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Sarah Lawrence College Ignored, Perpetrated Antisemitism, New Civil Rights Complaint Says

Illustrative: Anti-Israel students protest at Columbia University in New York City. Photo: Reuters/Jeenah Moon

At Sarah Lawrence College (SLC) in New York, it is “safe to be Jewish as long as you are openly anti-Israel,” according to a new civil rights complaint alleging antisemitic browbeating, intimidation, and discrimination throughout campus and in the school’s diversity office.

Filed with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) this week by Hillels of Westchester and Arnold & Porter LLP, the complaint describes dozens of alleged incidents of anti-Jewish hatred which administrators either declined to address or had directly initiated, thereby violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Title VI prohibits discrimination in programs and activities that receive federal funding.

“Sarah Lawrence created a hostile environment for Jewish students through years of action and inaction — after more than 15 years of documented pleas for the college to support all facets of its Jewish community, we’ve reached a breaking point,” Hillels of Westchester executive director Rachel Klein said in a press release announcing the legal action. “We are making this formal complaint to ensure the college improves so all future students can safely immerse in the college experience, and we hope the administration takes immediate, sustainable action.”

Sarah Lawrence College did not respond to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment.

Anti-Zionist students at Sarah Lawrence College threaten to kill Jews or kill themselves in front of them, the complaint alleges. Diversity officers assigned as advisers to the campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) are in charge of processing complaints of antisemitism, the lawsuit continues, and when Jews are killed in Israel, those officers promote anti-Zionist events promising to debunk the so-called “mainstream narrative” about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

The school’s alleged disregard for the welfare of Jewish students was revealed in the days and weeks after Hamas’ slaughter of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, the complaint explains. No sooner had the tragedy occurred than Briana Martin — SLC director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) — called on students to ignore Jewish suffering by attending on Oct. 9 “Hour of Solidarity with Palestine,” an event co-sponsored by SJP. While promoting the event, Martin invited Jewish students and Hillel members via email to attend it — a gesture, the complaint says, that the SLC Jewish community found “offensive and dehumanizing.” They soon discovered that in addition to being the school’s chief DEI administrator, Martin is SJP’s adviser, acting as the club’s advocate and liaison.

“Having been sent even before Israel had initiated any military response, the email’s message to ‘understand the mainstream narrative’ could only be interpreted to support SJP’s narrative that Hamas was justified in slaughtering Israeli civilians,” the complaint argues. “That such an obviously hostile and dehumanizing message would be delivered to SLC’s Jewish students by the director of the very office charged with protecting SLC’s minority Jewish student community sent a clear message that the SLC administration has chosen sides and that it would not protect SLC’s Jewish students.”

Martin’s conduct went beyond vocally supporting SJP’s extremist politics. She also allegedly refused to investigate anti-Zionist students accused of antisemitic harassment. When Sammy Tweedy, a Jewish student who had been in Israel on Oct. 7, reported to Martin that an anti-Zionist student threatened to beat him up and said he had “the blood of Gaza on your hands” and should have been murdered by Hamas, Martin would only agree to filing a no-contact order against the student. This wasn’t the first time that Martin declined to investigate or meaningfully punish antisemitic conduct, the complaint continues. Tweedy had filed several previous complaints to which Martin has never responded to this day. At one point, she put off Tweedy by telling him she needed “space and time to move forward.”

As an office, DEIB was complicit in silencing complaints of antisemitism, according to the lawsuit. In November, the office persuaded a Jewish student who wanted to report a professor for antisemitism not to do so, telling them it would not be in their best interest. Long before Oct. 7, former DEIB assistant director Ronald Benion was also allegedly dilatory in responding to antisemitism, as well as in failing to provide sufficient kosher dining options, despite being assigned as SLC Hillel’s representative. SLC President Christie Judd has allegedly avoided addressing these issues and declined to meet with Hillels of Westchester to discuss the school’s efforts to protect the civil rights of Jewish students.

“The hostile learning environment, the lack of support from the administration, and the recurring acts of brazen antisemitism that Jewish and pro-Israel students at Sarah Lawrence College have experienced is alarming and unacceptable,” Hillel International CEO and president Adam Lehman said in Wednesday’s press release. “This is clearly a systemic problem, and it requires a serious, systemic solution from the Sarah Lawrence administration. Nothing short of significant culture change will suffice.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post Sarah Lawrence College Ignored, Perpetrated Antisemitism, New Civil Rights Complaint Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels

View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.

i24 NewsSweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.

The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.

Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.

“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”

The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.

“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.

The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism

Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”

The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.

The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.

Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile

Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot

i24 NewsThe Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”

The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”

The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.

The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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