A Palestinian student who tried to interrupt a dinner party at the home of the dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law accused the dean’s wife, Professor Catherine Fisk, of assaulting her, US media reported.
Recounting the chaos, a video of which went viral, Malak Afaneh said she had never felt so “traumatised” and “humiliated”. The student claimed the dean’s wife saw her hijab as a threat. Afaneh said in a TikTok video:
“Professor Fisk did not assault me because I was talking about Palestine. I didn’t even get the chance to speak about Palestine. She assaulted me because to her a hijabi-wearing Palestinian Muslim student was enough of a threat that justified me being assaulted.”
Afaneh was one of 60 students invited to a dinner by Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, before graduation next month. Last week, Palestinian students put up posters around campus calling for a boycott of the dinner. She further said:
“The plan was that I would go up, speak about UC’s complicity and students would silently walk out. I was speaking about Ramadan when Professor Fisk came and put her arms around me, grasped me by my hijab and breasts inappropriately, groped my shirt and dragged me up the steps.”
A longer version of the confrontation at the home of Dean Chemerinsky and Professor Fisk emerged on Friday. The video shows a female law student standing up and reciting a traditional Islamic greeting in Arabic. She is wearing a white shirt, a black and white keffiyeh around her neck and a red hijab.
Chemerinsky and Fisk then approach her and ask her to leave. Fisk is seen trying to snatch Afaneh’s mobile phone from her and putting her arm around her. She said:
“This is not your house. It is my house and I want you to leave.”
In a statement posted by Berkeley, Chemerinsky said he was not intimidated. He said:
“I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.”
Earlier this week Chemerinsky, who is Jewish, was the subject of posters depicting a caricature of him that he later said he believed to be “deeply offensive” and “blatant antisemitism” but that he also believed had a right to be displayed as protected speech.
In an interview on CNN, Chemerinsky elaborated on why he thinks he was the target of such a protest, explaining that he has no control over the investments of the University of California and claiming that he’s “said nothing in support of what Netanyahu is doing in Israel … so it’s hard for me to see any reason why they were coming after me other than I was Jewish.”
