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BERKELEY, California – Marc Dollinger was invited to deliver a talk a few weeks ago at the University of Michigan on his pet subject: Jewish-Black relations during the Civil Rights movement.
About 15 minutes into the lecture, a group of students entered the room wearing kaffiyehs and masks. Dollinger, a professor of Jewish studies at San Francisco State University, naively thought they were the usual stragglers and continued talking.
Until he couldn't any longer, because his words were drowned out by the group chanting: "Dollinger, you can't hide; Zionism is a crime," and "Anti-Black and settler, too; Zionist, Zionist, we see you. "
Only then did it register that this was a personal attack.
Dollinger has been teaching for more than 20 years at one of the most anti-Israel – some would say antisemitic – universities in the United States, at least until not that long ago.
"In all my years as a Jewish studies professor at San Francisco State, I was never personally targeted like this," he tells Haaretz. "One day at Michigan and look what happens – and I wasn't even talking about Israel. "
Dollinger is best known for "Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance of the 1960s" (Brandeis University Press, 2018). But for the past five years, he has been working on a more personal book project: his experiences as a Jewish professor – and a self-defined progressive Zionist – on two California campuses with very different politics.
At Pasadena City College, where he launched his academic career, Dollinger took heat for his progressive views, whereas at San Francisco State, he is often accused of being a right-wing Zionist.
"Laundering Antisemitism: Jews, Identity Politics and the University" is currently under contract with a prominent university press whose identity Dollinger prefers not to disclose. Part memoir, part exploration of the role of higher education, the book was originally meant to cast his experiences as "the exceptions that define the rule" – the rule being that despite everything, universities in the United States are still good places for Jewish professors and students.
The manuscript was completed right before the October 7 attack, and has therefore required major revisions, along with an epilogue that addresses the explosion of campus antisemitism over the past...