Campus Antisemitism
On Dec. 2, the LSGA passed a resolution that calls on CUNY to cut all ties with companies that “aid in or profit from Israeli colonization, occupation and war crimes.”
The lawyers reminded the administration that it signed a Resolution Agreement with the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, “in which it agreed to take certain measures to address allegations of anti-Semitism.”
“The report hides behind misleading claims of ‘academic freedom’ to treat Jewish concerns with an extraordinary level of hesitation absent from similar university reports on other minority groups,” said Douglas Sandoval, managing editor of CAMERA on Campus.
“Many students have also witnessed hostile anti-Semitic tropes and rhetoric associated with aggressive BDS tactics here,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.).
Seventeen colleges brought BDS measures up for a vote by the student government in 2020-21, and 11 have passed them.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the administration’s response did not go far enough and will be included in the center’s annual list of the “Top 10” worst anti-Semitic incidents.
“No student should be afraid on a university campus, especially because of their race or religion. Sadly, for too many of our Jewish students today, that is not the case,” said Gov. Mike DeWine in a Nov. 29 letter outlining concrete steps to take to improve safety for students.
“We apologize for the distress that our miscommunication has caused the Jewish community on campus, and we understand their concerns,” said the Scarborough Campus Students’ Union.
The Dec. 2 program included a talk by a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a designated terror group in both Canada and the United States.
“We have to take it seriously every single time. Because we don’t know whether it’s just somebody trying to shock or whether it’s truly a sign that something that is dangerous to the physical safety of our students is coming,” said Rabbi Marley Weiner.
“I think it is an embarrassment to society,” said Rabbi Nechemia Deitsch, director of Chabad of Midtown in Toronto, which services the student population. “The fact that there is this hatred in the air is due completely to a lack of education.”
“Mind you, it never takes the form of brutal speech or action, but rather, it brews, all the more intensely, under the surface,” wrote the physicist and mathematician in 1936.
