Rice University received a C from ADL. Does it deserve it?

Week of Rage

On March 3, 2025, the Anti-Defamation League issued a new antisemitism report cards for 135 colleges and universities across the US. Rice University, in Houston, TX, received the grade of C. When the ADL report card was first issued in 2024, Rice received a D. Let’s analyze the recent report card and see if Rice really deserved a raise.

1. “In April 2024, at an anti-Israel encampment organized by groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Palestinian Youth Movement at Rice University, protesters displayed signs with messages that included: `We must divest from Zionism,’ `Zionists stay mad’ and `Ugly Zionist says what?’”

These quotes significantly underplay the anti-Israeli virulence of the 2024 encampments, which includes chants such as “Zionist get out, free free Palestine”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab”, “We don’t want Zionists here”. As the first chant makes it clear, “Zionist” refer to Israeli Jews. The second chant then calls for ethnic cleansing, and the third one declare Israeli Jews persona non-Grata on the Rice campus. To appreciate the vileness of this chant, just replace “Zionists” by “Blacks”.

2. “Rice has launched an informal task force, which includes the Hillel director, along with several students and administrators. The group began meeting weekly to keep the University informed of the climate on campus for Jewish students.”

So the university was informed. How has that made Rice safer for Jewish and Israeli students?

3. “The University has also convened a faculty advisory group composed of scholars on antisemitism, Judaism and the history of the Middle East.”

As I pointed out, even when Rice tried to do the right thing, it could not do it right. That “faculty advisory group” included Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti. Professor Takriti is a historian of the modern Arab world, so he does seem to be indeed a “faculty expert”. But he is also the faculty advisor of Rice’s student club of Students for Justice in Palestine (RiceSJP), which has been the major instigator of Israelophobic protests at Rice. To get a better picture of how objective is Professor Takriti with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I suggest browsing his Twitter stream, which is virulently Israelophobic. Is he the right person to advise Rice leadership on how to deal with the tensions on campus? I doubt it.

4. “In December 2023, President DesRoches issued a statement making clear that calls for violence or genocide against Jewish students or any other group of persons would violate Rice’s policies.”

Indeed, the 2023 statement included “Rice unequivocally considers calls for violence or genocide against Jewish students or any other group of people to be evil, wrong and immoral and they violate Rice’s policies and could violate federal law. We strongly denounce acts of hate speech and antisemitism and will not tolerate them.” But subsequent complaints about chants such as “Globalize the Intifada” were dismissed, claiming that such chants do not rise the a threat of violence under Texas Penal Code.

To put things in historical context, the Second Intifada was a 2000–2005 terror campaign aimed at Israeli civilians — which included suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings — resulting in over 1,000 people murdered. I lost a very good friend in the Passover Massacre, a suicide bombing carried out by Hamas at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel in March 2002, during a Passover festive meal, in which 30 civilians were killed and 140 were injured. For Israelis, “Globalize the Intifada” means that not only Israelis in Israel are legitimate targets, but that Israelis everywhere are legitimate targets. Yet Rice dismissed many complaints against such chants. So the December 2023 statement by President DesRoches had no effect in Rice making the campus safe for Israelis on campus.

5. “In May 2024, the University expressed a commitment to improving the campus climate for Jewish students by raising awareness of Judaism and antisemitism and promoting religious diversity within educational efforts, among other items.”

This is another empty statement. In an end-of-semester email sent to campus on April 28, 2024, President DesRoches described the encampment activities, including the chants of “We don’t want Zionists here”, as “responsible, personal expression”.

On April 7, 2024, I wrote to the Director of Human Resources at Rice to tell her that “I am a faculty member of Rice University, and I do not feel physically safe on the campus.” I added that Rice has a duty of care to provide a workplace that is physically and emotionally safe. The response on April 12 was that if I do not feel physically safe, I should call the Rice University Police Department, and if I do not feel emotionally safe, I should seek counseling. Following that deeply unsatisfying answer, a group of about ten Israelis — faculty members, staff members, and students — held a meeting in mid April with the leadership of the university, including President DesRoches. We made it clear that we do not feel safe on the Rice campus. Two people pulled out pocket knives that they carry with them for self defense while on the Rice campus. The leadership listened with interest, but no promise of concrete steps to address these issues was made, other than a vague statement about something to be done during Orientation Week in the fall. So far, no plan has been announced on how to keep Israelis safe on the Rice campus.

6. “In advance of the 2024–25 academic year, Rice made changes to protest and demonstration policies, including outlining time, place and manner restrictions, to ensure the University can be more proactive and responsive to conduct that violates school policies.”

But the problem in the spring of 2024 had nothing to do with vague policies. Rather, Rice was reluctant to enforce these policies and sanction violators. For example, the Rice encampment was not pre-approved, as required, but Rice acquiesced to it. Furthermore, Rice allowed an encampment poster, which clearly violated Rice’s Policy 856, to stand in front of the Multicultural Center for over two months. The previous version of Policy 820 on campus demonstrations, which can be found on the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive, included the following clause: “Interrupting a lecture, event, meeting, debate, class or forum on University property is considered an unacceptable form of protest,demonstration, or organized expression of opinion.” The new version omits this clause.

7. “New roles were also assigned to current facility employees to monitor and report any posters that do not comply with campus policies.”

Both the old and new versions of Policy 856 impose requirements on location, format, and identification. These requirements were widely violated at Rice during spring 2024, but with no disciplinary consequences, as Rice could not decide who should adjudicate such violations. The new policy, revised in August 2024, removes the threat of disciplinary consequences, and allows any Rice community member to remove posters that violates these requirements. So Rice decided that the solution to violations of of the policy is “vigilante justice”. I consider this a very bad approach. After all, humanity has concluded a long time ago that law enforcement has to be institutionalized.

Summary: At the start of the 2024 fall semester, RiceSJP posted the above threatening image on its Instagram page.

Rice does not have an explicit policy about social-media posts, but Policy 830 prohibits conduct that “a reasonable person would consider intimidating”. I, and several Israelis at Rice felt threatened and decided to play it safe and avoid the campus on Oct. 7, 2024. I submitted a complaint to the Student Judicial Programs. Four months later, the complaint is still under investigation. The policy requires Rice to provide “weekly updates about the progress of the investigation”, but I have received no meaningful update since Nov. 2024. (The Week of Rage referred to in the post did not materialize, but there is no reason to believe that this happened due to actions by Rice.)

So does Rice deserves a grade raise from D to C? Not according to the grading standards of this professor.