Israel Matzav

Official anti-Israel events at Columbia Law School

I received the following email regarding the goings on at Columbia Law School:

Carl,

I have learned that over the past few days there have been a number of announcements (by email) of official events, sponsored by Columbia Law School (or departments/clinics/etc within the school). So far as I know, these announcements appear to have been treated as unremarkable by students or faculty, but I hope you (especially as a lawyer, if I remember correctly) can write about this. I have copied and pasted two of these emails below, and here are the available links to "lawcal" (the CLS online event calendar): http://www.law.columbia.edu/calendar/event/62581, http://www.law.columbia.edu/calendar/event/62582, http://www.law.columbia.edu/calendar/event/62531, http://www.law.columbia.edu/calendar/event/61376

As you can see in the first email below, only one out of the four events sponsored by the school's "Human Rights Institute" is not directly related to Israel. But it is today's email (in which three of the six events relates to Israel) that is really disturbing in its condoning the use of the term "pinkwashing," and the co-sponsorship of an event with "Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine." (the attachment was sent along with this email).

Also, if you look at the website of CLS's "Human Rights Institute," you can see there already have been a number of similar recent events (http://www.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/events/calendar - "Doing Human Rights in Israel and the OPT" a discussion with Bill Van Esveld, Middle East & North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch, 2/13/2012; Struggling for Legal, Civil, and Human Rights: Bedouin Citizens of Israel in the Negev/Naqab, 10/27/2012; Rawia Aburabia, Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 10/19/2012), and last year (http://www.law.columbia.edu/human-rights-institute/events/pastevents/2010-2011- Libby Lenkinski Friedlander, Director of International Relations at the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, 2/21/2011; 'Housing, Land, & Property Rights in East Jerusalem & the West Bank' Antonia Mulvey of the Norwegian Refugee Council in discussion with Professor Peter Rosenblum, 2/7/2011).

These events can also be found on the website of the school's "Center for Gender and Sexuality Law," http://www.law.columbia.edu/center_program/gendersexuality/events

Thank you.

I'm sure you're all just shocked that a school that is part of Bir Zeit on the Hudson would behave this way.

Labels: Bir Zeit on the Hudson, Columbia

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:47 AM