CU condemns antisemitism following student protests at officials' homes

BOULDER — The University of Colorado on Thursday condemned antisemitism and the actions of a student group that held two protests at CU officials’ homes this month.

A group called Students for a Democratic Society in Denver held pro-Palestine protests in front of the home of University of Colorado Regent Ilana Spiegel, who is Jewish, on Monday in Arapahoe County and in front of Regent Callie Rennison’s home on June 1 in Superior.

“Targeting me and my family, American Jews and descendants of Holocaust survivors, at my personal home was and is blatant, brazen and dangerous antisemitism which we can not tolerate,” Spiegel said.

The University of Colorado Board of Regents, the elected board that oversees the CU System, passed a resolution on Thursday denouncing the actions of the protesters. The resolution said the group repeatedly called for “Intifada,” which are “calls for violence and murder against the Jewish people, are anti-Semitic, and are racist in nature.”

“The Board of Regents condemns SDS for its actions directed at Jewish people in the town of Superior and Arapahoe County, Colorado,” the resolution read. “Furthermore, the University of Colorado welcomes our Jewish university members who deserve to work, matriculate and live in a welcoming, inclusive and safe community just like all our students, staff and faculty deserve.”

Rennison said the protests made people feel threatened and unsafe.

“As elected officials, we understand that there will be varying opinions on the positions we take as stewards of the university,” she said. “However, targeting our homes, as mine has been, which affects not only me, but my family and neighbors, is out of line.”

The protests were related to demands that the University of Colorado divest from corporations that do business with Israel. SDS organizer Sky Childress said they “do not support the murder and displacement of any people.”

“The board is charged constitutionally with the general supervision of the university and the exclusive control and direction of all funds of and appropriations to the university. It is because of this position of power that we have targeted the regents for protest,” Childress wrote in an email, adding, “SDS condemns the University of Colorado for investing in the genocidal apartheid state of Israel and for refusing to meet the demands we have set before them.”