Anti-Israel Berkeley Law Students Protest At Dean’s Home and Disrupt Dinner Event
“I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.”
UC-Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife hosted a dinner at their home for students this week and the event was hijacked by anti-Israel student activists.
One young woman who is the head of Students for Justice in Palestine at Berkeley Law even launched into an anti-Israel speech with a microphone.
The Washington Free Beacon has details:
Anti-Israel Agitators Derail Dinner at Home of UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
Anti-Israel hecklers crashed a Tuesday dinner that U.C. Berkeley’s Jewish law school dean hosted for graduating students, days after activists circulated a blood libel cartoon targeting the dean and referencing the planned dinner.
Malak Afaneh, the head of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, stood in the midst of the backyard dinner hosted by law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky and his wife while roughly 60 law students were eating. Wearing a keffiyeh and hijab, she delivered an anti-Israel speech through a microphone, according to a Wednesday statement from Chemerinsky and an Instagram video from the Bay Area Palestinian Youth Movement that depicted the disruption.
“Please leave our house, you are guests in our house,” Chemerinsky can be heard saying, as his wife put her arm around Afaneh. Afaneh refused to budge, stating with her eyes half-closed that “we have attorneys” and that the disruption at the private home was their “First Amendment right.” Ultimately Afaneh left with about 10 other students who had accompanied her.
The disruption came a week after the law school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine posted a cartoon on Instagram showing Chemerinsky holding a fork and knife dripping with blood over the dinner, captioned with “No Dinner With Zionist Chem While Gaza Starves.”
Leftists are trying to paint Malak Afaneh as a victim, naturally. Note the words posted on the video, not the description of what happened by this Twitter/X user:
Crazy Footage out of UC Berkley
UC Berkeley Law Professor Catherine Fisk and her husband, Dean Chemerinsky, hosted a dinner for all graduating law students. During the dinner, law student, Malak Afaneh, stood up to decry the law school's investments in Boeing, Lockheed Martin,… pic.twitter.com/7rwM9bzZTr
— Stu (@thestustustudio) April 10, 2024
And look at the antisemitic propaganda put out by these activists:
Antisemites at @BerkeleyLaw are targeting their professors.
When Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and Prof. Catherine Fisk invited 3Ls to dinner, students called for a boycott and then came to their home with a mic to protest.
Now @sairasameerarao is spreading this video without context. pic.twitter.com/mHILs5To8m
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) April 10, 2024
Afaneh did not have First Amendment grounds here.
No, you do not have the First Amendment right to give a speech on someone else's private property after you've been asked to leave by the property owners. https://t.co/f3DHc7hccd
— Nico Perrino (@NicoPerrino) April 10, 2024
This longer video of the confrontation at Dean Chemerinsky and Professor Fisk’s home shows in more detail just how insufferable these students are.
And Chemerinsky has confirmed it’s a private residence (see below), which, as you can see, they were asked to leave repeatedly. pic.twitter.com/ojbaK1fnuM
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) April 11, 2024
Dean Chemerinsky has released a statement:
UPDATE: Statement from Dean Chemerinsky:
“I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.”
Two more “dinners will go forward on Wednesday and Thursday. I hope that there… https://t.co/5mL4OkxFUR pic.twitter.com/OStMDilrgs
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) April 10, 2024
From the statement:
On April 9, about 60 students came to our home for the dinner. All had registered in advance. All came into our backyard and were seated at tables for dinner. While guests were eating, a woman stood up with a microphone, stood on the top step in the yard, and began a speech, including about the plight of the Palestinians. My wife and I immediately approached her and asked her to stop and leave. The woman continued. When she continued, there was an attempt to take away her microphone. Repeatedly, we said to her that you are a guest in our home, please stop and leave. About 10 students were clearly with her and ultimately left as a group.
The dinner, which was meant to celebrate graduating students, was obviously disrupted and disturbed. I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.
The dinners will go forward on Wednesday and Thursday. I hope that there will be no disruptions; my home is not a forum for free speech. But we will have security present. Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar.
I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community. I am deeply saddened by these events and take solace that it is just a small number of our students who would behave in such a clearly inappropriate manner.
As I have said before and as this incident makes clear, these activists are not trying to win people over to their side. They are trying to assert dominance.
Featured image via Twitter video.
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Comments
to come into my home, in my backyard
Oof. Try that in Texas. (On a non-woke school.) First one through the door discovers that I consider that a danger. Same thing if I’m in my backyard and a group of people barges in – you’re a threat. Especially if you’re dressed like a terrorist.
Ah, I now see they came in by stealth. Immediate trespass once they disrupted the event. Trespassers do not get invited to leave, except once. Then they get “shown the door.” Resistance will be met with violence.
“now youse can’t leave”
These were actually invited students that did this.
They were invited to a cordial social event and turned into SJW activism.
The Schadenfreude of that is better than ice cream! They deserve each other.
We all know that her attire gave cause to think she was a terrorist 🙂
Tell them to behave or be gone.
.
kudos to the dean and his wife–they handled the situation with more patience and aplomb than called for–had the “protesters” tried the like here would have been a rather immediate response including a few physical mementos for the protesters to inform them their ” rights ” do not extend to a family’s private residence / home
Liberal probably loved it when conservatives were being threatened and forced away from the venues they were going to be speaking.
Like all liberals all is cool as long as it’s happening to the ones they hate. When it comes to their backyard all of a sudden “it’s different here”.
Screw him and his liberal wife, I hope the rest of the dinners are protested also.
The Unbearable Rightness of Schadenfreude.
“I have spent my career staunchly defending freedom of speech. I have spent my years as dean trying hard to create a warm, inclusive community.”
If true … Dean Chemerinsky … in Berkeley … has spent his career “pissin’ in the wind”.
As to the protestors who invaded the Dean’s property … I wouldn’t hire them … ever.
One can imagine the new instructions Law firms will provide to the search firm companies they use to recruit from law schools. Stop recruiting altogether from Harvard, Columbia. Penn, NYU, and Cal Berkley.
The final sentence of Mike’s essay says it all. These reprobates aren’t engaging in good faith protests and they aren’t attempting to convince others of the alleged righteousness of their cause.
These agitprop antics are pure manifestations of unabashed, obnoxious, goose-stepping and full-throated Muslim supremacism and Islamofascist bullying and intimidation.
The best way to get this stuff to stop is NOT to depend on the authorities to prosecute. It’s to sue civilly. These kids – and yes, they are indeed children, based on their tantrum-like actions – need to be forced to live with the consequences of their actions. They should be sued for trespass, with punitive damages. Force them to hire a lawyer, take depositions, get discovery of their funding. I’m mystified why no one is doing this.
I agree with the general concept, but the reality is *where* are you gonna sue the students?
State court in Berkeley? With a Berkeley jury pool?
It’s like trying to sue UT (or UT students) in Austin. Just about anywhere else in Texas, they’d be dogmeat. But in Austin, the state judges (partisan elected, so generally hard left dems) and a large percentage of the jury pool are going to be against you from go, so it’s a fool’s errand.
Who thinks this conduct is going to look good on a resume?
However, “Forget it Jake, it’s Berkley.”
Have to admire these blmplo types
they go after what they want
and with omar at the helm they will win
fjb
the lefty knows the welfare state has empowered them and their mission to destroy america
the gop rino cabal sold us away like their fellow leftists did with the slaves of yesteryear
and then helped the dems set up a system where any 3rd party interferers would be dealt with harsly
maga!!!
Law students … again, law students. Using intimidatioin and trespass to make a poinbt about a war taking place overseas. So, exactly what are they teaching at Berkeley Law?
Ask Chemerinsky, he’s Dean of the law school.
Reaping and sowing come to mind here.
Exactly. Chemerinsky has spent his entire career enabling this behavior, so I don’t feel bad for him or his wife.
I think I missed the seminar on 1A granting the right to criminal trespass and create a public nuisance within the enclosed backyard of another’s private residence. Frankly I would have ordered them to leave, called the cops, taken photos and absolutely press charges.
These budding lawyers will now show up at a judge’s home if the judge rules against them in a case? Sort of like the DOJ letting protestors show up at SCOTUS homes? Sounds legal to me.
That is what should happen, but I doubt the liberal idiot would contemplate it. I just hope they keep showing up to his house and saying to him “it’s past your time old man, we’re in charge now”.
No sympathy for the idiot dean.
You literally invited a group of students that were part of ‘Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine’ and you’re shocked that they misbehaved?
What, did you somehow think that you were special?
You misunderstood. These disrupters were NOT members of the invited guests, but trespassers.
No. They weren’t. Everyone there had registered for the dinner beforehand.
These are graduating law students.
Erwin Chemerinsky is solidly woke. He deserves all of this, and more.
I’m having a vision of showing up to meet the Palestinians with some autographed Benny Netanyahu ax handles and explaining to them what “thou shalt not trespass” means in a language they will understand.
Link to autographed axe handles?
Haha, here’s one of Lester’s models as a theme:https://thumbs.worthpoint.com/zoom/images1/1/0117/29/lester-maddox-signed-15-axe-handle_1_48c995ba6ecae51e2b4538cf42fa2b6a.jpg
I must have missed the part where they were arrested and charged with trespassing, disturbing the peace, etc.. So lets not wonder why this stuff keeps happening.
Calling a behavior unacceptable rings hollow when criminals, and they are criminals, aren’t held responsible for their actions. As a law professor he should know better than most how that works.
Why would you think that? SOMEBODY “educated” all these Soros DAs who grab thugs by the belt, spin them around again to face the door, and give them a push back out on the street. And Chemerinsky’s on the very shortlist of candidates.
No sympathy for the dean–he and the rest of the left have been encouraging this for years–remember when the left said protest is patriotic; and now that it’s been turned against them, they have the nerve to complain. Be careful what you wish for comes to mind; or that old folk tale about the scorpion and the frog
Another reason charges should have been pressed is that these appear to be law students. This behavior absolutely should be on their records when those records are reviewed to evaluate their character prior to admission to the bar.
They are adults and know damned well what they were/are doing. Let them now be held responsible for it.
Unfortunately in California this will prove to be of benefit. NY and CA have the most corrupt and politicized bar associations in the nation.
Perhaps, but we don’t know which bars they are seeking admission to.
In any case, if this information isn’t in their records the bars can’t be criticized for not taking it into account.
“UC Berkeley Law Professor Assaults a Hijabi” Always the victim, never the terrorist.
I’m not surprised Malak is the daughter of palestinians. She doesn’t understand the law and she thinks she’s allowed to do whatever she wants.
Chemerinsky has sown the wind and he is now reaping the whirlwind. He thought these rabid Leftists wouldn’t turn on him. Now he knows.
If only he stayed a good friend to John Eastman, a man he threw under the bus to placate Leftists and his own sorry sense of moral superiority.
The kind of stupid you just can’t fix without violence.
“Any student who disrupts will be reported to student conduct and a violation of the student conduct code is reported to the Bar… I am deeply saddened by these events…”
Expulsions, or it’s all gaslighting.
Chemerinsky is a cuck to anti-Americanism. These people are going to have to cut his pets’ throats before he finally understands the threat… if ever.
Chemerinsky has been Dean of this elite law program for around 7 years. He does indeed speak out about free speech. Sadly, judging by his response so far to the conduct of the students he recruits it is lip service.
I doubt the faculty he’s been hiring are any better.
I have heard Chemerinsky speak on multiple occasions. While he is a ridiculously raving liberal, he was always civil and polite. He does not seem to grasp that his beliefs and policies create the atmosphere of private and public disruption, interference and outright violence.
A polite communist is still a communist.
A polite communist is one who aims his gun at you instead of your wife.
A polite communist is either setting you up or a fool who doesn’t understand what he supports.
These are incredibly entitled and boorish people. I hope that the university will publish the names of all disruptors – they deserve the attention. I applaud the good professors Chemerinsky and Fisk for being gracious hosts to the graduating students but I do also hope their apparently naive world view is appropriately adjusted.
Chemerinsky’s age and experience rules out naive. Try delusional.
Erwin Chemerinsky professes alarmed innocence when his red guard student-troupe disrupt his backyard bourgeois garden tea party. (Maintained by serf-Mexican landscapers)
The black and white Hamas-Waffen SS scarf and BDS t-shirt worn by enemy-adversaries didn’t raise an internal alarm because Erwin is a cloistered idiot
Expel them.
No need for sky screaming….just look where they choose to do battle, on friendly ground.
Let them eat each other first. There is a reason they choose the protest ground.
It’s grievance performance like this that makes me long for the total and irreversible cleansing of gaza.
Poetic Justice
Getting what they voted for
Aw that cracks me up
Why not call the police on these abusive trespassers?
PoPo is too busy protecting the Bidenista Obamigrants.
“anti-Israel”
You’ve misspelled “Genocidal Anti-Semite”
This is disruption, a form of violence, that goes beyond protected free speech. Students who take part in violence and disruption should get more than a slap on the wrist from college procedures, they should be arrested and charged. They should also come to understand that disruption does not win friends or converts, it is counterproductive. Blocking roads for example angers motorists and makes new enemies. Invading private homes does not make their owners come over to their side. Those who are here as foreign students or are illegal immigrants who take part in disruption should be sent home and barred from future legal entry to the USA..