The AMCHA Initiative investigates, documents and reports incidents of antisemitism that occur in institutions of higher education. ¹ Two University of California professors, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin and Leila Beckwith, founded the organization in 2012. ^{2 3}

The AMCHA Initiative has a database collating alleged antisemitic activity on more than 400 campuses nationwide that lists more than 5,000 incidents that include acts of physical assault, vandalism, harassment, genocidal expression, and anti-Israel boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) activity. ⁴

AMCHA’s studies contend there is a statistical correlation between anti-Israel campus activism and acts of anti-Jewish hostility. ⁵ The AMCHA Initiative determined in a December 2022 finding that Harvard University led American campuses in antisemitism. ⁶

Background

The AMCHA Initiative investigates, documents and reports incidents of antisemitism that occur at college and university campuses in the United States. The group says it educates the Jewish community and other members of the public about such incidents. ⁷ The AMCHA Initiative informs university administrators and the public about the antisemitic incidents and the individuals and groups that are perpetrating them. The organization also mobilizes community activists to respond to antisemitic incidents. ⁸

“Amcha” is a Hebrew word meaning “your people.” The term connotes “grassroots,” “the masses,” and “ordinary people,” according to AMCHA Initiative. ⁹

The organization strongly opposes the BDS movement, an acronym for boycott, divest and sanctions against the state of Israel. ¹⁰

AMCHA Initiative has a publicly accessible database collating alleged antisemitic activity on more than 400 campuses nationwide. The database has more than 5,000 incidents since 2015 that include physical assault, vandalism, harassment, genocidal expression, and BDS activity. The database also displays more than 1,000 quotes from Jewish students. ¹¹

Policy Advocacy

The AMCHA Initiative says it communicates with officials at universities and at the state and federal government levels about the problem and possible solutions to antisemitism on campuses, and collaborates with other legal and educational organizations. ¹²

The organization uses the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) and U.S. State Department definitions to identify incidents of antisemitism, which considers certain anti-Israel behavior, including blaming Jews for actions taken by Israel or targeting Israel as a Jewish collective, as antisemitic. ¹³

The group spent a more than a year leading efforts to push the University of California Board of Regents to unanimously pass an intolerance statement that specifically addresses antisemitism and anti-Zionism. ¹⁴

The initiative says it influenced the U.S. Department of Education’s policy change to ensure Middle East studies programs advance diverse perspectives. ¹⁵

The AMCHA Initiative’s #NoAcademicBDS campaign says its efforts led to all 10 University of California Chancellors denouncing an academic boycott of Israel as a “direct and serious threat to the academic freedom of our [UC] students and faculty.” ¹⁶

Research

AMCHA Initiative research shows that college campuses with an active chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine or other anti-Israel groups are significantly more likely to have antisemitic incidents than those without. ¹⁷

In October 2017, AMCHA released a study that argued a direct correlation between the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses and anti-Jewish incidents. The study found that institutions with instances of student-produced anti-Zionist expressions, such as pro-BDS speakers, were seven times more likely to experience incidents of anti-Jewish hostility. The study researched 557 academic units affiliated with Ethnic, Gender, and Middle East Studies at 100 schools. ¹⁸

In March 2022, the organization released a report that argued university faculty who endorsed a boycott of Israel have directly contributed to the antisemitic activity. The report determined schools with five or more faculty members who support the BDS movement were 7.2 times more likely to have departments that released or endorsed anti-Zionist statements and 5.6 times more likely to have a student government that issued anti-Zionist remarks. ¹⁹

In December 2022, the AMCHA Initiative issued a report titled, “Campus Antisemitism and the Assault on Jewish Identity,” that cited examples of anti-Jewish bias at the University of Toronto Scarborough, the City University of New York, McGill University, and the University of California, Berkeley, among other campuses. The AMCHA report asserted that “[Threats] overall to Jewish identity fell into three categories: redefinition, denigration, and suppression.” “Redefinition” was the most frequent in framing Zionism as an ethnic-cleansing political ideology. The report described “denigration” as “including expression that uses classic antisemitic tropes to vilify Jewish or Zionist identity.” Meanwhile, suppression of speech for pro-Israel Jewish students was also cited as a problem. ²⁰

The AMCHA Initiative determined in a December 2022 finding that Harvard University led American campuses in antisemitism. The study looked at 109 campuses Jewish students were most likely to attend, and then focused what campuses had 10 or more antisemitic incidents in the 2021-2022 academic year. Harvard had 25 such incidents. The University of Chicago had 13, Tufts University had 12, Rutgers University and the University of California Los Angeles each had 10, according to the AMCHA study. ²¹ The report noted an art display at Harvard that said “Zionism is Racism, Settler-Colonialism, White Supremacy Apartheid,” as well as support by the the Harvard Crimson campus newspaper for the BDS movement, and speaking events denouncing Zionism among other incidents. ²²

Financial Support

The David and Janet Polak Foundation contributed $30,000 to the AMCHA Initiative in 2020. ²³

The California Community Foundation contributed $20,000 to the group in 2021. ²⁴

Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund contributed $18,332 to the organization in 2021. ²⁵

The San Francisco Jewish Federation and the Helen Diller Family Foundation have reportedly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the AMCHA Initiative. ²⁶

The Milstein Family Foundation is also a donor to the AMCHA Initiative. ²⁷

Controversies

AMCHA Initiative faced backlash from the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), which said in a on October 2014 letter that an AMCHA Initiative report’s goal was to “stifle the free and open discussion of, and the vigorous exchange of opinions on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college and university campuses.” ²⁸

Also in October 2014, more than 40 Jewish college and university professors across North America issued a statement criticizing an AMCHA list on Middle East studies professors, that said: “It goes without saying that we, as students of antisemitism, are unequivocally opposed to any and all traces of this scourge. That said, we find the actions of AMCHA deplorable. Its technique of monitoring lectures, symposia and conferences strains the basic principle of academic freedom on which the American university is built.” ²⁹

Leadership

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin is co-founder and president of AMCHA Initiative. She was a faculty member in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 1996 through 2016. ³⁰ She has presented her research at several universities, including Indiana University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Harvard University, and McGill University. In July 2010, she co-organized a two-week scholarly workshop entitled “Contemporary Antisemitism in Higher Education” at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. ³¹ She was paid $85,000 for her leadership role in 2021. ³²

Leila Beckwith is a co-founder and vice president of the AMCHA Initiative. ³³ She is a professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and worked for more than 30 years at the Neuropsychiatric Institute and the Department of Pediatrics at UCLA. She has published more than 80 research publications in scientific, peer-reviewed journals. She is a board member of the California Association of Scholars and Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. In 2013, she won a Hero of Conscience Award from the American Freedom Alliance. Beckwith has been on the editorial board of scientific journals such as Child Development, Infant Behavior and Development, and the Infant Mental Health Journal. ³⁴

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