Possible violations of state and federal law, as well as written policy, undercut DeSantis’s “safe haven” for Jews.
On January 9th, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that Florida universities would welcome Jewish students, touting the state as a “safe haven.” UCF Jewish Monitor’s investigation into this claim reveals a very different situation awaiting prospective out-of-state Jewish students.
“The day after we put up flyers,” complained a student who helped post flyers of hostages taken by Hamas, “they were all taken down, and [campus police] told us that they wanted to charge us with criminal mischief… meanwhile, [pro-Palestinian students] superglued flyers to the emergency telephone poles and they haven’t been charged.”
“We made reports to the university about death threats and racist comments coming from Registered Student Organizations on campus,” another student told the Monitor. “When I filed a public records request to see what they were doing about it, they told me there were no records regarding the situation at all, that there were no emails, no meetings, no activity regarding the reports.”
“We are watching our relegation to second-class citizens in real time,” said one Jewish student who edits for the Monitor. “We even contacted the Governor once we realized that the administration and police were complicit in this process. He never addressed it. If he really wanted to fix it, he would’ve done it by now.”
The evidence shows that Florida’s largest university is mired in a culture of institutionalized antisemitism, with the highest levels of UCF’s administration participating in the systematic marginalization of Jewish students. Public records and eyewitness testimony show that the administration’s misconduct has pervaded all of the major protective institutions at UCF, including the police department; the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); and the student conduct board.
For instance, records show that UCF’s police department was notified by Florida Department of Education that “calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews” and “delegitimizing Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying Israel the right to exist” constituted legally actionable antisemitism. Yet, when multiple illegally-posted flyers meeting these exact criteria were reported to UCF PD, they decided to stop investigating reports of illegally posted flyers altogether, even though they had previously told Jewish students that they would be criminally charged if they posted pro-Israel flyers.
“[Flyer removal] tied up police officers for some time and resulted in people taking photos of our officers taking down the posters. Then there was the question as to why we were taking down specific flyers but not all,” a police commander wrote, referring to an incident where only flyers of hostages in Gaza were removed from an area, and not any other unapproved posters, including some which advertised businesses and local events.
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| UCF PD removed a pro-Israel flyer, but kept flyers advertising a local business and a game night event. Under Florida law, any flyer posted without written approval from the University constitutes criminal mischief. UCF PD later changed their longstanding policy regarding flyers after the Jewish community noted the uneven enforcement of the law. |
“This is a matter for the University Officials with control over that space where the flyers are located to remove,” he continued, in effect overruling a policy which UCF PD has held to for at least the past 5 years, apparently to sidestep allegations of discrimination against Jews.
In addition, when sent a video of a student organization on campus celebrating the Hamas attacks on Israel and calling for more violence, a police major wrote that “there doesn’t appear to be a criminal violation… any other violation of Florida Statute that would be actionable from the PD,” despite such language falling squarely within the Florida Department of Education’s guidelines.
Jewish students told the Monitor they stopped posting their own flyers after being threatened with criminal charges. Some also told the Monitor that they began posting flyers again in secret earlier this semester, in order to challenge the monopoly on campus expression by antisemitic organizations masquerading as pro-Palestinian entities. “[Our posters] were all taken down the next day,” said one student involved with the resumption in flyering, “but some posters [of antisemitic content] are still up from last semester, exactly where they were when we reported them last semester.”
Everyone we spoke with was confident that the police would not protect them from criminal activity on campus, and many told us they no longer intend to report such activity. Yet the evidence indicates that the problem is not isolated to UCF’s police department. Student activists told the Monitor that while they have been reporting death threats, genocidal rhetoric, and other actionable conduct to the DEI office and student conduct board at UCF, they recently learned that their reports are being ignored.
“[UCF’s Head of DEI] Dr. Andrea Guzman told me that our reports about [antisemitic campus organizations] are ‘under review,’” one activist told the Monitor. “But we just learned that the only records related to the reports are the reports themselves. They’re not talking about the reports, they’re not investigating our claims. They’re sitting on them and hoping we forget.”
The reports, some of which describe incidents that the UCF Jewish Monitor has covered in the past, include allegations of UCF students calling for ethnic and racial violence against Jewish and/or Israeli students, as well as antisemitic speech degrading Jews and Israelis on the basis of their identities. All of the reports describe behavior meeting the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism, which was officially adopted by the UCF Student Senate prior to October 7th.
The rot spanning UCF’s institutions appears to come from the top of the ladder. Jewish students told the Monitor that despite University President Dr. Alexander Cartwright’s initial email offering sympathy to victims of the October 7th pogrom, he has failed to offer any material support to Jewish students on his campus. The same appears to be true for Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Dr. Andrea Guzman.
Two students who spoke with the Monitor, who wished to only be identified as A. and B., described conversations with Dr. Guzman and a number of other administrators, including Dr. Adrianne Frame (Student Success and Well-Being) and Dr. Nancy Myers (Title IX Coordinator and Office of Institutional Equity) that contained a number of contradictions and dubious statements.
“In my meeting with her,” said A., “[Dr. Guzman] told me that she knew about the police taking down our [pro-Israel] flyers, and told me it was because of where we put them. When I told her I had pictures proving that they removed flyers from everywhere, regardless of location, she literally ignored me and changed the subject.”
“But in my meeting, which happened just a few hours after [A’s meeting],” B. told me, “Dr. Guzman told me that she was shocked to hear about [the police taking down pro-Israel flyers and not any others], that it was the first time she’d ever heard about it.”
In a particularly worrying incident, Drs. Cartwright and Guzman personally met with members of the Palestinian Student Association (PSA) – whose official Instagram account posted that the “only thing keeping Muslims sane is the promise Allah gave us in the Quran about the destruction of Israel;” that “there’s no such thing as ‘innocent civilians’” in the Jewish state; and that Israel was responsible for the bombing for a hospital, a baseless allegation which was later conclusively refuted – and posed for a selfie, smiling ear to ear with students who had repeatedly called for the death of Jews.
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| UCF President Alexander Cartwright and V.P. of DEI Andrea Guzman appear next to board members of the Palestinian Student Association, which has lobbied since October 7th for additional murders of Jewish people. |
Jewish and Israeli students told the Monitor that they asked for a similar meeting and were ignored.
“Before [Drs. Cartwright and Guzman] met with the people who called for our deaths, we had asked for the same kind of meeting,” one student said. “I sent my first request on November 6th. After they met with [PSA], we continued to ask for a meeting and were ignored.”
It was later revealed that Drs. Cartwright and Guzman had met with three Central Florida Hillel board members in secret. They continue to ignore requests from ordinary Jewish and Israeli students for a similar meeting, despite Dr. Guzman admitting that both board and non-board members of PSA were in attendance at their meeting.
All of these incidents describe cases where Jewish students were denied access to campus resources on the basis of their identities, which means UCF may be running afoul of both state and federal law. That’s a problem for Governor DeSantis, who bills himself as a protector of his state’s Jewish population.
“Many universities outside of Florida have simply failed [at addressing antisemitism],” said DeSantis earlier this month. Yet DeSantis appears to be ignoring antisemitism on his own college campuses, including in situations where laws designed to protect Jews are outright ignored by campus officials.
Dr. Cartwright, Dr. Guzman, Chief Carl Metzger, and Governor Ron DeSantis’s offices did not return requests for comment. A spokesperson for UCF asked the Monitor to encourage students “who are still seeking a conversation with leadership” to email the Office of Institutional Equity (which oversees DEI initiatives at UCF). The spokesperson also mentioned that a Brandeis University study “ranked UCF among the lowest schools sampled for antisemitic hostility” – an evaluation made prior to the revelations in this report. While UCF certainly faces less antisemitism than, for example, Columbia University or Cooper Union, Governor DeSantis’s claim that Jews in the United States can study safely in Florida universities seems out of step with the situation on his college campuses.
Jewish transfer students to UCF and other Florida schools, encouraged by DeSantis’s description of Florida universities, may be in for a rude awakening.