A celebratory dinner for law students at the home of UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife, law professor Catherine Fisk, this week was disrupted by a student who chose to use the event to bring attention to Palestinians dying in Gaza.
During the dinner hosted by Chemerinsky on Tuesday, Malak Afaneh, co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Palestine, stood to make a speech about the growing deaths.
The speech, which was not part of the dinner, was cut off when Fisk tried to take the mic away from Afaneh.
A video posted on Instagram shows Fisk putting one arm around Afaneh and trying to remove the mic from her hand. At this point, Fisk and Chemerinsky ask her and a group of student protesters to leave their house.
This was the latest in a string of tensions at Cal as some students protested the war that broke out after a Hamas attack on Oct. 7 killed more than 1,100 people and kidnapped 250 in Israel. Over 33,000 people have been killed in Gaza in the ensuing war, according to the Gaza-based Ministry of Health.
The student organization announced on April 1 that it would boycott Chemerinsky’s annual dinners, planned for three days this week. Caricatures of him holding a bloody knife and fork with the caption “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza Starves!” were circulated on bulletin boards and social media and posted around campus and at the law school. The group said the professor is an outspoken critic of pro-Palestinian organizers on campus.
In a statement on the Berkeley Law website Wednesday, Chemerinsky said the organizers informed him through student government leaders that if he didn’t cancel the dinners, they would attend in protest. He said he went forward with the dinners in hopes that the protests would be peaceful. He said he believed he was being targeted for being Jewish.
“I am appalled and deeply disturbed by what occurred at Dean Chemerinsky’s home last night,” UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof said in a statement Thursday. “I have been in touch with him to offer my support and sympathy. While our support for Free Speech is unwavering, we cannot condone using a social occasion at a person’s private residence as a platform for protest.”
Protesters attend dinner
Muki Barkan, a UC Berkeley graduate law student, attended the dinner as part of a protest group of about 10 students. He said all the students who participated in the gathering were invited to Chemerinsky and Fisk’s home and RSVP’d before the event. About 60 students attended Tuesday, according to Chemerinsky.
Barkan said the group of 10 were seated in the garden but refrained from eating as part of their protest when Afaneh donned a keffiyeh and walked to the back to make her speech. Barkan said multiple people began filming the ensuing altercation.
In the videos, Afaneh begins explaining the significance of fasting for Ramadan, culminating in Eid celebrations on Tuesday, when Fisk appears behind her and attempts to grab the mic from her hand. Fisk wraps her right arm around Afaneh’s shoulder and pulls her back, saying, “Leave. This is not your house; this is my house.”
Standing near Afaneh and Fisk, Chemerinsky asks the group, “Please leave our house; you are guests at our house.”
Afaneh repeatedly says that the group has an attorney and that it is her First Amendment right to speak at the gathering. Chemerinsky replies that she cannot exercise those rights at their private home.
Shortly after being told to leave, Barkan said the group left the home. He said they consulted with the National Lawyers Guild, which told them they would risk trespassing charges if they remained in the house after being told to leave.
The protesters believed they were protected by the First Amendment to make the speech because the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students posted the Eventbrite listing for the dinner.
In his statement, Chemerinsky said he has spent his career defending freedom of speech, but the students’ actions were disruptive and rude at his private home. He said he was offended by posters of the event showing him holding a bloody knife and fork, invoking antisemitic tropes of “blood libel.”
One version of the flyer, circulating on social media, shows a drawn caricature of Chemerinsky holding a knife and fork with crumbs on his face.
“Although many complained to me about the posters and how they deeply offended them, I felt that though deeply offensive, they were speech protected by the First Amendment. But I was upset that those in our community had to see this disturbing, antisemitic poster around the law school,” Chemerinsky wrote in a statement.
Chemerinsky said he would continue his dinners on Wednesday and Thursday and that security would be present. He said any students who disrupt the gatherings “will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar.”
Barkan said Chemerinsky voiced the same consequences to the protest group as they left his home on Tuesday, but there’s no indication that he’s moved forward with the disciplinary reports.
Neither Chemerinsky nor Afaneh returned calls for comments from Berkeleyside.
Student says she was traumatized by incident
In a statement on her social media site, Afaneh said she was traumatized and humiliated by a professor putting their hands on her. She said she had barely spoken past the customary Muslim greeting, “Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh,” or “Peace and blessings to you all,” when the speech was forcibly stopped. She demanded that Fisk and Chemerinsky resign.
The San Francisco-based office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-SFBA) condemned what they called the “alleged assault” on Afaneh.
“Students at UC Berkeley have reported being targeted and harassed for their Palestine advocacy for many months now, not just by fellow students but also faculty and administrators. Dean Chemerinsky has unfortunately perpetuated an atmosphere of Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism for too long,” CAIR-SFBA Executive Director Zahra Billoo said in a statement Thursday.
Berkeley Law Jews for Palestine said in a statement Thursday that they condemn Fisk’s actions and firmly stand with Afaneh and the students who protested the dinner.
“It is only a couple of weeks before Passover, when we, as Jews, are meant to open our homes to strangers and commemorate our own oppression before sitting down to a meal, so that we remember not to be complacent in the oppression of others,” the statement reads, adding that Chemerinsky violated that spirit.
The university did not confirm whether there is an open UCPD investigation following the events at Chemerinsky and Fisk’s home.
Tensions rising on campus
On Feb. 26, about 200 protesters disrupted a talk by Ran Bar-Yoshafat, deputy director of the Kohelet Policy Forum, at the Zellerbach Playhouse that evening. They broke down a door and smashed a window, according to the university.
UC Berkeley police and anti-discrimination officials are investigating possible hate crimes due to allegations of “overtly antisemitic expression” at the protest. Congressional groups also launched a federal investigation into antisemitism on the campus following the protest.
In response to a weekslong protest blockade at Sather Gate calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, Chancellor Carol Christ is also considering changing the university’s “time, place, and manner regulations” to limit the action.
