A San Francisco professor of Jewish history was shouted down and told he “can’t hide” during a lecture last month at the University of Michigan — an incident the administration labeled a “clear instance of antisemitism.”
“Dollinger, you can’t hide! Zionism is a crime!” shouted the students, clad in masks, standing at the back of a classroom where Marc Dollinger was delivering a lecture on American Jews and the Black Power movement of the 1960s. About 10 protesters entered during the talk, Dollinger told J.
Cellphone video shows the commotion, as attendees sit quietly waiting for it to end. “Anti-Black and settler too, Zionist violence we see you!” the protesters chant.
“This is so dumb,” one student attendee says.
Dollinger is a tenured professor of Jewish studies and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Chair at San Francisco State University. As a scholar, much of his work has focused on the intersections of Jewish history, liberalism and American social movements.
(Photo/Sharon Goldstone)
He was invited by the University of Michigan’s Judaic Studies Department to deliver a lecture on his 2018 book “Black Power, Jewish Politics.” The book looks critically at the relationship between Jewish and Black political activism in the 1960s — both how Jewish activists impacted the Civil Rights Movement and how Black Power influenced Jewish political movements, including Zionism.
To him, the incident reeked of bigotry.
“It’s kind of strange for them to yell about Zionism when my talk is about civil rights,” Dollinger said.
“It’s one thing if they were coming to debate the thesis of my book. But they weren’t. They were saying because you consider Zionism part of your Jewish identity, you should not be on the University of Michigan campus,” he added. “That’s antisemitism.”
The Nov. 19 incident came as the Michigan university, with more than 50,000 students, tries to steady itself following a tumultuous year for on-campus protests and allegations of a hostile climate for Jews. In June, the U.S. Department of Education said the University of Michigan failed to respond adequately to 75 bias complaints, many related to anti-Jewish and anti-Arab bigotry, from August 2022 through February 2024.
As at many American universities, a group of Michigan students erected a tent encampment in the spring, calling for “intifada” and demanding the university cut all ties with Israel. Michigan’s encampment was one of the longest lasting and led to arrests when it was dismantled.
In September, a 19-year-old Jewish student reportedly was attacked near campus after being asked if he was Jewish.
University Regent Mark Bernstein rebuked the university during a public meeting in June, citing what he called a “dangerous, deeply rooted culture of antisemitism on our campus.”
A left-wing communist group called the League of Revolutionary Students Washtenaw took credit for the protest at the Dollinger talk, alongside the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace at the University of Michigan. The university is located in Washtenaw County.
The two groups published an unsparing screed on Instagram explaining “why we disrupted Marc Dollinger’s talk.” It shows a photo of Dollinger with his eyes scribbled out.
The protesters attacked him as a “progressive Zionist,” which is a “particularly sinister strain of zionism,” they wrote. Their statement also took aim at a “false picture of Black and Jewish solidarity” and said Zionism plays a role in the “amerikan state’s counterinsurgency” against Black rights — using a spelling of “American” preferred by left-wing groups that conflates the country with fascism and the KKK.
Dollinger said he didn’t know exactly why he was targeted, but his “best guess” was that the university had included a blurb about his forthcoming book on the campus calendar. The book lays out “what it’s like to be a Zionist professor on campus these days,” he said.
For Dollinger, to be a Zionist means to believe fundamentally that “the State of Israel should exist as a national home.” He added that he is “pro-Israel and pro-Palestine” and supports either a two-state solution or a “confederation” of Israeli and Palestinian territories.
After the disruption started, Dollinger said, a Michigan professor who is “trained in de-escalation” tried to engage the protesters.
“They were not interested in de-escalation,” he said. Campus police were called, but the protesters left before they arrived.
The incident was reminiscent of other attempts at U.S. universities to alienate or “deplatform” Jews who support the existence of Israel and who, activists say, support apartheid or even genocide. At UC Berkeley, progressive Oakland city councilor Dan Kalb was disinvited from a November 2023 talk on environmental stewardship because students learned that he supports Israel. At San Jose State, a talk in February about a two-state solution was interrupted by student protesters and a visiting Jewish lecturer was forced to leave with a police escort.
The University of Michigan administration condemned the Dollinger incident in a statement on Nov. 23 and said the protesters may face disciplinary action.
“Shouting down speakers for any reason is unacceptable at the University of Michigan. It violates our academic mission and our commitment to free speech and diversity of thought,” the statement said. “Doing so in a way that, in this case, targeted a person because of their Jewish identity is particularly abhorrent and will not be tolerated.”
The statement continued: “The actions of the individuals who interrupted this event are a clear instance of antisemitism. The university is working to identify the perpetrators so they can be held accountable.”
Dollinger said the lecture continued after first opening the floor to students and other attendees to share their thoughts about the disruption.
“Where were we, before we were so rudely interrupted?” he told them.