Even Kanas has radicals at their universities. Another institution of higher ed has been discovered promoting antisemitic ideas and calling for the killing of Jews. According to a report by the Washington Free Beacon, an investigator in Kansas State University’s civil rights office, which is supposed to protect students from discrimination, joined a club that calls for the destruction of Israel and praises terrorism.
The Kansas Socialist Book Club, founded in 2022, has attracted scrutiny for its radical positions following Hamas’s October 7 attacks on Israel, writes the outlet. In a manifesto published last year, the group declared, “We remain steadfast in our support of Palestinian liberation, whatever that ends up looking like,” while defending the killing of Israeli civilians, whom it labeled the “Zionist middle class.” The same statement added, “We have no sympathy for their casualties or losses.”
The club also endorsed an open letter defending Elias Rodriguez, a left-wing activist who assassinated two Israeli embassy employees, Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky, on May 21 outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
Connections between the group and Kansas State University official Derron Borders emerged through several channels. Borders is one of only five followers of the Kansas Socialist Book Club’s GitHub page, which hosts the group’s website. He also serves as co-secretary of the Flint Hills chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which has collaborated with the book club. His résumé highlights an academic paper titled Raising class consciousness: Adult learning in a socialist book club, presented to the American Association for Adult and Continuing Education, and notes his role as founder of the Coalition for Fat Identities.
During a virtual meeting on May 30, Borders—appearing under his first name and an avatar of The Little Prince—discussed Rodriguez’s attack. His concern was not for the loss of civilian life but for the absence of revolutionary momentum. “Most of the time Christian Zionists are not as belligerent as Israeli Zionists, and so it’s really hard to get at a Zionist and them not also be Jewish,” he remarked. He complained that the shooting lacked “class consciousness,” adding, “It feels like a temporary blip, and I don’t think much movement’s going to come from this.” He compared the event unfavorably to the assassination of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, which the group hailed as the act of a “brave anonymous soul.”
Borders’s position at Kansas State University’s Civil Rights and Title IX office—tasked with safeguarding an environment free from discrimination, harassment, and retaliation—has raised questions about his associations. When announcing his appointment, the office, formerly the Office of Institutional Equity, praised Borders’ “wealth of experience” in civil rights. Yet his record includes controversy from his tenure at Cornell University, where, according to the New York Post, he defended Hamas’s October 7 assault as “resistance” against “settler colonization, imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy.”
The revelations surface as the Trump administration has sanctioned universities accused of fostering anti-Semitic activity and expanding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs similar to those at Kansas State. With the Civil Rights and Title IX office charged with investigating harassment tied to race, ethnicity, and religion, Borders’s reported affiliations take on heightened significance.
Recently, UCLA settled a lawsuit from several Jewish students who sued the university for violating their civil rights. NBC News reported that the school “reached a settlement in a discrimination lawsuit brought by Jewish students and a faculty member, agreeing to pay more than $6 million.
The plaintiffs, who brought the lawsuit in June 2024, accused the university of failing to take action when pro-Palestinian protesters set up encampments last spring. They claimed that the protest areas were inaccessible to Jewish students and amounted to what plaintiffs referred to as “Jew exclusion zones.” While UCLA has denied any wrongdoing, it agreed to settle fully, with $50,000 payments to each of the plaintiffs in addition to $2.33 million in donations to organizations that combat antisemitism.”
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