The fabricated panic over antisemitism in the U.S. medical community conceals an attack on Palestinians
By Wendell Potter
February 21, 2025
In 2024, I was disinvited from presenting a lecture on the health and human rights consequences of the Israeli assault on Gaza, by unnamed administrators at Harvard University, who (I was told) accused me of being an antisemite. At Geisel, the medical school affiliated with Dartmouth, I was also invited and then met with an “indefinite postponement” for a similar presentation. It is clear these have not been isolated events.
Two recent pieces provide an illustration of the current ideological battle taking place with in the U.S. healthcare community. First, a recent report on the suppression of speech at UCLA’s medical school shows the real-world harm antisemitism witch hunts are creating on medical campuses across the country. And then an error-riddled article from the Journal of Religion and Health provides a perfect illustration of how false charges of antisemitism are constructed and gives us a perfect case study in how to debunk the smears.
The view from UCLA
A January 2025 report prepared by the UCLA Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Arab, and Anti-Muslim Racism offers a sobering picture of the growing suppression of speech and actions in medical schools and hospitals where there is support for Palestinian human rights and criticism of the genocidal assault on Gaza and the West Bank. The report reviews data from UCLA where over 24 medical students, residents, and faculty in the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) experienced intense targeting, gaslighting, harassment, doxxing, death threats, and job loss from both inside and outside the medical school in well-organized campaigns to suppress freedom of speech and to uphold the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition, which is highly contested in academic and progressive circles, defines antisemitism with the usual anti-Jewish tropes but then lists examples that are various forms of criticism of Israel and Israeli policies. These social media attacks quickly rose to the attention of high-level administrators, the media, and ultimately the U.S. Congress, threatening the targets’ mental and physical safety.
UCLA courses on Structural Racism and Health Equity (SRHE) and Global Health, as well as classes on race and health inequities, were all vulnerable to attacks, particularly if they focused on Palestinian human rights. This repression and retaliation extended to other academic inquiries on racial justice, health inequities, and DEI initiatives and often targeted women of color. People were confronted in response to social media posts as well as for curricula, protests, statements, and buttons, and lectures were illegally recorded and weaponized.
The administration from DGSOM and UCLA initially responded to the October 7 attack with a full-throated statement in support of Israel and subsequently refused to support academic freedom for students and faculty critical of Israeli policies. They also refused to condemn those who were making the attacks, reducing the ability of students to learn and understand health inequities and the social determinants of health, the impacts of race and class, etc. The repression often took the form of increased levels of surveillance and weaponized accusations of antisemitism, particularly when students described the assault on Gaza as a genocide.
This pattern of behavior pre-dated the events of October 7. In 2021, a vigilante group titled the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group (JFRG) targeted instructors working in the Structural Racism and Health Equity course (SRHE) with accusations of antisemitism. They were joined by a group called Do No Harm, a group self-described as “a national association of medical professionals combating the attack on our healthcare system from woke activists” and “protecting healthcare from the disastrous consequences of identity politics.” Much of this occurred under the pretense of preventing students from feeling “uncomfortable.”
The DGSOM administration repeatedly responded sympathetically to the antisemitism accusations while ignoring credible evidence of racism against Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims, and people supportive of Palestinian rights, as well as the well-documented violations of international law, statements from the UN, International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice. The Task Force noted that this behavior violates the faculty codes of conduct for both institutions.
This is all particularly consequential because the repression and retaliation are not only designed to threaten and punish the targets immediately but also to impact their training and professional employment options in the future. This also creates a hostile learning environment that includes anti-Palestinian racism and hostility towards other races and social justice activities. As the Task Force stated: “UCLA DGSOM continues to maintain a toxic, discriminatory and psychologically unsafe work environment,” which creates an “inability for students to discuss their positionality when exploring racial justice…[and] leads to harassment and self censorship and loss of critical discussion.”
Debunking accusations of antisemitism
It was thus with particular curiosity that I read an opinion piece titled “Social Media, Survey, and Medical Literature Data Reveal Escalating Antisemitism Within the United States Healthcare Community,” in a somewhat obscure publication, Journal of Religion and Health. What I found was profoundly disturbing, but not unexpected. And provides a perfect illustration of the framing and definitions, of both antisemitism and…
[READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE HERE]