UC Berkeley launches civil rights investigation into confrontation at dean’s home

“This is not your house. This is my house. And I want you to leave,” shouts Fisk, threatening to call the police.

In a statement, Chemerinsky described the university’s investigation as a routine response to a complaint.

“It’s nothing more,” Chemerinsky said. “It is disturbing that the student who intentionally disrupted a dinner party at my home and refused to stop the disruption or leave when repeatedly asked to do so then had the audacity to file a complaint with the campus that she was mistreated.”

Afaneh is co-chair of the group Law Students for Justice in Palestine, which has long called for UC Berkeley to divest from manufacturing companies that supply weapons to Israel and called for a boycott of the dinner at Fisk and Chemerinsky’s home. After the altercation, she released a statement calling for the couple to resign.

Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, said a poster distributed by Afaneh’s group that included a caricature of him holding a bloody knife and fork and the words “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves” was blatantly anti-Semitic.

UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ said in a statement last month that she was “appalled and deeply disturbed” by what happened and offered her support to Chemerinsky. “While our support for free expression is unwavering, we cannot tolerate using a social event in someone’s private home as a platform for protest,” Christ said.

The San Francisco Bay Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, praised the university’s Title IX investigation.

“It is critical that all students, regardless of their religious or political beliefs, are safe and respected at university-sanctioned events,” Zahra Billoo, the group’s executive director, said in a statement Tuesday.

Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian student protests continue at UC Berkeley. According to local news site Berkeleyside, there were 170 tents on the steps of Sproul Hall last Friday. Last week, there were at least 14 pro-Palestinian camps on college campuses in California.