Julia Chang

Overview

Julia Chang [Julia Haeyoon Chang] has dismissed anti-Semitism, defended violent protesters, demonized Israel and promoted incitement. She also defended a pro-Hamas professor, endorsed anti-Israel agitators and spread hatred of the police.

Chang promoted a 2021 Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) protest at Cornell University (Cornell) in support of anti-Israel violence.

As of March 2022, Chang was an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance Studies at Cornell, as well as a member of the core faculty in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and affiliated faculty in the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell.

Chang was an Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies at Brown University (Brown) in Providence, Rhode Island, in 2013-2015.

Chang reportedly received a bachelor’s degree in Humanities from Loyola Marymount University (LMU) in 2003, a master’s degree in Hispanic language and culture from New York University (NYU) in Madrid in 2004 and a Ph.D. in Hispanic languages and literature from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) in 2013.

As of March 2022, Chang was located in Ithaca, New York.

Dismissing Anti-Semitism

In May 2021, during Israel’s “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW)” against Hamas in Gaza, Chang signed a letter by the Cornell Arab Student Association (Cornell ASA) condemning Cornell President Martha Pollack.

On May 26, 2021, President Pollack issued a statement which took notice of the “alarming national rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes…amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East,” and appealed for “rigorous discourse and debate, devoid of personal invective and attacks.”

Anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. “more than doubled” during OGW and its aftermath, compared to the same time period in 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Defending Violent Protesters

In May 2021, Chang launched a change.org petition denouncing “the Israeli military’s recent massacre of unarmed Palestinian protesters participating in the Great March of Return in the Gaza Strip.” On May 6, 2021, the petition was published in the Cornell student newspaper, The Cornell Sun.

The petition accused Israel of “a 50-year occupation, and 70-year ethnic cleansing” of the Palestinian people and

The petition concluded by saying: “As we combat racism and militarism at home, we salute those Palestinian demonstrators who are facing one of the world’s military giants armed only with their determination to be free.”

On March 30, 2018, some 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza approached Israel’s border to take part in “Land Day Protests,” or the “March of Return.” The march was organized and funded by Hamas as a campaign of violent protests to spotlight the Palestinian demand to “return” to Israel. The “right of return” has since been discredited as a means to eliminate Israel.

On April 24, 2018, Chang promoted to Twitter a campus rally scheduled for the following day titled “Stand with Gaza.” The rally was hosted by the Cornell Collective for Justice in Palestine (CCJP) in support of the March of Return protests in Gaza.

The event’s Facebook description referred to March of Return protesters as “non-violent Palestinian protesters” and asked participants to “stand with us in solidarity with Gaza's brave demonstrators and against Israel…”

Media reports confirmed [00:00:20] the March of Return protesters’ breaches and attempted breaches of Israel’s border fence, some by armed Palestinians. One Hamas leader declared [00:00:30]: “We will take down the border [with Israel] and we will tear out their hearts from their bodies.”

Demonizing Israel

On January 15, 2021, during the coronavirus pandemic, Chang tweeted: “Israel has the highest Covid vaccination rate in the world but has excluded 5M Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.”

Under the Oslo Accords [p. 5], the Palestinian Authority (PA) is responsible for providing health services to Palestinians under its jurisdiction. In December 2020, PA officials reportedly contacted Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) department to request the vaccine, which Israel agreed to provide.

Chang retweeted a May 11, 2021 tweet that referred to Israel’s OGW against Hamas in Gaza as a “fourth war on Gaza.”

In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.

The tweet included a video of Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza, in which he accused [00:00:58] Israel of targeted strikes against civilians. Sourani also charged [00:01:53] Israel with “new brand of apartheid...much, much worse than South Africa used to be.”

Promoting Incitement

On May 13, 2021, during Mohammed el-Kurd’s eviction from his home in Sheikh Jarrah, Chang tweeted: “Mohammed el–Kurd's CNN interview was going viral yesterday and then this happened

and omg [oh my g-d] that fearless woman in the video.”

In May 2021, calls to “save” Sheikh Jarrah, a Jerusalem neighborhood at the center of a property dispute, led to violence against Israelis and were one of the leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza into Israel that month.

In May 2021, El-Kurd returned from the United States to Israel, following a February 16, 2021 Israeli District Court ruling to evict over 70 Palestinian tenants.

On May 11, 2021, El-Kurd spread misinformation about Israel during a CNN interview posted to YouTube in which he claimed [00:00:18] “it’s not really an eviction, it’s forced ethnic displacement.”

Defending a Pro-Hamas Professor

Chang signed a November 2023 letter defending a professor at Cornell who expressed support for the Hamas terror group the previous month.

The November 21, 2023 letter was authored by “Members of Cornell University’s Faculty” and it called on Cornell to take action following “attacks on a faculty member over comments about Israel’s war on Gaza.”

The letter referred to Professor Russell Rickford, who gave a speech on October 15, 2023, praising [00:00:04] Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings. Hamas executed the terror attacks on October 7, 2023, and left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Rickford said [00:01:39]: “It was exhilarating! It was exhilarating! It was energizing!” He then said [00:01:47] that if Palestinians “weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, by this shifting of the balance of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated!”

Rickford made his statements at a rally hosted by the anti-Israel Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) organization.

On November 16, 2023, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened an investigation into discriminatory incidents, including anti-Semitic ones, at Cornell following the October 2023 Hamas terror attacks.

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 2] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

Endorsing Anti-Israel Agitators

Chang retweeted a January 26, 2021 tweet that celebrated Angela Davis: “Happy birthday, Angela Davis! The world-renowned abolitionist, author and professor, known for her decades of organizing and prolific scholarship around the Black liberation movement, turns 77 today.”

Angela Davis made the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List in 1970 after being charged as a principal in an aggravated kidnapping and first-degree murder, for purchasing the shotgun used in the abduction and killing of a judge.

Chang retweeted a January 23, 2021 tweet that read: “Rep. @RashidaTlaib on Israel's denial of coronavirus vaccines to Palestinians: ‘It’s really hard to watch as this apartheid state continues to deny their own neighbors, the people that breathe the same air they breathe, that live in the same communities.’”

Rashida Tlaib was elected to the U.S. Congress in November 2018. She has advocated for a one-state solution, endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement and called for reduced foreign aid to Israel. In July 2019, Tlaib co-sponsored a pro-BDS bill in the U.S. Congress introduced by Rep. Ilhan Omar.

On October 28, 2020, Chang tweeted: “Something to look forward to. The amazing Sa'ed Atshan coming to my class next week!

...”

Atshan has praised inciters of violence and blamed Israel for Palestinian honor killings and persecution of LGBTQ+ people within Palestinian society.

During violent riots instigated by Hamas on the Israeli-Gaza border, Chang retweeted a May 14, 2018 tweet from Marc Lamont Hill that read: “...Today and tomorrow will only serve to compound the pain, injustice, and humiliation of the Nakba. I pray that you remain steadfast. And we stand with you.”

The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term often used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by defining it as a catastrophe.

Hatred of the Police

Chang retweeted a July 25, 2020 tweet that read: “Free the people, fight the power, f**k the police #FTP [f**k the police].”

Promoting a Protest in Support of Anti-Israel Violence

In May 2021, Chang promoted on Twitter Cornell SJP’s “March for Palestine” in support of then-ongoing anti-Israel violence.

On May 12, 2021, Cornell SJP promoted on Instagram their upcoming May 15, 2021 “March for Palestine” on Cornell’s Ho Plaza. The event poster featured calls to: “SAVE SHEIKH JARRAH” and “SAVE AL-AQSA.”

Incitement surrounding Al-Aqsa and Sheikh Jarrah were leading factors in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists firing over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at Israeli population centers from May 10 to 21, 2021. In response to rocket attacks from Gaza, Israel launched “Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW),” striking military targets in the terrorist-controlled enclave.

On May 12, 2021, Cornell SJP promoted their upcoming march on Facebook, calling on their followers to “show support for the ongoing rebellion in occupied Palestine against the Zionist occupation” and condemn “Zionism and Israeli state terrorism.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

On May 15, 2021, Cornell SJP demonstrators participated in the group’s march. Protesters displayed a banner that read: “Stand with Palestinian Resistance,” as well as signs that read: “End the Palestinian Holocaust” and “Stop the US Funding of Genocide.”

At the protest, one demonstrator accused [slide 2] Israel of “white supremacy,” as well as [slide 1] “ethnic cleansing” and “violent brutal occupation.” Joseph Mullen, a newly-elected SA member and march organizer, pledged [00:00:50] “to end Cornell’s relationship with Israel.”

Also, on May 15, 2021, Chang tweeted a photo of the march and commented: “A good turnout! #sjp #SaveSheikhJarrah.”

On May 16, 2021, Cornell SJP posted photos of their demonstration to Facebook and commented: “Cornell students and Ithaca residents turned out in force today to demonstrate solidarity with the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation and apartheid!”