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Back in 2019, a reader wrote in to remind J. of a dispute that reared its head in 1970s Oakland.

“Your article ‘Draft high school ethnic studies curriculum ‘anti-Jewish,’ say California Jewish orgs’ … reminds me of the time in the mid-’70s when Oakland’s Merritt College, where I was teaching, instituted a graduation requirement for all students to take a course in ethnic studies,” Berkeley reader Renata Polt wrote. “Since I was planning a course in Jewish studies, I proposed that this course qualify to meet the requirement. Little did I expect the firestorm that met my proposal!

“At public meetings, faculty members and administrators dragged out the ancient, scurrilous attacks on Jews: Jews are rapacious landlords, Jews suppress black people and other minorities, etc. The only two faculty members who came to my defense were my African American department chair and a devout Christian instructor. My course was approved, but it failed to qualify for the ethnic studies requirement.”

That debate at Merritt College five decades ago encapsulated some of the issues around Jewish identity that are still raised in 2024. Taking a look back, you can see fault lines that are still apparent in higher education to the present day.

In the 1970s, Merritt College was going through some self-imposed struggles. In 1971, the public community college had completed a controversial move from the flatlands of North Oakland, an area with a high number of Black residents, to the hills of East Oakland where it is today. 

Merritt College was known as the school that birthed the Black Panther movement — Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton met there — and its decision to move the campus was widely opposed by students.

According to the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, Merritt College was also one of the first institutions in the nation to offer ethnic studies when it started a Black studies program in the late 1960s.

The ethnic studies debate that Renata Polt wrote to us about? Earl Raab, a longtime director of the Jewish Community Relations Council and a columnist for the then-Jewish Bulletin, had tackled the subject in 1976.

“Merritt College decided that a course in Jewish culture and history did not qualify as an ‘ethnic studies’ course. Every student at Merritt has to take three units of ethnic studies. There is a course in Jewish history and culture in the Merritt curriculum, which any student can take for credit. However, Merritt officials decided that these credits could not satisfy the specific need for three ethnic studies units,” Raab wrote.

“The real reason for the opposition is simple: if the Jewish studies course could satisfy the ethnic studies requirements, it would divert some students from the Black, Chicano, Asian, and Native American courses which now comprise the ethnic studies program — and some of those teachers might lose their jobs.”

A faculty member wrote that Jewish ethnic studies were not legitimate because Jews were ‘white and wealthy;’ and also because Jews ‘can choose to be Jewish or not.’

Columnist Earl Raab, 1976

That may or may not have been the reason — the column was a personal opinion, expressed in Raab’s forthright style. But something in his column may provoke a sense of déjà vu for anyone listening to today’s conversations about where the Jewish story belongs in both the realm of ethnic studies and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“More interesting,” Raab continued, “is the philosophy expressed to support this resistance. A faculty member wrote that Jewish ethnic studies were not legitimate because Jews were ‘white and wealthy;’ and also because Jews ‘can choose to be Jewish or not.’”

There’s a familiar ring to that.

This sticky point of the discrepancy between how Jews see themselves and how others see them is one that frustrates dialogue to this day. Some people see “Jewish” and think of white, wealthy people with access to power, like Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, director Steven Spielberg or billionaire tech entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg.

But American Jews know that Jews can be of any color, country or socioeconomic status. We are all too aware that in every generation of living memory, Jews have suffered persecution in every country in the diaspora where we have lived.

A similar issue surfaced in 1995 when then-reporter (and now senior editor) Natalie Weinstein wrote about the growth of Jewish studies programs in the Bay Area, which she noted had “not occurred without problems.”

“Professor Mira Zussman, who coordinates Middle East Studies at San Jose State University, felt compelled to discount the notion that the Bay Area has overwhelmingly welcomed Jewish studies,” Weinstein wrote. “At San Jose State, she said, Jewish studies is just hanging on and faces hostility from other ethnic minorities who complain that ‘Jews don’t deserve their own ethnic studies programs because they have always blended into the dominant culture.’”

The situation at Merritt was eventually resolved — in a way.

“The officials finally agreed that Jewish studies would be recognized as a fulfillment of the graduation requirement for ethnic studies,” Raab wrote. “But those Jewish studies will have to be taken some other place; and such a course is being set up at nearby College of Alameda for any student who wants to take it.”

It was an awkward but practical workaround to give students credit for taking a Jewish studies class. The bureaucratic issue might have been over at Merritt, but the conversation about where Jews fit in has not ended. 

Now, with tensions flaring in the U.S. since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, the taking of hostages and the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, these fault lines are again exposed in universities, showing that debates about Jews are far from over.