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Reporting by Coral Springs Talk Spurs Mass Review Targeting Antisemitism, Anti-Israeli Bias at Florida Universities

{Florida International University}

The head of Florida’s university system is directing state schools to root out coursework tainted by antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias after Coral Springs Talk revealed anti-Jewish material being taught at Florida International University.

State University System Chancellor Ray Rodrigues told university presidents in an email Friday that keyword searches would be conducted on course descriptions and syllabi to flag for review “any course that contains the following keywords: Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jews.”

With help from Rodrigues’ staff, all 12 state universities will then initiate a “faculty review that will need to be completed by the conclusion of the 2024 fall semester” to “ensure that all universities are reviewing the same courses, and nothing falls through the cracks” with regard to antisemitic or anti-Israel content, the chancellor wrote.

According to the email, the reviews should flag all instances of antisemitism or anti-Israeli bias in course materials and report them to Rodrigues’ office.

“The most important thing is that we get this right,” Rodrigues wrote.

The move by the State University System to tackle antisemitism in classrooms comes five weeks after Coral Springs Talk revealed that an FIU adjunct professor gave students an online quiz containing anti-Israel content – an assignment that outraged the class’s Jewish students, including some from Coral Springs.

Florida Rep. Randy Fine, who called for better academic oversight amid the FIU controversy, said Wednesday that Coral Springs Talk “helped expose a lot” of the problems concerning anti-Israel teaching materials at FIU and “deserves some credit” for spurring Rodrigues’ directives.

Fine said the chancellor’s effort “is a direct response” to what happened at FIU. He added that Rodrigues has taken the problem of antisemitism and anti-Israel prejudice in coursework “seriously since the first time I talked to him about it” in the wake of the FIU revelations.

“I think it’s probably going to uncover a lot of issues,” Fine said of the university system’s planned reviews. “We have a real problem, even in Florida, with [antisemitic and anti-Israel faculty] working at our universities.”

“This will put those people on notice,” Fine said.

According to Rodrigues’ email, state universities will also need to implement a process requiring “each faculty member to attest that they have reviewed all resources (textbooks, test banks, online materials, etc.) for each course that they teach” in an effort to uncover any antisemitic or anti-Israel content.

The attestation process will likely need to be codified in the university system’s governing board regulations, the email states.

Florida law uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism to define the anti-Jewish prejudice.

The IHRA defines antisemitism as: “[A] certain perception of Jewish individuals which may be expressed as hatred toward such individuals. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish and non-Jewish individuals and their property and toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The alliance has said manifestations of antisemitism might include the targeting of Israel with criticism linked to Jewish collectivity, but that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”

Rodrigues’ directives aimed at combating anti-Jewish materials were welcomed by Jewish students from Coral Springs and Parkland.

“Anti-Israel bias, disinformation, and delegitimization have no place in our classrooms,” said Eden Hebron, a pro-Israel student leader at Florida Atlantic University, president of FAU’s Owls for Israel club, and a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

“There should be oversight of inaccurate content taught to students, which can easily lead to hatred of Israel and the Jewish people,” said Hebron, a junior. “Additionally, there should be a continuation of consequences given to students and educators who seek to spread fallacies surrounding the Jewish people. For the sake of protecting all students, there needs to be greater accountability.”

Luke Berg, a Jewish Coral Springs resident and senior at FAU’s Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, said the university system’s coursework reviews could help fight antisemitism in classrooms.

Berg said he’s taken several history courses that featured antisemitic and anti-Israel material, including teachings that “erase the history of Jews in Israel” and “pretend as though we’ve never been a presence in the land of Israel.”

“It sort of erases us out of the history of the world and pretends we didn’t come from anywhere,” Berg added. “That leads toward students who already have a bias against Israel continuing to be biased against Israel.”

Antisemitic flyer seen at FAU’s Jupiter campus. {Luke Berg}

Berg said he has heard a number of antisemitic remarks made by students on campus. A student in one history class he took gave a final presentation in which she described Israelis eating hummus as “Jews stealing Arab culture” – antisemitism that left Berg shocked.

“I think [the coursework reviews] will definitely help because a lot of people have [anti-Jewish or anti-Israel] biases, and you keep reading all of this literature that reinforces your biases,” said Berg. “You’re taught this material in a classroom in a university, and you think, ‘well, this must be correct.’ It’s very harmful.”

Florida’s move to uncover anti-Jewish prejudice in university coursework comes amid an unprecedented surge in antisemitism on U.S. college campuses.

Jewish students at Florida universities have said demonization of Jews and Israel has increased on campuses since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

Rodrigues’ directives also follow years of anti-Israel material being taught in FIU’s Terrorism and Homeland Security courses.

The course textbook with the same name – a book characterized by Fine as “blatantly antisemitic” – was published by the Cengage Group, a Boston-based educational content company. A bank of over 1,500 test questions that came with the book contained anti-Israel questions, including, “When Israelis practice terrorism, they often refer to it as [blank].”

The answer choices included “proactive attacks” and “terrorist defensive strategy.”

Other questions posed to students on a course quiz were, “Terrorism began with two Zionist organizations, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and [blank],” and, “In which country did the Zionists purchase land to create their new homeland?”

The answer choices were Persia, Israel, Syria, and Palestine, but none of those answers were correct. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the territory in which modern Israel was established in 1948 was governed by the British following World War II and, immediately before that, ruled by the Ottoman Empire.

The dean of FIU’s Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs in June said the “problematic material” had been removed from the homeland security course and that new material would be taught in the fall.

Claims of antisemitic material in FIU’s Terrorism and Homeland Security book were first revealed by The Floridian in 2021.

The book, according to Fine, was being used by four universities in Florida and 150 universities nationwide at the time of the FIU controversy.

“The publisher of the textbook had no idea [about the anti-Israel material], so they are now doing their own internal check,” Fine said.

Kathleen Plinske, president of Valencia College in Orlando, addressed the textbook controversy at a July 24 Florida Board of Education meeting.

“Antisemitism has no place in Florida and certainly not on our college campuses,” said Plinske, who addressed the meeting on behalf of Florida’s College Council of Presidents. “Our students deserve the best in instruction, and that includes the highest-quality instructional material with subject matter free from any trace of antisemitism or any form of discrimination.”

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Author Profile

Kevin Deutsch

Kevin Deutsch is an award-winning journalist and author of two nonfiction books. He covers general assignment news and Jewish community issues for Talk Media. He has also worked as a staff writer at The Miami Times, the Rio Grande SUN, the New York Daily News, Newsday, The Miami Herald, The Palm Beach Post, The Riverdale Press, and Bronx Justice News.