Campus Antisemitism
The vote occurred just months after students voted overwhelmingly in favor of a referendum calling on the school to separate itself from companies that conduct business with the State of Israel.
After a quick quarantine for Jewish students who attended the AIPAC conference in Washington, some students have been harassed in person and on social media with anti-Semitic messages.
Lee Bollinger also said “it’s wrong” for Jews to be targeted by anti-Semitism, stressing that Columbia is not “an ‘anti-Semitic’ institution.”
Central Student Government president Ben Gerstein said prior to college, he had only been exposed to pro-Israel viewpoints, but was “committed” to “learning new perspectives and being empathetic to the Palestinian community.”
At least one-sixth of the student body must vote for the referendum to succeed. If the referendum does not garner 300 signatures, the Tufts Community Union Senate would vote on it as they would any other resolution.
“The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” by Jasbir Puar asserts that the Israeli Defense Forces believe in “rehabilitation through the spatial, affective and corporeal debilitation of Palestine,” as well as “the sovereign right to maim, wielded by Israel, in relation to the right to kill.”
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) asked the U.S. Department of Education to investigate whether the Center for Middle East Studies at the college has misused federal dollars.
“Anti-Semitism in the South was alive and well,” says Darryl Hill of the 1960s. Adds Jerry Fishman, “as far as we’ve come, I don’t think we’re as far as we should be in respecting other religions and colors. We’re just not there.”
Heerak Kim, who is running in Virginia’s 8th Congressional District, recently tweeted that the “FBI should investigate US politicians in both Republican and the Democratic party with ‘questionable’ ties with Israel,” among other social-media posts that have been deemed anti-Semitic.
Carol Christ pledged to continue to “speak out loudly and clearly in condemnation of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, anti-blackness, racism, and other hateful ideologies and perspectives that target people based on their identity, origins or beliefs.”
“The world’s oceans and seas are the last great frontier of archaeological exploration, and the Mediterranean Sea holds the oldest and most densely traversed maritime network in the world,” said Professor Thomas Levy in the Department of Anthropology at UC San Diego.
It will now likely be heard again by the student government, where the resolution will need a two-thirds majority to override the veto.
