Cal State investigating professor seen coaching class to oppose antisemitism bill

A prominent professor at a public university in California coached her students on opposing a state antisemitism bill and taught them that Israeli interests had subverted the US government, a video that surfaced this week showed.

The university said it was aware and investigating.

The class, by Prof. Melina Abdullah at California State University, Los Angeles, provided a glimpse into a prominent academic’s teaching of Israel-related issues on campus, amid an aggressive Trump administration crackdown on antisemitism and anti-Israel activism at universities.

Abdullah is a professor at the university’s Department of Pan-African Studies and the former chair of the department. She is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, the lead of the movement’s Los Angeles chapter, and involved in the organization’s national leadership, according to the university website.

Cornel West, a prominent academic and social activist, selected Abdullah as his running mate for his 2024 presidential campaign.

Abdullah livestreamed the video of her class on her personal YouTube page in September. The footage identified the lecture as part of a course called “Race, Activism and Emotions.” The video went unnoticed until it was picked up by the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit that opposes antisemitism at US universities, and shared with The Times of Israel.

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, the director of the AMCHA Initiative, has been tracking Abdullah’s activism and said she was a “pillar of the ethnic studies establishment in California.”

“She’s a really powerful actor,” Rossman-Benjamin said. “She has a huge movement behind her.”

In the video, Abdullah denounces a California state legislative bill, AB 715, meant to combat antisemitism in public schools. The law, passed in October, established an Office of Civil Rights and an antisemitism prevention coordinator for K-12 schools, and required school districts to investigate and take action against discriminatory content in schools, California Governor Gavin Newsom said.

Jewish groups backed the bill, but progressive organizations opposed the measure, saying it stifled academic freedom.

Abdullah told her students about her own activism against the “terrible bill,” saying it was part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “student protesters.” The bill was a California state initiative, not federal.

“The kinds of people who are doing this — they are the antisemites. They could give a damn about antisemitism,” she said. “Donald Trump doesn’t care about antisemitism. He is an antisemite.”

“They’re using this as an opening so that teaching truth in the classroom becomes something that’s criminalized,” she said, describing the bill’s sponsors as “two Zionist state legislators” and calling the legislation “racist, anti-union.”

The Trump administration’s opponents, including some Jewish officials, have criticized the government’s antisemitism crackdown as a way for the administration to target its perceived leftist opponents on campuses under the guise of protecting Jewish students.

Some Jewish leaders have expressed concern about the administration’s heavy-handed tactics, even if they support action against antisemitism, saying that measures such as the arrests of protesters could erode civil rights that have historically protected Jews. Those discussions have largely focused on university campuses, though, while AB 715 was about kindergartens, elementary schools, and high schools.

California State University, Los Angeles, said in September it was being investigated by federal authorities for alleged antisemitism.

Abdullah added that “all of my friends who are Jewish” opposed the bill.

“They’re opposed to the war in Gaza, and they’re opposed, really, to Israel and the genocide that they’re carrying out,” she said.

“They believe that you can’t be a justice-loving Jewish person and be okay with slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people,” she said. “If anything, when you talk about genocide, Jewish people, it should resonate with Jewish people that we should be opposed to genocide because they suffered their own genocide.”

The class took place after the California state legislature had approved AB 715, but before Newsom had signed it into law. Abdullah encouraged the students to petition Newsom against signing the bill.

“Every single labor union is against AB 715, but we could not overcome the influence of the Israeli lobby,” she said.

“We can push Gavin Newsom to veto 715, so if you’re willing, so this is a long way of me introducing you to a thing you can do right now, go to tinyurl.com/veto715,” she said, spelling out the website address as the students wrote it down.

“You can sign that petition to veto AB 715,” she added. “AB 715 is a particular attack on Muslims, so that’s something that you can do.”

California State University guidelines prohibit employees from “supporting or opposing any political candidate or issue being considered by the electorate of the state” while using state resources, such as public facilities, in line with state law.

A spokesperson for the university, Erik Frost Hollins, said, “We are aware of the issue and are looking into the matter.”

Abdullah did not respond to requests for comment.

Abdullah also taught the class that Israeli interests had taken control of Congress via the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“These fools don’t even like Jewish people. Have you ever heard of an old, white South Carolinian talking about how much they love Jewish people? No. But in addition to the American flag, they got the damn Israeli flag,” she said. “You’re supposed to not be working for Israel.”

“AIPAC has bought and paid for almost every single member of Congress,” she said.

“Remember, we think we live in a country where there’s free and fair elections. They are not free and fair,” she said.

Jewish community advocates say that exaggerated criticisms of AIPAC lean into age-old antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jews pulling the strings of power, Jewish wealth and its corrupting influence, and Jews’ dual loyalty.

Abdullah’s lecture included several falsehoods. She inflated the Gaza death toll, saying “hundreds of thousands” had been killed, while the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry puts the figure at under 70,000. She exaggerated AIPAC’s spending in Congressional races, including an election in New York last year between Jamaal Bowman and George Latimer, although AIPAC did spend heavily on the race.

She also said Bowman’s opponent in the race was US Rep. Ritchie Torres, not Latimer, and misstated the location of Bowman’s district as Brooklyn. The district is focused on Westchester County and covers a sliver of the Bronx.

She misidentified AIPAC as the “American Israel Political Action Committee,” when the acronym stands for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Abdullah also falsely stated that the Israeli flag is the “only flag in the country that it’s a felony to burn.”

It is legal to burn the Israeli flag, and all other flags, in the US. The falsehood that it is illegal to burn the Israeli flag stems from a right-wing disinformation campaign based on a judge’s statement in a civil case this year that did not establish any laws related to burning flags.

Like Abdullah’s statement about the flags, her focus on AIPAC also mirrors far-right talking points from figures like US Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a frequent AIPAC critic who has said Israel has “control over nearly every single one of my colleagues.”

Abdullah’s lesson also highlighted how classroom criticism of Israel blends with far-left talking points.

After her discussion of AIPAC and the antisemitism bill, the class discussed the recent killing of conservative political organizer Charlie Kirk, with one student celebrating the murder, another expressing sympathy for Kirk, and Abdullah saying, “I could give a rat’s ass” about the assassination.

The class closed with a discussion of the assigned reading, “Blood in My Eye,” a political manifesto that discusses violent revolution in the US, such as using flamethrowers against police, and asks its readers to “accept the eventuality of bringing the USA to its knees.”

Abdullah said she was “not uncomfortable” with the radicalism in the book, adding that she was “not going to say everything on the livestream.”

Recent surveys have found that younger and more left-wing Americans are more open to political violence.

Abdullah discussed “making colonialism and white supremacist capitalism fall.” She said the US government was fascist and at war with minority groups, women, and others.

“As people who are oppressed, there is nothing more dangerous than pretending to live at peace when war has been declared on us,” Abdullah said.