Anti-Israel Jews and the Vassar Blues

Thanks to MOSAIC MAGAZINE for picking up this vital piece, originally aired last week in the WSJ and now available to those who want to read it. 

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement has added to my ambivalence about my alma mater by Lucette Lagnado February 24, 2014 Source: Wall Street Journal Originally published on 02/23/2014

Recently I was contacted by a fellow Vassar alumna through Facebook. She wanted to know if I was aware that our genteel alma mater had become a hotbed of anti-Israel, pro-boycott sentiment. Suddenly, my stomach was in knots—a feeling that Vassar has managed to evoke in me ever since I went there in the 1970s. An Orthodox Jewish girl from Brooklyn on a full scholarship, I fixated on this Seven Sister school as my entryway to the American dream, the epitome of style and grace that also prided itself on teaching “critical thinking.” In this case the cause of my angst was a young woman named Naomi Dann, the president of the Vassar Jewish Union. She had penned a piece for the campus paper strongly supporting the recent move by the American Studies Association to boycott Israeli academic exchanges—a decision denounced by college presidents across the country, including Vassar’s. Her piece strung together all the familiar buzzwords and clichés used by Israel’s critics: “atrocities,” “oppressive,” “abuses,” “colonial,” and, of course, “apartheid.” Signed jointly with the co-president of Students for Justice in Palestine, Ms. Dann even slammed Vassar’s president and dean of the faculty for daring to oppose the boycott against the Jewish state. There was more to fuel my Vassar angoisse. The head of the Jewish Studies Program, a professor named Joshua Schreier, had also expressed support for the boycott movement. Prof. Schreier was quoted in the campus paper ruminating that while once “instinctively against” the boycott, he had heard more “substantiated, detailed” arguments on its behalf, and as a result “I am currently leaning in favor of it,” he concluded delicately, as if choosing a flavored tea.

http://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/2014/02/1695/

Read more at: http://spme.org/boycotts-divestments-sanctions-bds/anti-israel-jews-vassar-blues/16949/ | SPME