UC Berkeley’s Sather Gate. Photo: John Morgan.

An antisemitism education program at the University of California, Berkeley, was the recipient of a $25,000 grant this week in recognition of growing student interest in its output.

The Academic Engagement Network (AEN) — a body that opposes antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel on university campuses — said in a statement that it had made the grant “in support of the Antisemitism Education Initiative, a pilot program at the University of California, Berkeley, which will bring together multiple campus stakeholders to inform about, discuss, and develop the resources to respond to antisemitism.”

The AEN noted that in “an environment of increasing antisemitism on many college campuses, initiatives and training of the type that Berkeley is developing are sorely lacking.”

“AEN finds it essential that key campus stakeholders have the requisite knowledge and tools to better address the problems and challenges,” it added.

The Berkeley program launched at the end of 2019, with a speaker series that has already included a panel on the roots and resurgence of antisemitism by four faculty experts at Berkeley, a talk about Protestants and Catholics who saved Jews in Western Europe during the Holocaust and a talk by internationally‐acclaimed Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt on her book Antisemitism Here and Now, which drew some 400 people from across the campus and community.

“The challenges we face defy easy answers but we can see that our work is already spreading greater awareness, and we regard that as a crucial first step,” Prof. Ethan Katz — one of the three initiators of the Berkeley program — commented.