When Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies Matthew Berkman planned out his spring courses at Oberlin College, he likely did not anticipate that one of them would become the center of national scrutiny, nor that he would become a target of online organizers.
Over the past month, Berkman has come under fire from pro-Israel groups online for a course that he is teaching, JWST 218: “Jews and Power.” While these groups have labeled him as antisemitic for his course and for his past activism with Jewish Voice for Peace, the Association for Jewish Studies has also taken a stand on the issue, defending Berkman and urging the importance of academic freedom. This controversy has also come during a moment of increased scrutiny over professors who have spoken critically about Israel across the country.
Oberlin College Director of Media Relations Andrea Simakis addressed these concerns in an email to the Review.
“Some have raised concerns about a course being offered this spring at Oberlin that they suggest is antisemitic,” Simakis wrote. “We are horrified that anyone would believe this and nothing could be further from the truth. Ironically, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies Matt Berkman’s course, Jews and Power, is about dismantling antisemitic tropes, not reinforcing them.”
The controversy began when a member of Mothers Against College Antisemitism, a group that self-describes as dedicated to calling out antisemitism on American college campuses, found Berkman’s course description and, interpreting it as antisemitic, reposted it to the 61,000 member group. According to Berkman, this precipitated a mass email campaign to Oberlin College administrators and members of Oberlin City Council, as well as a slew of right-wing blogs and even posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, from some members of Congress, demanding that the course be canceled and labeling him an “antisemite.”
One comment on X, which has been reposted 312 times and garnered over 7,000 views as of Feb. 13, calls Oberlin College an “antisemite hate factory.”
“They have presented the course as if its purpose were to indoctrinate students with antisemitic views,” Berkman wrote in an email to the Review. “Obviously, that is an absurd misinterpretation of the course description, which specifically states that the purpose of the course is to challenge extreme, ahistorical views about the relationship between Jews and power, including the classical antisemitic view.”
Berkman believes that the real issue that precipitated this email campaign was not the course itself, but the fact that he was previously a member of Jewish Voice for Peace before coming to Oberlin. Berkman clarified that since starting at Oberlin College in 2019, he has not been involved as an activist with any groups focused on the Israeli–Palestine conflict, focusing instead on his teaching, research, student mentoring, and his own young child.
Berkman is not the only professor to be accruing unsolicited attention based on his views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. A recent article in The New York Times pointed to a pattern of universities cracking down on professors for pro-Palestine activism, raising concerns around academic freedom. President Trump’s recent threat to deport anti-Israel protesters may also exacerbate these concerns in the coming months.
“The attack on me is part of a much broader pattern of attacks on academia generally and Jewish Studies in particular,” Berkman wrote. “Jewish Studies scholars far more eminent than myself — David Myers [at UCLA] and Derek Penslar [at Harvard], for example — have been subject to attacks by right-wing groups intent on delegitimizing scholarly expertise and imposing political litmus tests on the field.”
While Oberlin College has received letters calling for the class to be canceled, it has also received ones in Berkman’s defense. On Jan. 16, the executive committee of the Association for Jewish Studies, which describes itself as “the largest learned society and professional organization representing Jewish studies scholars worldwide,” wrote a letter to Oberlin College Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences David Kamitsuka urging him to reaffirm the importance of academic freedom and to reject the calls from the pro-Israel groups.
“The campaign being waged against Berkman and his course sets a very dangerous precedent that threatens the academic freedom of all members of your faculty,” the executive committee of the association wrote in the letter.
The executive committee emphasized Berkman’s status as a “credentialed political scientist” and pointed to the importance of diverse views within and beyond the walls of the college.
“It should go without saying that his academic freedom is not subject to the judgement of an outside pressure group, but to Oberlin’s faculty guide and its administrative structures alone,” the letter reads. “Allowing an outside group to determine the agenda of Oberlin’s courses strikes at the heart of the very intellectual freedoms Oberlin cherishes.”
The course description of Jews and Power, which is what the MACA member initially picked up on and reacted against, details the purpose of the class as to “complicate the bipolar framework” of Jews as “perennial victims” or “preternaturally powerful” by “exploring a more diverse range of encounters between Jews and power from antiquity to the present.”
Berkman pointed out that this course description was “badly misunderstood” by MACA, and clarified the content of the course to the Review.
“The aim of the course is to examine the ways that Jews (differently throughout time and across different societies) have negotiated with non-Jewish state power and joined political coalitions; to investigate why those arrangements sometimes worked and ensured long periods of Jewish security and why they sometimes broke down and left Jews vulnerable; and to compare those diasporic strategies to the strategy of Jewish sovereignty as embodied in both the ancient Israelite states and the contemporary state of Israel,” Berkman explained.
Simakis emphasized that in Berkman’s time at Oberlin, he has never been accused of antisemitism by his students.
“Professor Berkman has taught courses at Oberlin on antisemitism and other sensitive aspects of Jewish history for more than five years without a single complaint of bias from his students,” Simakis wrote. “He seeks to arm them with the deep historical context required to understand the roots of the crises facing Jewish communities today. This is the type of academic experience we promise our students when they enroll at Oberlin.”
