Recently, however, Chemerinsky and his wife, Catherine Fisk, also a UC Berkeley law professor, have become the target of an extraordinarily vitriolic and antisemitic campaign from some pro-Palestinian activists on campus and at the law school. Their offense? Not that Chemerinsky is pro-Netanyahu or that he’s spoken out in defense of the IDF’s actions on Gaza—he isn’t and he hasn’t, and in fact he told me this week that he abhors what Israel is doing in Gaza and opposes the blockade of food into the territory. But he has made statements in the past saying that he supports Israel’s right to exist. Activists have also called him out for not signing on to a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions demand, even though this is entirely outside his bailiwick: As dean of the law school, he has zero institutional say as to whether UC Berkeley, or the UC system more generally, divests from Israel.
Chemerinsky and Fisk have long opened up their home and their garden to host law school students at an annual dinner. This year, because the university was still playing catch-up after the pandemic years made such gatherings impossible, they agreed to host three dinners in quick succession for multiple years of students.
In early April, as the dinners were nearing, activists with a group called Berkeley Law for Palestine put up posters at the law school that showed
a vicious caricature of Chemerinsky holding up a bloodied knife and fork. Chemerinsky also interpreted the image as showing his lips limned with blood. The caption, all caps, read, “NO DINNER WITH ZIONIST CHEM WHILE GAZA STARVES!” It would not have been out of place in
Der Stürmer during the heyday of the Third Reich.
Chemerinsky has made a conscious effort to
not make public statements on Israel and Gaza over the past six months, preferring, he told me, to focus instead on his areas of specialty, which mainly concern US constitutional law. Given this, it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that he was targeted with this ancient blood-libel imagery not because of his position on Israel, which he has kept largely private, but because he happened to be the highest-profile Jew in the neighborhood.
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Days later, the activists disrupted the dinner by bringing in their own microphone and amplifier, and attempting to seize control of the gathering. When Chemerinsky, who is in his 70s, asked them to stop, to respect the fact that they were guests in his house, and to leave if they weren’t willing to join the dinner, they refused. When Fisk tried to grab the microphone away from the woman who was speaking, the student refused to cede the microphone. As the two women tussled for control, Chemerinsky continued to plead for the protesters to desist.
Finally, the group of 10 or so students left—but not before accusing Fisk of assault. Subsequently, they have called for the university to fire both Chemerinsky and Fisk and demanded that the police open an investigation. In the days since the events, each has been bombarded with grotesque hate mail. Fisk, Chemerinsky told me, has received messages like “you should die, ****ing ****.” Protesters have surrounded their house, banging drums and trying to disrupt their gatherings.
