UC Berkeley professor Ron Hassner hauled a suitcase, pillow and sleeping bag into his campus office Thursday evening and began converting the small room into his temporary home.
Hassner, faculty director of the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies, began an open-ended “sit-in protest” over what he and many others in Cal’s Jewish community see as the failure of university administrators to protect Jewish students. A wave of anti-Zionist activity — and antisemitic intimidation — began on campus after the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel, including mob violence on Feb. 26 at Zellerbach Playhouse, where an Israeli speaker was slated to appear.
Hassner intends to eat, sleep and teach from his office until the university administration addresses a series of requests he issued in a letter Thursday to UC Chancellor Carol Christ and Provost Benjamin Hermalin.
“If my students feel that they cannot walk safely across campus without being bullied, then I will not cross campus either,” he wrote.
In the meantime, Hassner will leave a lamp illuminated in the window of his 7th-floor office, an announcement to students walking down Bancroft Avenue that his door is always open to them and that a faculty member is “sleeping as bad at night as they are.”
I expect to be in this office for a while.
“I’m thinking that maybe by doing this — giving the students some hope, showing them that someone cares, the door’s open, there’s a light in the window, please come by, let’s talk — I can avert the next disaster,” said Hassner, who has worked at Cal for 20 years.
The next disaster, he fears, could come as soon as Monday morning when an ad-hoc group of Jewish students has planned a “Liberate the Gate” march from Zellerbach Playhouse to Sather Gate, where anti-Zionist protesters have been stationed for nearly a month and have blocked the gate’s main entryway.
“I’m so sorely afraid,” Hassner said of what might happen Monday. “It makes me want to cry.”
Asked to comment on Hassner’s sit-in, a Berkeley spokesperson emailed a statement to J. on Friday, noting that Cal “remains committed to fostering an environment conducive to robust free speech and in which all members of its community feel that they may engage in campus life without fear of harassment. The administration is committed to confronting antisemitism and holds Professor Hassner in great esteem and it is in conversation with him about his concerns.”
Hassner also took a public stance in the days following the Oct. 7 massacre when Hamas called for a global “day of jihad” on Oct. 13. Hassner released a joint-statement on Oct. 12 with Hatem Bazian, a UC Berkeley lecturer on Middle Eastern languages and cultures and the founder of the anti-Zionist group Students for Justice in Palestine, calling on all students to remain peaceful.
By midday Friday, Hassner said he’d heard from eight colleagues who have decided to support his sit-in so far by moving their courses out of the classroom and onto Zoom.
In a way, Hassner said, it’s as if he’s sitting shiva — mourning the loss of Jewish student safety on campus. Like a mourner, he anticipates that his family, students and other supporters will bring him meals while he remains in his office. And like those in mourning, he won’t bathe. He’s using a hall bathroom with a sink and toilet but does not have access to a shower.
The situation at Berkeley, he said, is “shiva-worthy.”
“If the university can’t get its grip around this, we are doomed,” he said. “Jewish students will stop coming to this campus.”
Hassner remains hopeful that his protest will elicit a response from administrators. Among his requests to Christ and Hermalin is unblocking the primary entryway of Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus, which has been cordoned off by anti-Zionist protesters in recent weeks.
His second request comes in response to the mob violence at Zellerbach, which forced speaker Ran Bar-Yoshafat, an Israeli lawyer and reservist who served in Gaza after Oct. 7, to cancel his talk on campus and deliver it at UC Berkeley’s Chabad instead.
Hassner has also requested that administrators apologize and invite Bar-Yoshafat back to campus — and to follow such protocol if any future speakers are interrupted by hecklers or violence.
Finally, Hassner has called for antisemitism and Islamophobia training for incoming faculty, resident advisers and leaders of registered student organizations.
“My ask is quite modest,” he said. “Nonetheless, I expect to be in this office for a while.”
On Thursday evening, Hassner’s wife and 15-year-old daughter stopped by to check on him. His 18-year-old son was on the way with a “cheapo” mattress, Hassner said.
Several of Hassner’s students also dropped by. Before deciding on where to order takeout for dinner, one student produced a box of glazed donuts to tide everyone over.
Hassner informed his War in the Middle East class, an upper-level political science course, on Thursday afternoon about the sit-in. He plans to teach that class, which has more than 100 students, over Zoom. A smaller seminar will meet in his office.
Eli Glickman, a junior studying political science, was among those visiting Hassner’s office.
“I think it’s nice to see people like Ron sticking their necks out for students and showing that they care and they’re listening, even if the administration — which I have a great amount of respect for — is not always the best at showing everybody that they’re listening,” Glickman said.
“This strikes me as one of those times where they should be clearly delineating their position,” he added. “And they’re not.”
Until they do, Hassner plans to stay in his office, with one light always on.