The most anti-Semitic college campus in the United States is...
The most anti-Semitic college campus in the United States is the home of Edward Said and Joseph Massad and Rashid Khalidi and the center for 'Palestinian studies.' Yes, you guessed it, it's
Bir Zeit on the Hudson.
According to the [David Horowitz Freedom] Center, Columbia University is listed first because
it is home to the “most well-known antisemitic professors in the
nation such as Rashid Khalidi and Joseph Massad, who has been accused
of harassing Jewish students on multiple occasions. In addition, it is
home to a highly active SJP chapter that has recently brought BDS
founder Omar Barghouti and disgraced antisemitic professor Steven
Salaita to campus.”
The Center also cited a number of offending events held at Columbia
University in 2014, such as Israeli Apartheid Week and a protest with
signs that read “Call to Action: Stand with Gaza.”
My friend
Professor Jacobson's campus, Cornell, comes in second.
Cornell University came in second place followed by George Mason
University, Loyola University Chicago, Portland State University, San
Diego State University and San Francisco State University. Rounding off
the list was Temple University, University of California Los Angeles and
Vassar College.
Kind of surprised not to see
Brandeis or
UC - Irvine on the list.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: American college campuses, Bir Zeit on the Hudson, Brandeis University, Cornell University, Edward Said, Joseph Massad, Muslim anti-Semitism, Rashid Khalidi, University of California at Irvine
Will Brandeis finally make it permanent?
Almost exactly a year ago, Brandeis University
suspended its partnership with 'east' Jerusalem's terror supporting al-Quds University. Perhaps
this latest incident involving al-Quds glorifying terrorism will convince Brandeis to make it permanent (which the University has yet to do as best I can tell). Al-Quds has decided to honor the 18-year old 'Palestinian' terrorist who 'accidentally on purpose' drove his car into a crowded light rail station two weeks ago and
murdered two Israelis in the process (video of the terror attack
here).
This is from the second link.
Four
days after Palestinian terrorist Ibrahim Al-Akari killed two and
injured more than 13 Israelis in Jerusalem, the UN- and EU-funded
Al-Quds University honored him by naming a tournament after him.
Dr. Ahmad Al-Khawaja, in charge of the Physical Education Faculty of the Al-Quds University, which organized the tournament, explained that:
"The Martyr (Shahid) Ibrahim Al-Akari Tournament... it was a national activity held in honor and appreciation of the soul of the heroic Martyr Ibrahim Al-Akari"
[Al-Ayyam, Nov. 11, 2014]
In
July 2013, the UN announced a donation of €2.4 million (close to 3
million US dollars) from the EU and UNDP (United Nations Development
Programme) to Al-Quds University, the aim of which would be to
"contribute to the development and protection of Palestinian cultural
heritage in the old city of Jerusalem." [UNDP website, July 2, 2013 and
Al-Quds University website, accessed Nov. 12, 2014]
The
Burj Luq Luq Social Centre Society, which helped organize the
tournament honoring Al-Akari, is also funded by several Western donors.
The Center's annual report for 2013 lists the following international
donors: UNICEF, UNDP, European Union, French Consulate, British
Consulate, Pontifical Mission, ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid)
and Terre des Hommes. [p. 56 in Annual Report 2013 of The Burj Luq Luq
Social Centre Society http://www.burjalluqluq.org,
accessed Nov. 13, 2014] The Center states on its website that its
"message" is to "aspire to have a positive impact on the economical,
cultural and social level for the local community."
Read the whole thing.
But of course, that won't cause anyone to cut off their support of al-Quds or Burk Luq Luq....
Labels: Brandeis University, European support for terrorism, European Union, United Nations
It's come to this: 'Jewish' university slammed for anti-Israel bias by Fox
Mr. Justice Brandeis has just taken another turn over in his grave. The 'Jewish' university that bears his name has just been
slammed for anti-Israel bias by Fox News, and justifiably so.
Boston's Brandeis University may have been founded by American Jews, but
it has become a hothouse of anti-Israel sentiment, according to Fox
News.
The TV news channel was referring to thousands of
electronic messages from Brandeis faculty that were obtained and
published by conservative students.
The messages, which were
distributed to academics on a closed mailing list known as a ListServ,
"reveal a long-standing and vehement anti-Israel bias and anger at Fox
News and a human rights advocate who renounced her Muslim faith,"
according to Fox.
The messages, Fox continues, "were hyperbolic
in their condemnation of Israel, regarding the recent fighting in Gaza
and prior conflicts with the Palestinians." They also include
"accusations that Israel has committed war crimes and 'holocaustic
ethnic cleansing' against Palestinians," Fox says.
...
Fox comments that the "one-sided view of the Middle East is not new
at the school, founded in 1948, the same year Israel was established,
with funding from the American Jewish community."
The ListServ in
question, titled “Concerned,” was started by faculty members in 2002
“out of concern about possible war with Iraq.” It has more than 90
subscribers and is used to correspond about current news, Israel, Jewish
people, America and world affairs in general.The messages also
include attacks on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a human rights activist who survived
genital mutilation as a child in Somalia, renounced her Muslim faith
and now crusades against radical Islam, Fox writes. Ali was slated to
receive an honorary doctorate at Brandeis in April before the ceremony
was canceled amid campus protests.
Fox quotes a message from
Brandeis Professor of English Mary Baine Campbell, who apparently
described Ali as “an ignorant, ultra-right-wing extremist, abusively,
shockingly vocal in her hatred for Muslim culture and Muslims, a
purveyor of the dangerous and imaginary concept, born of European
distaste for the influx of immigrants from its former colonies… To call
her a ‘woman’s rights activist’ is like calling Squeaky Fromm an
environmentalist.’”
Brandeis president Frederick Lawrence
commented: “While we maintain our staunch support of freedom of
expression and academic inquiry, some remarks by an extremely small
cohort of Brandeis faculty members are abhorrent. Such statements, which
include anti-Semitic epithets, personal attacks, denigration of the
Catholic faith and the use of crude and vulgar terms in discussions
about Israel, do not represent the Brandeis community,” he wrote. “I
condemn these statements under no uncertain terms.”
Ah, but will Lawrence bring them up on disciplinary charges? Is there anyone to whom he could bring them up if he wanted to? Just yesterday, the University of Illinois voted to
deny a faculty position to someone who expressed similar sentiments. Is there any hope of this 'Jewish university' doing the same?
Read the whole thing. Shabbat Shalom everyone.
Labels: anti-Israel obsession, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis University, Fox News, liberal academia, Louis Brandeis
'You are a s**t bag'
One of those refined J Street leaders called Brandeis senior and pro-Israel activist Daniel Mael a '
s**t bag' as he walked to his dorm room on campus late Friday night. This is from Adam Kredo.
Mael said that he and a friend were returning to their dorm rooms at
around 12:45 a.m. on Saturday when he came across Lepson—who says she
currently works as a political intern at the Democratic National Committee (DNC)—and a group of her friends.
“As they approached, Talia Lepson give me a really, really intense
stare and then I turned to the students and said, ‘Shabbat shalom,’”
said Mael, who is an observant Jew. “I was being serious. I thought that
religion and politics are not necessarily intertwined. I thought you
could still be nice.”
Lepson “responded by saying, ‘Jews hate you’,” Mael said. “As she
continued to walk, she screamed, ‘You are a shit bag.’” Mael said an
unidentified person to her right hurled a similar insult.
Students who witnessed the event say they were shocked to see the J Street leader verbally attack Mael.
“It is somewhat scary to witness malice in exchange for benevolence,
especially in the context of religion, where we are supposed to set
aside politics when embracing it,” said one student who witnessed the
incident but was not comfortable speaking out publicly.
Mael said that he “proceeded immediately to the university police to
file an incident report” following the run-in with Lepson, who has
interned at the White House, according to her LinkedIn profile.
A Brandeis University police official said that the department does
not speak to the media on the weekend and recommended a reporter call
back later.
Read the whole thing.
J Street tried to turn the tables, self-righteously accusing Mael of
harassing J Street's leadership by fabricating stories.
It is one thing to engage in a strong and vibrant argument over the
difficult issues at stake in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We are
deeply committed to an open and engaging dialogue when it is grounded in
the substance of our disagreements.
It is another to conduct a campaign of personal intimidation and
harassment, which is the pattern of behavior that Daniel Mael, a student
blogger at Brandeis, has established in relating to J Street U student
leaders.
In a new episode this weekend, a story was fabricated concerning one of
the leaders of J Street U Brandeis. That student has now filed a report
with the campus police over the incident that Mael invented and his
ongoing pattern of harassment at Brandeis. The matter is now in the
hands of campus police and we hope the authorities will take action to
address our serious concerns.
In the meantime, we ask that others in the Jewish community and media -
even those who don't agree with us politically - will distance
themselves from this blogger and others with a history of conduct driven
by malice and deceit.
That's pretty Orwellian. We don't agree with Mael and therefore you should distance yourself from him and not hear his point of view because we would never be uncivil. Really?
In the meantime, another student has
backed Mael's version of the story.
But I'm sure that if they were part of the Conference of Presidents, J Streeters would not be involved in incidents like this. /sarc
Labels: Brandeis University, J Street, pro-Israel pro-peace, pro-Israel students
Caroline Glick: American Jews have forgotten what freedom means
Caroline Glick rips the New York Jewish Federation and Brandeis University for their respective roles in the news this week. Caroline argues that the two incidents - Federation's insistence on allowing BDS groups to march in the Salute to Israel parade, and Brandeis' decision to cancel an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali - are symptomatic of American Jews having forgotten the main lesson of Passover:
what freedom means.
More and more, every day we see American Jews embracing intellectual
bondage. We see American Jewish leaders embracing the intolerant, who
seek to constrain freedom, and shunning those who fight for freedom and
the rights of Jews and other threatened peoples and groups.
To a large degree, this rejection of the lessons of the Exodus among the
American Jewish community reflects the growing intolerance and tyranny
of the political Left, to which most American Jews pledge their
allegiance.
With increasing frequency, leftist groups and leaders in the US are
openly acting to deny freedom of expression to their political and
ideological foes, and to destroy the lives of people who oppose their
dogma.
...
In Israel, the public understands that boycotts are about
mainstreaming hatred and bigotry just as much as they are about economic
strangulation. That is why in 2011 the Knesset passed the anti-boycott
law which allows all Israeli entities to sue groups calling for boycotts
against them for civil damages, and bars such groups from participating
in state tenders.
But in the American Jewish community, these groups are defended and legitimized.
Disgusted at their community leadership’s double standard of tolerance
and support for foes of Israel and intolerance for supporters of Israel,
a consortium of organizations and synagogues organized a protest
against the inclusion of anti-Israel organizations in the Israel Day
Parade.
After weeks of protests in the press and on social media sites, on
Tuesday some 200 people demonstrated outside the UJA-Federation building
in New York and demanded that the boycott supporters and abettors be
shunned.
It was an important act of defiance.
The group includes such stalwart organizations as Americans for a Safe
Israel, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, the Endowment for Middle East
Truth, JCC Watch, the National Conference on Jewish Affairs, and the
National Council of Young Israel.
These groups have joined together in the past to protest against
UJA-Federation funding of institutions such as the 92nd Street Y and the
New York JCC, which have provided platforms for Jew-haters and BDS
supporters.
Their protest was vital. It would be a tragedy if the thuggish behavior
of the Jewish community leaders went unopposed. But it is hard to see
how the protesters can change the situation.
The rot runs deep.
Consider Brandeis University’s craven and intolerant administration.
Brandeis was founded as a traditionally Jewish university in 1948, the year that Israel was established.
But whereas Israel has remained faithful to its sovereign duty to
cultivate and defend Jewish freedom and engender a liberal democracy,
over the years, Brandeis has largely abandoned its mission of standing
up to intolerance, and protecting Jewish rights and those of other
threatened groups.
Case in point is its obscene treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim who suffered genital mutilation as a child
in Somalia and at age 21 fled to Holland to avoid a forced marriage.
After liberating herself, Hirsi Ali could have settled into a quiet
European life. Instead, she dedicated her life to championing the rights
of women and girls in Islamic societies.
For the past decade, Hirsi Ali has lived under an Islamic death sentence for her work. She can go nowhere without bodyguards.
In 2006, despite her membership in the Dutch parliament, Hirsi Ali was
forced to flee to the US, when the Dutch government refused to continue
to protect her.
In the US, as in Holland, she continues to campaign for the rights of women and girls in Islamic society.
Most recently, she was the executive producer of a new documentary film
called Honor Diaries, which describes the plight of Muslim women and
girls living in societies where they risk murder at the hands of their
family members if they refuse to live in abject humiliation and
submission to the misogyny of Islamic law.
Several months ago, Brandeis offered to confer an honorary doctorate on Hirsi Ali for her work on behalf of women and girls.
When the leftist and Muslim thought police in the Brandeis student body
and faculty got wind of the university’s plan to honor her, they joined
forces with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to force the
administration to cancel the honorary degree.
CAIR claims to be a Muslim civil rights group. And yet, the group that
purports to care about the civil rights of Muslims is waging a
nationwide campaign to bar screenings of Honor Diaries, at universities
around the country.
When Fox News’s intrepid host Megyn Kelly asked CAIR leaders this week
how they can object to a film that seeks to help Muslims, they said they
don’t have a problem with its content. They object to the fact that it
was produced by Jews (also known as “Islamophobes”).
Far from being a civil rights group, CAIR is a pro- Hamas and Muslim
Brotherhood organization. It was an unindicted co-conspirator in the
Hamas financing trial against the Holyland Foundation.
And yet, on Wednesday, Brandeis sided with CAIR and the thought police,
against Hirsi Ali. Brandeis canceled its plan to confer its honorary
doctorate on her.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, BDS, Brandeis University, New York Jewish Federation, Salute to Israel Day Parade
What Ayaan Hirsi Ali would have said if Brandeis hadn't given in to the thought police
It's a pity that Brandeis University didn't live up to its seal of truth this week. As I reported earlier, they decided to
withdraw an honorary degree from Ayaan Hirsi Ali due to her criticism of Islam. The Wall Street Journal has
published the speech that Ms. Hirsi Ali planned to give. It's quite powerful (Hat Tip:
Memeorandum).
You deserve better memories than 9/11 and
the Boston Marathon bombing. And you are not the only ones. In Syria, at
least 120,000 people have been killed, not simply in battle, but in
wholesale massacres, in a civil war that is increasingly waged across a
sectarian divide.
Violence is escalating in Iraq, in Lebanon, in Libya,
in Egypt. And far more than was the case when you were born, organized
violence in the world today is disproportionately concentrated in the
Muslim world.
Another striking feature
of the countries I have just named, and of the Middle East generally, is
that violence against women is also increasing. In Saudi Arabia, there
has been a noticeable rise in the practice of female genital mutilation.
In Egypt, 99% of women report being sexually harassed and up to 80
sexual assaults occur in a single day.
Especially
troubling is the way the status of women as second-class citizens is
being cemented in legislation. In Iraq, a law is being proposed that
lowers to 9 the legal age at which a girl can be forced into marriage.
That same law would give a husband the right to deny his wife permission
to leave the house.
Sadly, the list
could go on. I hope I speak for many when I say that this is not the
world that my generation meant to bequeath yours. When you were born,
the West was jubilant, having defeated Soviet communism. An
international coalition had forced Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. The next mission for American armed forces would
be famine relief in my homeland of Somalia. There was no Department of
Homeland Security, and few Americans talked about terrorism.
Two
decades ago, not even the bleakest pessimist would have anticipated all
that has gone wrong in the part of world where I grew up. After so many
victories for feminism in the West, no one would have predicted that
women's basic human rights would actually be reduced in so many
countries as the 20th century gave way to the 21st.
Today, however, I am going to predict a
better future, because I believe that the pendulum has swung almost as
far as it possibly can in the wrong direction.
When
I see millions of women in Afghanistan defying threats from the Taliban
and lining up to vote; when I see women in Saudi Arabia defying an
absurd ban on female driving; and when I see Tunisian women celebrating
the conviction of a group of policemen for a heinous gang rape, I feel
more optimistic than I did a few years ago. The misnamed Arab Spring has
been a revolution full of disappointments. But I believe it has created
an opportunity for traditional forms of authority—including patriarchal
authority—to be challenged, and even for the religious justifications
for the oppression of women to be questioned.
Yet for that opportunity to be fulfilled, we in the West must provide
the right kind of encouragement. Just as the city of Boston was once the
cradle of a new ideal of liberty, we need to return to our roots by
becoming once again a beacon of free thought and civility for the 21st
century. When there is injustice, we need to speak out, not simply with
condemnation, but with concrete actions.
It's a pity that Brandeis betrayed its seal and gave in to the thought police.
Read the whole thing.
Labels: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Brandeis University, CAIR, Hamas, Islamophobia, Louis Brandeis, Muslim Brotherhood, political correctness
Ayaan Hirsi Ali too hot for Brandeis
Mr. Justice Brandeis must be rolling over in his grave again. The thought police at Brandeis have decided that women's rights and anti-Islam activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali is
not worthy of an honorary degree she was scheduled to receive at the school's commencement exercises next month.
April 8, 2014
Following
a discussion today between President Frederick Lawrence and Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s name has been withdrawn as an honorary degree
recipient at this year's commencement. She is a compelling public figure
and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work
to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the
world. That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that
are inconsistent with Brandeis University's core values. For all
concerned, we regret that we were not aware of these statements earlier.
Commencement is about celebrating and honoring our extraordinary
students and their accomplishments, and we are committed to providing an
atmosphere that allows our community's focus to be squarely on our
students. In the spirit of free expression that has defined Brandeis
University throughout its history, Ms. Hirsi Ali is welcome to join us
on campus in the future to engage in a dialogue about these important
issues.
The Times of Israel
explains the references.
Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from
2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That
includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she said of the
religion, “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful.
It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested
in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle
ground in wars.”
Brandeis, outside Boston in Waltham, Mass., said it was not aware of Ali’s statements earlier.
...
Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but
after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an
arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. She declined to
comment this week to The Associated Press.
More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at
Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be booted off the list of
honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by
students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures
from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a real slap in the face to Muslim
students,” said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student
Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew
the honor.
“But it’s not just the Muslim community that
is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs,” she said.
“A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should
not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic.”
Thomas Doherty, chairman of American studies,
refused to sign the faculty letter. He said it would have been great for
the university to honor “such a courageous fighter for human freedom
and women’s rights, who has put her life at risk for those values.”
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on
American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy group,
said, “It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would
honor someone with such openly hateful views.”
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
The 'Council on
American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) is the
American branch of the Hamas terror organization. The 'Muslim Students Association' (MSA) is a
U.S. branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is
the original ideological and Islamist foundation for Hamas.
On Tuesday, I received an email telling me about a massive 'denial of service' attack on Robert Spencer's Jihad Watch.
Who will stand up to this academic terror? Not Brandeis, that's for sure. Shame on them.
Labels: Brandeis University, CAIR, Hamas, Islamophobia, Louis Brandeis, Muslim Brotherhood, political correctness
Sari Nusseibeh resigns as President after another Hamas rally at al-Quds University
University President Sari Nusseibeh has resigned from his position at al-Quds University after yet another Hamas rally on the university's campus on Sunday.
Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Tom Gross, who has also posted many pictures of the rally
here).
As you might recall, Brandeis University
severed its relations with al-Quds after another Hamas rally in November.
Brandeis was considering
reinstating those relations, but this may be the final nail in that coffin. Khaled Abu Toameh is now reporting that
purported 'moderate' Sari Nusseibeh has
resigned as university President at al-Quds. The article to which Abu Toameh links is in
Arabic.
Maybe Brandeis could hire Nusseibeh. That would be in character.
Labels: Brandeis University, Hamas, Sari Nusseibeh
For once, Mr. Justice Brandeis should be pleased
For a
change, Mr. Justice Brandeis can be proud of the actions taken by the university that bears his name with respect to Israel. Brandeis has followed
Penn State Harrisburg and become the second American university to
suspend institutional support for the American Studies Association after the latter decided to boycott Israel.
"It is a with deep regret that we in the American Studies Program at
Brandeis University have decided to discontinue our institutional
affiliation with the American Studies Association," a message on the
university's American Studies program said.
The program views the ASA vote to affirm the academic boycott of
Israel "as a politicization of the discipline and a rebuke to the kind
of open inquiry that a scholarly association should foster."
"We
remain committed to the discipline of American Studies but we can no
longer support an organization that has rejected two of the core
principles of American culture - freedom of association and expression,"
the Brandeis statement continued.
...
The leadership of the much larger and more influential American
Association of University Professors wrote an open letter earlier this
month saying it was disappointed by the ASA decision and that it
rejected boycotts.
The Native American and Indigenous Studies
Association (NAISA) also decided to join the academic boycott against
Israel earlier this week.
Ohio State English Prof. Chadwick Allen,
president of the association and coordinator of American Indian studies
at the university, wrote on the association’s website that the move
followed a “member- generated” petition asking that the group “formally
support the boycott of Israeli academic and cultural Institutions that
was initiated by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural
Boycott of Israel.”
The Association for Asian American Studies adopted the boycott in April.
But at least two universities have come out against the ASA boycott. Have the BDS'ers finally overstepped enough that people are noticing?
Labels: academic boycott, BDS, Brandeis University, liberal academia, Louis Brandeis
Brandeis University finally acknowledges reality, suspends partnership with al-Quds University
Mr. Justice Brandeis can finally stop rolling over in his grave. Brandeis University has finally suspended its
partnership with the 'Palestinian' al-Quds University. Although the relationship will be 'reevaluated' in the future, maybe Brandeis will finally recognize that
these are the real 'Palestinians.'
The decision was made in light of recent events at the university,
which has campuses in Jerusalem, Abu-Dis and Al-Bireh, including a
November 5 Nazi-style demonstration at the main campus.
During the
demonstration, protesters marched in black military gear with fake
automatic weapons while waving flags and offering the traditional Nazi
salute. Banners with images of Palestinian suicide bombers decorated the
campus’ main square, according to a statement from Brandeis. Several
students also portrayed dead Israeli soldiers
Following the
demonstration Lawrence called on Al-Quds President Sari Nusseibeh to
issue in Arabic and English a condemnation of the demonstration.
Nusseibeh, as you might recall, is considered a 'moderate.'
In a statement issued to Al-Quds students Sunday, Nusseibeh said that
“Jewish extremists” were using the demonstration to “capitalize on
events in ways that misrepresent the university as promoting inhumane,
anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies.” Without these ideologies,
he said “there would not have been the massacre of the Jewish people in
Europe; without the massacre, there would not have been the enduring
Palestinian catastrophe.”
“As occurred recently, these
opportunists are quick to describe the Palestinians as a people
undeserving of freedom and independence, and as a people who must be
kept under coercive control and occupation. They cite these events as
evidence justifying their efforts to muster broad Jewish and western
opinion to support their position. This public opinion, in turn,
sustains the occupation, the extension of settlements and the
confiscation of land, and prevents Palestinians from achieving our
freedom,” Nusseibeh wrote.
The Brandeis University statement
called Nusseibeh’s message “unacceptable and inflammatory.” It added:
“While Brandeis has an unwavering commitment to open dialogue on
difficult issues, we are also obliged to recognize intolerance when we
see it, and we cannot – and will not – turn a blind eye to intolerance.”
It only took Brandeis 15 years to notice.... Now Mr. Justice Brandeis may return to his rest.
Labels: Brandeis University, Louis Brandeis, Nazis, Palestinian anti-Semitism
Brandies University Hillel rejects Jewish Voice for Peace chapter
Brandeis University's Hillel organization has rejected an application for membership from the radical Leftist
Jewish Voice for Peace organization. As you read the link (or at least the part of it I will quote), keep in mind that it's JVP's views, and things are not necessarily as they are depicting them.
On March 8, 2011, Brandeis University Hillel rejected the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) from becoming a Hillel member group. In line with controversial guidelines recently issued by National Hillel, the decision was based on JVP’s support for targetted boycotts of goods produced in Israeli settlements.
In response to the decision, Brandeis senior and JVP activist Jon Sussman stated "Brandeis students have lost an opportunity to learn from one another. Jewish students must demand the national Hillel organization change its condescending guidelines which marginalize progressive Jewish opinion on campus."
Hillel is the center of Jewish life on-campus , and its constitution affirms “the necessity of a pluralistic Jewish community on campus, with partisanship to none.” Regardless of this affirmation, Hillel’s new guidelines exclude Jewish groups on the basis of political opinions.
Ah yes, of course, Jon Sussman. Does that name sound familiar? He knows all about allowing Brandeis students
to learn from each other. Doesn't he?
William Daroff, the Vice President for Public Policy and Director of the Washington office of The Jewish Federations of North America,
tweets:
Jewish Federations are the largest funders of Hillel & we endorse the decision to exclude JVP.
It's nice to see clarity on the right side of an equation from Jewish communal leaders. Far too often that clarity is lacking. Kol HaKavod @Daroff.
Labels: Brandeis University, Hillel, Jewish Federations of North America, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jon Sussman, William Daroff
Jewish groups at Brandeis sponsoring Israeli occupation awareness week
Mr. Justice Brandeis (pictured, through the wonders of Photoshop) must be rolling over in his grave. The Jewish-funded university that bears his name is sponsoring 'Israel occupation awareness week' from November 8-11. The sponsors are two organizations calling themselves 'Brandeis students for justice in 'Palestine'' and 'Jewish voice for peace.'
I'll skip the link to the event, but I wanted to post this response to it which I received by email.
Ideology Parading as Scholarship at Brandeis
By Richard L. Cravatts, PhD
Seeming to confirm a world view that the brilliant British commentator Melanie Phillips describes in her new book as “a world turned upside down,” Brandeis University is hosting a troubling series of events in the tellingly-named “Israeli Occupation Awareness Week,” being held from November 8-11 and advertised on a Facebook page with a vile composite photograph of Louis Brandeis with a keffiyeh draped around his neck. Co-sponsored by the radical group Students for Justice in Palestine and the self-righteous, self-loathing Jews of Jewish Voice for Peace, the events once again demonstrate the moral incoherence seen on college campuses whenever there is debate about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.
Brandeis University, of course, was named for Justice Brandeis, who, though he was a secular Jew raised in the comfort of the social elite, still asserted that “Zionism finds in it, for the Jews, a reason to raise their heads, and, taking their stand upon the past, to gaze straightforwardly into the future,” a notion that might well have informed the thinking on the University’s campuses for much of the 20th century.
But that was before campus ideology was hijacked by the Left’s obsessive reverence for something that came to be known as “social justice,” a Leftist way of thinking that informs the very educational mission of Brandeis today (or “social action,” a term which Brandeis uses in its Diversity Statement). Students, and liberal faculty on campus, as well, are urged to advocate for social and economic goals described in decidedly liberal intellectual formulations such as ‘social and economic justice,’ ‘distributive justice,’ and ‘the global interconnections of oppression,’ this latter view ideal for conflating, at least in liberal imaginations, the shared complicity of America and Israel in their long-term oppression of the indigenous people of Palestine and the “occupation” of their land.
So it should come as no surprise that the list of guest speakers for the repellant “Israeli Occupation Awareness Week” includes a galaxy of notorious anti-Israel Jew-haters whose contribution to the week’s awareness-raising will not be an animated discussion of alternate views of the Israeli/Palestine conflict, but a one-sided, biased, inflammatory series of exhortations calling for the continued murder of Jews in the name of “resistance” and the eventual extirpation of the Jewish state.
Headlining at Brandeis will be a speech entitled “Israel’s Escalating Policies of Apartheid” by the intellectually notorious Noam Chomsky, who clearly lives in an academic netherworld of political fantasies, conspiracies, and intellectually-disingenuous distortions of history and fact. If Chomsky’s vituperation against America has been a defining theme in his intellectual jihad, an obsessive, apoplectic hatred for Israel has more completely dominated his screeds and spurious scholarship. Like other anti-Zionists in the West and in the Arab world, Chomsky does not even recognize the legitimacy of Israel, believing that its very existence was, and is, a moral transgression against an indigenous people, and that the creation of Israel was “wrong and disastrous . . . There is not now and never will be democracy in Israel.”
Chomsky denounces Israel’s identity as a Jewish state as being essentially racist on its face, and decries the very notion of its Jewishness as necessarily violating the concept of social equity by being exclusionary and elitist. While he is happy to, and regularly does, ignore the murder of Jews by Arabs, Chomsky never hesitates to point to the perfidy of Israel, and its barbarous assault on its Arab neighbors who, in his socialist fantasies, wish for nothing more than to live in peace.
A second odious guest at the Brandeis event will be Alice Rothchild, a physician, activist, and member of Jewish Voice for Peace, a far-Left, pro-Palestinian group that seeks to weaken Israel for it alleged human-rights violations through targeted boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. Its stated goal in promoting a divestment campaign is to prevent companies from “[profiting] from the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” and while it regularly excuses the murderous behavior of Palestinians, it scolds the U.S. to “stop supporting repressive policies in Israel and elsewhere.”
Rothchild not only believes that Israel has no moral right to exist as a Jewish state, she has written that Jews are not even a people, so of course are undeserving of a state of their own. “It is important to stress that the historic hatred of Jews was traditionally not part of the Arabic-speaking world until Jews began to claim Palestine for themselves,” she wrote in a letter to the Boston Globe, “and that the ‘return of land to Jewish people’ involves a particular reading of history, obliterates the several thousand years of others’ claims to this land, and ignores the academic questions regarding the probable multiple origins of the ‘Jewish people.’”
Rounding off the one-sided dialogue about the faults inherent in Israel’s so-called occupation of the West Bank will be Diana Buttu, whose reason for being at the Brandeis event is her credentials as a former legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and whose stream of anti-Israel propaganda is characterized by misstatements, contortions of history, and lies. In 2009, for instance, after some 6000 rockets had rained into southern Israeli towns from Gaza, Buttu repeatedly claimed “that none of these rockets actually [had] an explosive head on them, unlike the Israeli weaponry.” And the actual lethality of the “crude, homemade rockets” aside, “the reason that they have been launched,” she asserted, is not because of any genocidal impulses on the part of Hamas, but “is because of the fact that Israel has maintained a siege and a blockade against the Gaza Strip for the past three years, in addition to military operations in the Gaza Strip”—in other words, the rocket attacks were Israel’s fault. In a CNN interview with Rick Sanchez, Buttu also suggested that Israel’s initiatives to protect its citizenry from being murdered by random terrorist attack were unjustified. “Israel has a right to protect itself,” she admitted, but “it doesn't have a right to protect its occupation. And what it has done is, it's protecting its occupation.”
Of course, if the organizers of Brandeis’ Israeli Occupation Awareness Week actually wanted different views of the situation on the ground in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, they might have invited participants with opposing, alternate views. Such speakers might call into question the repeated, though mistaken, references to the West Bank and Gaza, as well as East Jerusalem, as “Arab” land, encumbered only by Israeli oppression, the dreaded occupation, and those pesky settlers.
That is a convenient fable, as is the fictive people that the Palestinians have been conjured up to be: an indigenous nation that had sovereignty, a coherent society, leadership, and some form of continuous government— none of which, obviously, have ever existed. More to the point, it is historically and legally incorrect to overlook the fact that not only all of the land that is current-day Israel, but also Gaza, the West Bank, and, in fact, the land east of the Jordan River that became Jordan, is part of the land granted to the Jews as part of the League of Nations Palestine Mandate, and that no “occupation” by Israel therefore exists. According to Eugene V. Rostow, the late legal scholar and one of the authors of UN Security Council Resolution 242 written after the 1967 war to outline peace negotiations, “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, was made unassailable.
So if the Brandeis community wants to make itself collectively feel better by seeking to bring “social justice” to the long-suffering Palestinians by demonizing, delegitimizing, and libeling Israel, they will have achieved that objective with the noxious, Israel-hating event. But the only awareness that such events create is the realization that much of what tries to pass as scholarly debate on campuses today is nothing more than propaganda and ideology dressed up as true intellectual inquiry.
Richard L. Cravatts, Ph.D., Director
Program in Publishing
Center For Professional Education
Boston University
Indeed.
Labels: Alice Rothchild, Brandeis University, Israeli Occupation Awareness Week, Noam Chomsky
