Pro-Palestinian Anti-Semitism at Vassar

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Petra Marquardt Bigman

In brandeiscenter.com blogs  LINK

Vassar College, which describes itself as “a highly selective, residential, coeducational liberal arts college,” has recently attracted a lot of attention because of the energetic activism of so-called “pro-Palestinian” groups like Vassar’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) who were apparently supportedby dozens of faculty members.  As I noted in a related post a few weeks ago, the anti-Zionist – and sometimes also anti-Semitic – website Mondoweiss seemed to view the activism at Vassar as a kind of bellwether indicating victory in the “BDS war on campus.” By now, Mondoweiss has published another similarly triumphant report on a Vassar event with the movement’s “rock stars” Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal; according to an announcement on Facebook, the event was co-sponsored by Jewish Studies and the departments of English, Political Science, Religion, Geography, and Sociology.

Before addressing subsequent developments, it is useful to recall that the first Mondoweiss report included the acknowledgement that “SJP students can be obnoxious,” though it also suggested that they should be compared to “abolitionists during slavery” who were “dedicated to a principle worth living and dying for.” However, if this comparison is at all justified, it is arguably in the sense that the goal of “pro-Palestinian” activism is the abolition of the world’s only Jewish state – and it is hardly surprising that the pursuit of this goal indeed often results in undeniably “obnoxious,” i.e. anti-Semitic, conduct.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

What Is Going on at Vassar College?

Jonathan Marks | @marksjo105.08.2014 - 4:45 PM  Commentary on line LINK

Vassar has recently distinguished itself in at least two ways. First, it is one of a tiny group of colleges whose faculty supported the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israel in substantial numbers. Thirty-nine faculty members signed a letter that sang the praises of the boycott-Israel movement. Second, as I have written here before, Vassar was the venue for an open forum at which two professors were vilified for leading a trip to Israel and at which Jewish students who spoke up were heckled. William Jacobson has provided extensive coverage of the situation at Vassar and was there to speak earlier this week.

In a blog entry describing reactions to Jacobson’s speech, Jewish studies professor Rebecca Lesses draws attention to a series of posts by Vassar’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the most shocking of which includes this language: “Of course, mainstream media hasbarats have been around for decades, as have ‘hasbaratchiks,’ fifth-columns in foreign governments who subvert national policies to serve Israel.” The author of the linked article, Greg Felton, also wrote a book entitled The Host and the Parasite: How Israel’s Fifth Column Consumed America. Lesses observes that theOccidental Quarterly, on which the SJP draws, is an anti-Semitic magazine. While I hesitate to take the word of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which she cites, for it, a look through the Occidental Quarterly, which includes an article about libertarianism as a creed advanced by Jewish intellectuals to advance Jewish “group evolutionary interests,” tends to support the charge.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

SJP Vassar and White Nationalism

NOTE: the following is taken from the excellent blog: Mystical Politics at: 

LINK HERE

Last night I tweeted to @SJPVassar about their use of an article from the Occidental Quarterly (seeprevious post), and this is the response I got.

I didn't think it was possible to prove that there exist links (intellectual, political) between at least part of the pro-BDS movement and far right antisemitism and white nationalism, but here it is. I wonder who is writing the tweets for SJP Vassar. If someone is really antiracist, as they claim to be, they would stay far, far away from even a hint of connection to the organized racist and antisemitic far right. 

And it's not accidental - the SJP Vassar Tumblr just posted from another white nationalist on Tumblr.

This is the Tumblr blog of "neonationalist":

His slogan? "I have no white guilt."

2013 Top Schools Jews Choose

NOTE: Vassar does not register in the top 30 in any list. Hmmm....

The top school lists are collaboratively published in Reform Judaism magazine’s RJ Insider’s Guide to College Life, in partnership with Hillel.

by Hillel News |Aug 21, 2013|

Choosing a college is about finding the place that is right for you. The best place to start is by deciding which factors are most important to you.

Hillel’s College Guide offers information on hundreds of large and small colleges and universities around the world. It features information on Jewish populations, Jewish studies, fun clubs and initiatives, kosher dining options, religious life, and more. Once you have narrowed down your college choices, contact the local Hillel professional on campus and ask to be put in touch with a current Jewish student.

Visit Hillel's College Guide to:

• Discover Jewish life at each college in text, photos, and videos
• Learn about student engagement and social action initiatives, Israel study abroad programs, Jewish Agency Israel Fellows to Hillel, religious services and kosher dining options
• Compare/contrast Jewish life at up to three schools simultaneously
• Connect to social media and event calendars
• Access every local Hillel and directly connect with staff and students there— the key to knowing what a school is really like.
• Begin your search here.
• Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Anti-Israel Vassar student group focuses on race of crowd at my speech

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Wednesday, May 7, 2014 at 11:59am
Legal Insurrection

Not all minds were changed by my speech at Vassar. The speech and lengthy Q&A (see video below) took place after none of the 39 Vassar professors who signed a letter defending the academic boycott of Israel took up my challenge to debate any or all of them.

But that’s okay.

It’s a shame, though, that people who disagree with me have to focus on race.

(Original tweets here, here, here, here)

Their comment isn’t even accurate and is insulting to the diverse crowd in attendance. Certainly the crowd was mostly white, just like Vassar’s student body and faculty. But so what?

Dividing people by race and trying to drum up racial tension is a deliberate tactic of SJP at Vassar and elsewhere, as was reflected in the highly racialized taunting of two Vassar professors at a March 3 open forum on campus, as previously reported.

I guess I’m not really surprised.   Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

SJP Vassar Responds to Professor Jacobson

Read this SJP Vassar Response to Professor Jacobson

Abunimah and Blumenthal’s freedom ride

from Mondoweiss

NOTE: Isn't it amazing how one can see only what one wants to see and hear only what one wants to hear? If you are a lion, a giraffe looks like lunch, I guess. This utter Jew hater thinks what Blumenthal and Abuminah said was okay? 

For weeks now I’ve been hearing about Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal’s joint appearances and though it was one of the rainiest days ever in New York last Wednesday I drove up to Vassar College to hear them talk.  
Keep Reading Here if you can stomach it

ASA Boycott – Not Defending the Undefendable

from divestthis.com May 7, 2014

I’ve said my piece (really more than my piece) regarding the academic boycott voted in by the American Studies Association last year.  But now that we’re closing in on the six month mark since a boycott against the Jewish state was made policy by an (admittedly marginal) academic group, it’s worth taking a step back to see what the consequences have been for Israel vs. the ASA.

As far as Israeli academics are concerned, I’m not aware of a single American Studies professor from a single university taking a single step to target an Israeli academic or institution in compliance with the boycott policy.  Perhaps someone can provide us an instance of the boycott actually being enacted, but as far as I can tell the leadership of the ASA has proven itself willing to put its organization, its members and the entire discipline of American Studies at risk for the sake of a policy they do not have the guts to actually implement.

Supporters of the ASA boycott point out that the action was primarily symbolic – a means to demonstrate that the organization (claiming to represent the ideals of academic inquiry and discourse) had become so sickened by Israeli policy that they were willing to use the blunt instrument of a boycott to express their disapproval.  But for this symbolism to hold, it must be demonstrated that the boycott actually represents some kind of consensus within the field, especially for a vote passed by a “majority” of just 16% of the organization’s members.  

NOTE: Several paragraphs later....

But probably the most telling example of how desperately the boycotters don’t want to engage in the conversation they claim to crave was this week’s appearance by Jacobson at Vassar College, a school where 39 professors attacked the college’s President’s when she joined over two-hundred other college and university presidents to condemn the ASA’s action (correctly) as an attack on academic freedom.

Please CLICK HERE to read the whole article

Calling out the anti Israel anti-semitic Vassar College Professors

NOTE:!! William Jacobson will appear at VASSAR COLLEGE tomorrow, Monday May 5, 2014. He had offered to debate any or all of the 39 VASSAR Professors who signed a letter to the VASSAR COLLEGE newspaper, the MISCELLANY NEWS who were dismayed with the VASSAR PRESIDENT when she opposed the ASA Boycott. 

NOT ONE of the professors would come forward to accept the challenge. Not one! Meanwhile these professors continue to sponsor JEW HATING anti-Israel speakers on a near daily basis. 

If you are anywhere near VASSAR COLLEGE on Monday please go and show your support. 

No takers on my debate challenge to Vassar pro-boycott faculty, but I’m still going

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 3:29pm

The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom still will be made.

You may recall My debate challenge to Vassar pro-boycott faculty who signed an Open Letter defending the American Studies Association academic boycott of Israel:

Any or all of the 39 Vassar faculty members are welcome to debate me. All I insist on is equal time cumulatively. If none of the 39 Vassar faculty agree to debate, I will give a lecture on why the academic boycott of Israel should be opposed.

The organizers of the debate, the recently renamed Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union (VCLU), informed me a short while ago that none of the 39 Vassar faculty who signed the Open Letter had accepted my debate challenge by the deadline of last night.

Accordingly, I will go to Vassar and give a lecture on The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom, focusing on rebutting the support for the academic boycott of Israel expressed in the Vassar faculty Open Letter.

Here is the revised event poster provided to me by VCLU:

NOTE: Where is the academic integrity of the Vassar Faculty? Is there no one who is smart enough to debate? Or do they just hide behind Professor Shreier's snarky curriculum? There is much more to this... 

Statement by Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) Regarding Vassar College’s Recent Controversy Involving Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the International Studies (IS) Travel Class to Israel

from SPME, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East

Boycott Calls Against Israel

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP): Targeting Israel-Related Activities 07.04.14 Editorial Note, SJP, with chapters on numerous campus, has evolved an effective technique to target Israeli-oriented activities.  Among the tool of choice in the SJP arsenal are heckling, disturbances, protest and others.  According to critics, the tactics are designed to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in order to dissuade students from attending such events. The statement of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East  (SPME) describes one such occurrence - at Vassar College.   Members of SJP are highly motivated and easy to mobilize - a characteristic that contrasts with the more low-key supporters of Israel.  College authorities have had a hard time controlling this phenomenon because of adherence to the rules of academic freedom that strives to give both sides of the debate a voice. Unfortunately, SJP intends on propagating only one "narrative," making it virtually impossible to conduct a rational and civilized campus debate.  The real aim of the SJP is to project an image of Israel as an apartheid state deserving to be targeted by BDS.  The "moral clarity" necessary for sustaining the BDS movement cannot tolerate alternative views.   April 1, 2014 PHILADELPHIA, PA—Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a grass roots organization of over 30,000 academic members, expresses its great concern with recent events at Vassar College, growing out of a student and faculty response to the “International Studies 110” class (IS) which traveled over Spring break to Israel. The IS trip was taught and led by Vassar professor of Earth Science and Geography, Jill Schneiderman, and associate professor of Greek and Roman Studies, Rachel Friedman. Its educational purpose was to look “at issues of water rights and access to the Jordan River, as well as disparities in water distribution in Palestine and Israel.” Locations visited by students in the class included sites throughout Israeli and Palestinian Authority controlled territories and a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. Professor Schneiderman’s teaching objective was inclusive. “I was motivated to propose and teach such a course because from my perspective as an earth scientist,” she wrote in a blog, “I understand how daily and future access to clean water in ample supply is one of the key issues about which people in the region fight. It is also a problem on which Arabs, Jews, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Israelis have worked together with integrity and compassion.” For 25 years IS trips had been offered without dispute. Only this year did the issue of the propriety of visiting a specific country—in this case, Israel—become a topic of discussion and condemnation—led by Vassar’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is very clear in its opposition to the Jewish state, and they regularly vilify Israel, Zionism, and supporters of Israel; SJP previously constructed a mock security wall on Vassar’s campus. SPME is very concerned that through SJP’s response to the IS course—and the subsequent the meeting held by Vassar’s Committee on Inclusion and Excellence on March 3rd to discuss guidelines for activism at the school in the context of the trip—SJP has created a climate of fear and intimidation that has enveloped the Vassar campus, particularly for Jewish students and faculty, and others who might support Israel. On February 6th, nine members of SJP appeared at the classroom for the IS course and formed a human barricade to impede students from entering the classroom. An SJP leaflet distributed to students described Israel as sponsoring apartheid and asserted that “the indigenous people of Palestine” did not want students going on the trip. Professors Friedman and Schneiderman have noted that the demonstration by SJP was inappropriate because it took place at the classroom itself, misguided because it misrepresented both the purpose and substance of the course, and threatening and intimidating to students enrolled in the class because of the physical presence of the demonstrators and the ululating and heckling that accompanied the protest. When the class did finally begin, protestors continued to shout and students inside the classroom told the professor that they “felt unsafe,” “bullied,” and “harassed.” SPME believes protestors do not have the right to “occupy” classroom spaces and to physically insert themselves between students and faculty in teaching situations at any time. SPME is also troubled by the fact that the SJP’s interference with the conduct and teaching of the course was met, not with sanctions from the administration, but in fact with another opportunity to further denigrate Israel and Israelis in a school-wide public panel held on March 3 by Vassar’s Committee on Inclusion and Excellence to discuss guidelines for activism at the school. In fact, that meeting was arranged primarily because SJP members had complained to the administration. SPME is also concerned that this March 3rd meeting, called an “Open Forum on the Ethics of Student Activism and Protest at Vassar,” which some 200 people attended, was arranged by the administration solely for the purpose of giving SJP members and their supporters on campus additional opportunities to demonize and attempt to delegitimize Israel—in the context of the IS trip—and to repeat misinformation and slanders, rather than to seriously examine the events that took place. The few pro-Israel speakers at the meeting were heckled with finger snapping and made to feel unwelcomed in the discussion, leading Professor Schneiderman to feel that “last night was knocked off-center by a belligerent academic community dedicated to vilifying anyone who dares set foot in Israel,” as she expressed in a blog posting.  KEEP READING! VERY IMPORTANT Also, please see this related article by CLICKING HERE

Another Horrible Vassar College Student Site

Shit White People Say at Vassar College

NOTE: Amazingly Anti Semitic

CLICK HERE TO READ

Its a spinoff from this awful twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/search?q=shitliberalzionistssay&src=typd

BDS and Thuggery

from DIVEST THIS! at divestthis.com

I don’t think I’m alone in being appalled by the degree to which nasty behavior – up to and including intimidation and violence – has gone mainstream within the BDS “movement.”

Now anti-Israel activism has always had its ugly side that included vandalism, threats, and shouting down those with whom the boycotters disagree. I can recall the divestniks storming the podium when they lost the divestment vote they forced on the City of Somerville as far back as 2004, the same type of public tantrums we saw when the Methodist Church or Carleton College told them “No” more recently.

But in most of the cases just mentioned, BDS supporters were able to keep the Mr. Hyde portion of their personality in check, at least during what I call the “all smiles” period when they were trying to convince an uninformed audience that both they (and what they were requesting) were all perfectly reasonable.

But recent behavior in schools like Michigan, Vassar,  Northeastern and elsewhere seem to indicate that the boycotters no longer feel the need to be bound by civilized norms even during a period when it would be to their benefit to pretend to be something other than a bunch of single issue fanatics ready to do anything to get their way.  CLICK TO KEEP READING

Vassar’s miseducation

Israel-bashing is a new major on campus

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, April 13, 2014, 4:10 AM

Parents who shell out $61,140 a year to send their children to exclusive Vassar College have a right to expect an open and civil setting for learning.

That’s not what the faculty or President Catharine Hill have been offering this year. A rabidly anti-Israel group, Students for Justice in Palestine, has spread hatred and intimidation of students and faculty who support the Jewish state.

While respecting their right to voice their opinions, Hill must lay down the law: Just as members of SJP are free to viciously attack Israel, the rights of others must not be infringed. She has not done so, only issuing weak can’t-we-all-get-along statements, including one on Friday.

This has not been a good year at Vassar. It began when, in January, Hill rejected on behalf of her college a push by a group of academics called the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli universities.

She was absolutely right to refuse to participate in a devious and dishonest campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state, where academic freedom and other basic rights of inquiry are protected.

But her disavowal unleashed furies that Hill has failed to staunchly resist.

On Feb. 6, a handful of hoodlums from SJP blockaded an official Vassar course for students who were preparing to take a college-sponsored trip to Israel — harassing them as they entered the classroom, urging them to drop the class and the trip and making disruptive noises.

Hill should have quickly and sternly condemned the interference. Offenders should have faced discipline for violating the campus code of conduct. Didn’t happen.

On March 1, 39 professors, including the director of Jewish studies, signed a letter attacking Hill for opposing the boycott of Israel. Ironically, the letter said: “We want on our campuses, including here at Vassar, to have open, honest and principled discussion about the situation in Palestine/Israel, without the labeling, targeting and harassing of faculty, students, administrators and staff who disagree.”

That perfectly describes the abusive tactics of the Israel-bashers at Vassar, which have only escalated over time.

At a March 3 campus forum discussing the value of the Israel trip, things got worse. In a room filled with a few hundred people, the Israel-bashers shouted at, bullied and denigrated Jews and Israel supporters.

So bad, so out of bounds, was the behavior directed at Israel supporters that even boycott supporters admitted it was wrong, with one writing in the student newspaper that the forum came “ together in a way that many agreed was unhelpful or intimidating.” But as the fight has gone back and forth in the pages of the paper, Hill has failed to stand strongly for academic freedom and civil debate.

The nonsense has even picked up a nasty racial edge. Some of the anti-Israel activists are students of color and criticism of them is being portrayed as racially motivated. Good grief.

The two professors who led the trip to Israel, and who had their class picketed, wrote in the student paper last week that they and their students asked the dean “for a facilitated discussion between them and SJP members. Despite our repeated requests for such an intervention, none transpired.”

Hill’s three-page letter to the Vassar community on Friday has lots of nice words but — yet again — failed to forcefully condemn those who would shout and intimidate rather than answer civil speech with civil speech.

Clearly, academic freedom and respectful debate exists in Israel. The question is: Does it exist at Vassar?

LINK TO THE DAILY NEWS

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/vassar-miseducation-article-1.1754020#ixzz2ym50vlKc

Anti-Israel “Climate of fear” at Vassar

Posted by William A. Jacobson    Saturday, April 12, 2014 at 1:34pm

NOTE: The negative spotlight keeps shining on Vassar. Why? Because this stuff is happening at Vassar and so far precious little seems to be coming from the administration. 

Our post, Anti-Israel academic boycott turns ugly at Vassar, exhaustively detailed the fury directed by Vassar Students for Justice in Palestine at two Vassar  professors teaching a class that involved travel to Israel and the West Bank. 

That fury erupted in an Open Forum organized by the Vassar administration at which those professors together with Jewish students were heckled, jeered and belittled in such a frenzy that it shocked even Philip Weiss of Mondoweiss website, who himself is anti-Israel and was present at the event.

The accuracy of our reporting was confirmed by the two professors involved, as detailed in The Anti-Israel Cultural Revolution at Vassar.

Now the two professors have written a lengthy column in the Vassar student newspaper detailing their experience.  They specifically address how this incident fits into the perceived climate of fear at Vasssar.  Here is an excerpt (emphasis added):  KEEP READING CLICK HERE

Vassar College Alums Strike Back at Anti-Israel Movement on Campus

the Algemeiner 4/6/14

Alumni of Vassar College, an elite, liberal arts school in Poughkeepsie, New York, struck back against the rising anti-Israel tide on campus, protesting in a widely-read letter to the campus newspaper against recent moves by a group of faculty and students to vilify the Jewish state and intimidate pro-Israel voices.

The open letter, initially signed by 66 alums, was printed by the Miscellany News, the campus newspaper of record since 1866, and quickly attracted dozens of comments from alums worldwide who agreed with the content of their protest.

In their letter, the alumni said that “faculty and student supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel have hijacked campus discourse and imposed an anti-intellectual atmosphere in which professors are ranting activists, not scholars, and students who disagree with the prevailing ‘progressive’ ideology are intimidated into a deafening silence.” CLICK TO KEEP READING

Op-Ed: Regarding the Vassar College IS-SJP Controversy

by Israel National News April 2, 2014 www.israelnationalnews.com

NOTE: The drumbeat for Vassar to speak up is growing. And that make's the administration's silence more alarming. Here's the latest from a very reputable source. 

The International Studies (IS) class at Vassar was harassed and intimidated by "Students for Justice in Palestine" (SJP) for visiting Israel. Scholars for Peace in the MIddle East (SPME), is just as concerned with the college's response.

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME), a grass roots organization of over 30,000 academic members, expresses its great concern with recent events at Vassar College, growing out of a student and faculty response to the “International Studies110” class (IS) which traveled over Spring break to Israel:

The IS trip was taught and led by Vassar professor of Earth Science and Geography, Jill Schneiderman, and associate professor of Greek and Roman Studies, Rachel Friedman. Its educational purpose was to look “at issues of water rights and access to the Jordan River, as well as disparities in water distribution in Palestine and Israel.” Locations visited by students in the class included sites throughout Israeli and Palestinian Authority controlled territories and a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem.

Professor Schneiderman’s teaching objective was inclusive. “I was motivated to propose and teach such a course because from my perspective as an earth scientist,” she wrote in a blog, “I understand how daily and future access to clean water in ample supply is one of the key issues about which people in the region fight. It is also a problem on which Arabs, Jews, Jordanians, Palestinians, and Israelis have worked together with integrity and compassion.”

For 25 years IS trips had been offered without dispute. Only this year did the issue of the propriety of visiting a specific country—in this case, Israel—become a topic of discussion and condemnation—led by Vassar’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).  CONTINUE READING HERE

California's Brownshirt Anti-Semitism Comes to Vassar

April 1, 2014 by Stella Paul on American Thinker

California is the lifestyle incubator of the nation. And now the trendy anti-Semitic thuggery that debuted at California’s public universities has metastasized across America, all the way to the elite halls of Vassar.    

Before we discuss the fashionable pogrom that just took place on the Vassar campus where Jackie Kennedy once strolled in pearls, let’s look back at May 7, 2002. On that day, Professor Laurie Zoloth, Director of the Jewish Studies program at San Francisco State University, attended a “Peace in the Middle East” campus rally, organized by Hillel students, where they sang songs and prayed for peace in Israel. WroteProfessor Zoloth:

“As soon as the community supporters left, the 50 students who remained praying in a minyan for the traditional afternoon prayers, or chatting, or cleaning up after the rally, talking -- were surrounded by a large, angry crowd of Palestinians and their supporters. But they were not calling for peace. They screamed at us to ‘go back to Russia’ and they screamed that they would kill us all, and other terrible things. They surrounded the praying students, and the elderly women who are our elder college participants, who survived the Shoah, who helped shape the Bay Area peace movement, only to watch as a threatening crowd shoved the Hillel students against the wall of the plaza.

“As the counter demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming at the Jews to ‘Get out or we will kill you’ and ‘Hitler did not finish the job,’ I turned to the police and to every administrator I could find and asked them to remove the counter demonstrators from the Plaza, to maintain the separation of 100 feet that we had been promised. The police told me that they had been told not to arrest anyone, and that if they did, "it would start a riot." I told them that it already was a riot.”

Eventually, the terrified Jewish students gathered under the flag of Israel and were led by armed police guard back to the Hillel House. “This was neither free speech nor discourse, but raw, physical assault,” wrote Professor Zoloth, who noted with sadness, “Not one administrator came to stand with us.”

PLEASE KEEP READING

Careful What You Sow — BDS At Vassar Gets Ugly MORE on the Anti Semitic Rhetoric at Vassar

this from the blog Jewish Philosopy Place orig. posted 3.27.14

NOTE: A rehash of well known events. Click the link to the blog, though, and read the comments. 

I would have been skeptical about the little bit of reporting I’ve seen about this episode in more rightwing news media,  except that it was confirmed by Mondoweiss, who was there. Jill Schneiderman, a professor of Earth Sciences at Vassar College was recently called to give public account about a planned trip to Israel and the West Bank to study water issues. After her classroom was picketed and her students intimidated, and she was basically called before “open forum” on the ethics of political activism, where Jewish students who spoke out were heckled by the large crowd of some 200 students (and faculty). Is this what BDS is going to look like? A kind of public shaming reminiscent of the Cultural Revolution? No “cardboard civility” at Vassar. And where’s Open Hillel? Even the intrepid anti-Israel, anti-Zionist Mondoweiss found the incident “unsettling.” He maintains that the  ”belligerence might be necessary to a solution.” My bet is that this kind of hostility is going to rip out the guts of a university to no good effect. Kudos to Professor Schneiderman.  GO TO THE BLOG

The anti-Israel Campaign at Vassar Goes Through the Looking Glass

Posted by David Gerstman    Sunday, March 30, 2014 at 3:00pmk from LEGAL INSURRECTION

NOTE: One wonders what is taking the President, Board and administration so long to speak out against the rising tide of antisemitism and Jew Hatred at Vassar? More is written every day. They cannot remain silent for long. 

JJ Goldberg of the Forward quotes the anti-Israel head of Vassar’s Jewish Study Program out of context.

JJ Goldberg of the Forward has weighed in on the anti-Israel intimidation campaign at Vassar College that Prof. Jacobson covered quite extensively last week.

Goldberg, working off reporting by Philip Weiss of the anti-Israel blog, MondoWeiss, acknowledged that Legal Insurrection had reported new facts on the story but:

Among other things, Jacobson points to the fact that the director of Vassar’s Jewish Studies Program is himself leaning toward sympathy with the BDS movement. Jacobson exaggerates the case: he says the director, history prof Joshua Schreier, “supports the academic boycott of Israel,” but the source he provides, a feature story in the Vassar student paper focused on the administration’s rejection of BDS, actually says Schreier has found himself rethinking as he listens to the tactical arguments pro and con, and that his “opinion is evolving, but I am currently leaning in favor of it.” Yes, tenured professors get to think out loud and let the rest of us watch their opinions evolve.

In fact Schreier does support the BDS movement as he says in the article cited by Goldberg.

“Originally, I was instinctively against it. Recently, I have heard far more reasoned, substantiated and detailed arguments in favor of the boycott.”

The “evolution” of course is towards supporting an academic boycott of Israel.

At the end of February, Schreier signed onto a letter defending the ASA boycott. Goldberg quoted Schreier selectively and ignored evidence to the contrary to assert that Prof. Jacobson “exaggerated.”

Of course that Schreier would support the ASA boycott against Israel is hardly surprising. A group of Vassar alumni and parents wrote a letter to the student newspaper decrying the anti-Israel activism that is going on at Vassar.

The 39 faculty members so afraid of being bullied about their anti-Israel views are curiously undisturbed by the chilling effect their activities have on those in their community who might oppose academic boycotts or reject the ASA’s targeting and demonization of Israel. They failed to consider the impact of their manifesto on students attending the “open conversation” about the Israel/West Bank trip two days later or worse, deliberately timed it to silence pro-Israel voices. Certainly, their fear of inhibiting an open exchange of ideas has not inspired them to present a balanced view of the Israel/Palestinian history in their classes (as one of the signatories once candidly admitted in his course description, students should not expect “an ‘objective’ account of a ‘two- sided’ conflict”). Nor has it compelled them to invite speakers who might present an alternative view of the Jewish state from the racist, apartheid one portrayed by the anti- Zionist guests who are regularly invited. (In the last 12 months alone, Vassar hosted Judith Butler and a Palestinian slam poet, both of whom — like the leaders of BDS — advocate the elimination of the Jewish state.) We can only imagine the repressive effect of the pro-BDS hostility on students worried that their stridently anti-Israel professors will grade them harshly for expressing contrary views and that their apartheid-chanting peers will ostracize them unless they keep silent. Indeed, this bullying has been so effective that the only public voices so far supporting President Hill’s denunciation of the ASA boycott or protesting the anti-Israel ethos have come from alumni and one brave Vassar student in a letter to The Wall Street Journal.

That signatory is none other than Prof. Schreier whose 2008 syllabus (for a course he still teaches) states:

This class traces the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict from its roots during the late Ottoman period through the current period. Students should keep in mind that this course is NOT designed to present “an objective” account of a “two-sided” conflict.

That a professor could be so upfront about his biases is shocking.  CLICK TO KEEP READING