I am questioning my application at Berkeley due to hearing about the hate on campus. I would consider myself a zionist and being a political science major, it may not be possible to avoid politics. I have been warned by Muslim students at my CC already. Is it really violent?
Honestly, no. Everyone sees Cal as a hotbed for various activity, but thats only the case sometimes because its a very urban school and integrated with the Berkeley/Oakland area. UCLA is secluded so they dont have this, but we do get people that come up from Oakland to do various activities. So, in short, the students are fine, and even if there is a problem there is a student association for every group basically. Its just the locals you may have to worry about, but I’ve never seen it where a local comes up to attack a certain group (religious or ethnic in particular), and they more just come to riot/break stuff when something at the school is happening.
Israeli - Palestinian politics can get really nasty and really racist anywhere, because it tends to attract noisy extremists who think anyone who does not agree with them is racist but are racist themselves.
Secular Jew at Cal here: There have been anti-Semitic incidents on campus during my time here (flyers blaming Jews for some Kavanaugh conspiracy, chalk with some hate speech-also targeted other groups-, and two problematic cartoons). These incidents were definitely jarring but I do feel the campus made a swift effort to denounce each incident (both admin and student gov) and I have never felt on safe on campus. When these incidents occurred the entire campus community made an effort to make Jewish students feel supported. I have also been able to have some really insightful discussions on race, ethnicity, religion, and Israel-Palestine. In fact, I talked to friends a few days ago about the Israel-Palestine conflict and the way Zionism is sometimes discussed on campus. A thing that I like about Berkeley is that while the school is far from perfect students are willing to engage and learn from each other. I think Berkeley is no different then most “liberal” campuses including UCLA in how Zionism is perceived. Anti-zionist rhetoric can become anti-Semitic, but I don’t think Zionism or Anti-zionism are at the forefront of most people’s Berkeley experiences unless they are intentionally engaging in the debate. Most people will respect your pro-Israel stance or disagree with you over occupation/Netanyahu’s policies without attacking you as a person (or Jew).
Thank you. I definitely do not want to get too involved in politics on campus, but want to ensure my safety.
You probably would not want to display as signs of conservative views (i.e., wearing a red Trump hat, etc.) on the UCB campus. Even attending a Ben Shapiro speaking engagement can put you at risk with left-wing demonstrators. Among the liberals, especially the extreme liberals, conservative views (even no hate view or speech) can be construed as racist or fascist views. Most of these violent incidents have been instigated by groups such as Antifa, who like cowards, choose to hide behind their black masks. Times have changed with the free speech movement.
The black mask far-leftists came out when baited by far-rightists including agitator Milo Yiannopoulos, which is exactly what the far-rightists wanted.
Ben Shapiro is another extreme rightist, rather than an ordinary conservative. Regarding freedom of speech, he himself has called for defining political opposition as sedition or treason: https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2006/02/15/should-we-prosecute-sedition-n1214384
I feel like Jewish people are a comparatively large proportion of campus. Cafe 3 has a whole Kosher station (basically half of what Cafe 3 serves right there). They are building/remodeling the Hillel across from campus and there’s a lot of events and related clubs which are very present on campus. But there is a club of free Palestine people too, so we have some balance, and the 70 year old OG hippies aren’t very happy with Israel every few months and they hand out some flyers.
Trust me, the vast majority of Berkeley students are far too occupied with their coursework and student organizations to be violent towards people who disagree with them politically.
You are correct, however, that there have been some violent episodes here in the past. I was actually standing a couple of feet away from someone who was attacked by an antifa member during the night of the 2016 election. Most of the violence comes from far-left organizations and people living nearby the university (namely Oakland), and not from the students or residents of Berkeley. There’s absolutely nothing to worry about in terms of day-to-day safety, but it’d be wise to avoid certain spots on campus such as Sproul or Telegraph during political episodes such as the Milo talk or the Trump election.
From what I’ve noticed, CC transfers at Berkeley tend to have much more polarized political views and tend to speak out about race more than normal Berkeley students, which may explain some of the negative things you’ve heard.