way, is complicit with genocidal impunity. 

We support the CSU faculty union, the California Faculty Association (CFA), in its call for members not to participate in interviews unless subpoenaed, as these interviews will most likely lead to further targeting of faculty, staff, and even students for false claims of antisemitism in their critique of Israel’s genocide and forced starvation of Palestinians. We commend the CFA for providing union and legal protections for those faculty who will be subpoenaed to talk. 

Compliance with the federal government will not save the CSU system.  The federal government’s cynical weaponization of charges of antisemitism will lead to only further efforts by the government to get rid of the autonomy of universities and take full control. CSU employees are being denied their fundamental rights to know the accusations against them, confront their accusers, and mount a defense—protections guaranteed in your own policies and in the Constitution. CSU has engaged in procedural sabotage by suspending protocols that ensure “fair and objective resolution.” CSU has exposed vulnerable community members at risk for  attack: international students, adjunct faculty, and staff now face harassment, termination, and deportation. We condemn this bending of the knee to authoritarian rule.

Academic institutions must have as their goal the maintenance of  academic free speech, including the right to teach the truth, uphold facts, and address key disputes in each field of inquiry. All CSU campuses have stood up for academic freedom at important historical points. CSU has betrayed that history and thrown academic freedom into an unnecessary crisis. This creates a climate where legitimate criticism and campus discourse could be criminalized. Your actions echo some of the darkest chapters in U.S. history by mirroring McCarthy-era informant practices that all CSU leadership should categorically reject. 

Rather than defending your community, CSU leadership has shown institutional cowardice by capitulating to federal bullying and extortion. Do not imagine this capitulation will protect the CSU system. CSU is deeply concerned about protecting its goals of a diverse and equitable, working class student body. But the CSU system will not be able to maintain this worthy vision if it allows the faculty and staff to be criminalized.  There is no common ground to be found with the Trump administration by CSU administrators when these false charges of antisemitism are also being weaponized to shut down Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts that so far CSU has appeared rightly to support.To the contrary, it will only show the Trump administration that they can pressure you to hand over more control of the university to them while further undermining academic freedom. 

This repression fails to recognize the truth that support for Palestinian rights and lives, and concomitant criticisms of Israel and Zionism, are not antisemitism. Indeed, a majority of Jews in the U.S. are critical of Israeli violence towards Palestinians, and our right to free speech is being destroyed by right-wing antisemites who are using the scourge of antisemitism to silence political speech they dislike. The CSU  is caving into the federal government’s weaponization of the charge of antisemitism, relying as they do on the IHRA definition of antisemitism, which by falsely conflating criticisms of Israel with antisemitism, is overbroad and repressive. Genocide can more easily happen when the naming of genocide is suppressed or criminalized. 

CSU continues to benefit from material investment in genocide in Israel, most notably in arms manufacturing, and study abroad programs in Israel, which have been the subject of sustained student protests and calls for divestment from Israel. (SF State has divested from arms manufacturers). It is erroneous to claim (claiming erroneously) that divestment would be antisemitic or compromising to academic freedom. To the contrary: boycott is a hallmark of freedom of speech and should be defended as such.  

We demand immediate transparency about what was shared. All employees whose information was given to the federal government should be informed of exactly what private information was shared. 

We demand the CSU recommit to defending academic free speech and to protecting your academic community from spurious political attacks. You must end this capitulation to the federal government and stand up for academic freedom.

We demand implementation of proper review procedures. We currently have laws and policies that protect employees from biased or libelous speech and behavior in the workplace, including Title IX and campus grievance processes. Complaints of ethnic or religious bias should be handled by the already-existing procedures, which require full investigation of all incidents, something that has not happened. Instead, all employees have been punished in the absence of any evidence that a violation occurred. 

There can be no excuse for compromising the safety of your employees in order to be seen as compliant by authoritarian leaders. The whole world is watching. The reputation of the CSU as an academic institution is at risk, along with our constitutionally guaranteed rights to free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of religion. Today, your employees are paying the price for your cowardice, but in the future, the CSU system as a whole will pay the price for compromising academic freedom.

Sincerely, 

Dr. Jonah Rubin, JVP Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing, on behalf of the JVP Academic Council

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  We defend employment rights, academic freedom, and rights of association within higher education and confirm the core values of Jewish Voice for Peace.