The ‘First Amendment’ Dodge at UC Berkeley

In “Mr. Trump, Investigate My Campus” (op-ed, Feb. 3) Prof. Steven Davidoff Solomon calls for an investigation of incidents of antisemitism at the University of California, Berkeley. Chancellor Rich Lyons suggests that such an investigation isn’t needed, citing the First Amendment (“No Need to Investigate My Campus, Mr. Trump,” Letters, Feb. 6).

But the issues at UC Berkeley and elsewhere extend beyond the scope of First Amendment protections. Many incidents of vitriol, incitement to violence and antisemitism on American campuses in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre can be linked to American Muslims for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus group that receives funding and training from AMP.

As I shared in November 2023 testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee, both groups were aided by people who were, at a minimum, ideologically aligned with nonprofits that were shut down by federal authorities or sued in civil court for funding or providing material support to Hamas.

UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian helped give life to both groups. Mr. Bazian lectures for its Department of Ethnic Studies, established an Islamophobia research center on campus and founded Bears for Palestine.

AMP and SJP are admittedly only part of the problem. Berkeley and many other universities have received funding from foreign countries that seek to promote their agendas. For reasons that have never been entirely clear, the autocratic and terror-funding Qatari regime has invested billions in U.S. universities over the past 10 years. More stringent measures, such as the bipartisan, bicameral Deterrent Act, would help shine a light of accountability on these donations.

Though some universities have already instituted reforms, the problems seen on American campuses since Oct. 7 persist. It’s time for Congress, and the Trump administration, to let the investigations begin.

Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Treasury, is executive director at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC. Follow him on X @JSchanzer.