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Connecticut College students are in revolt after president’s planned talk at Florida club with antisemitic and racist past
(JTA) – When students at Connecticut College learned that their president had been planning to attend a fundraiser at a historically racist and antisemitic golf club, they began to organize.
But their school’s building for race and ethnicity programming, the Unity House, didn’t have enough space to hold them all. So a pivotal meeting that kicked off a weeks-long campaign against the university took place at a space with a larger capacity: its Hillel house.
“Having a Jewish space on campus that felt like a safe space to gather as a community is something that really struck me as important,” Ilan Listgarten, a Jewish sophomore at the college, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Three weeks later, Connecticut College students have moved to an even bigger location: They have occupied a central administrative building on the New London campus for five days and counting, and are receiving support from faculty and staff.
The students want the president to resign, and they are calling for increased funding and support for various ethnic studies and student group programs. Their demands include enhancements to the Jewish studies program (the school currently offers a minor) and bias training to address antisemitism.
Tensions have remained so high that Hillel leaders canceled a planned Shabbat dinner with the embattled president, Katherine Bergeron, an annual event that this year had been scheduled for Friday.
As Jewish students and faculty on other campuses have complained that they feel excluded from progressive activism, the crisis at Connecticut College has gone in a different direction. Jewish students are playing a leadership role in the protests, working closely with a coalition of activists from other backgrounds who specifically invited Hillel to join in its efforts. That’s notable because, at other schools across the country, recruiting support from coalitions of minority groups has been a hallmark of pro-Palestinian activists — who often boycott (or are themselves barred from) Hillel due to its pro-Israel stance.
“I’ve felt even more proud to be Jewish on campus right now,” sophomore Davi Schulman, a student journalist and member of Connecticut College Hillel’s leadership team, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “And I’m just proud to be a Connecticut College student. We’re really coming together like we never have before.”
Connecticut College students are protesting against their school’s president, Katherine Bergeron, who had been scheduled to speak at a venue with an antisemitic and racist history. (Courtesy of Sam Maidenberg/The College Voice)
Key to Hillel’s participation, observers said, was the fact that the kindling for the student uprising involved antisemitism. Bergeron had been planning to attend a fundraiser for the college to be held at the Everglades Club, an exclusive golf club in Palm Beach, Florida, that has a history of denying entry and membership to Jews and Black people (reportedly including Black Jewish entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. and Jewish cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder).
Today the club is secretive about its current membership policies, though recent testimony from officials has claimed that the club no longer discriminates against Jews. Its antisemitic past was enough to turn off former President Donald Trump from selling his Mar-a-Lago club to them in the 1990s.
The larger campus community became aware of the fundraiser only after the school’s dean of institutional equity and inclusion, or DIEI, resigned from his position Feb. 7 after only a year on the job, citing the president’s unwillingness to take his advice to cancel the fundraiser. Bergeron announced the next day that the event had been canceled and apologized “to all who saw our plans as contrary to Conn’s values or to the inclusive institution we aspire to be.”
The dean had leaked his resignation letter to a group of student activists, sparking the initial efforts to organize what became Student Voices for Equity — and that meeting in the 6,700-square-foot Zachs Hillel House. Jewish students suggested the venue, opened in 2014 to serve the school’s roughly 200 Jewish students, when it became apparent that the crowd of hundreds wouldn’t fit in Unity House.
The controversy over the fundraiser was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to Rabbi Susan Schein, the director of Connecticut College Hillel (and an employee of the university’s diversity and equity office). She and students said there had been long-standing dissatisfaction among many on campus with Bergeron’s leadership; several students said they wanted to see more funding and support for ethnic studies and diversity-focused programs.
When the student activists approached Hillel’s student leadership about having a Jewish representative join their efforts, the students quickly agreed, electing to have Listgarten play the role; today he is helping to support the around 30 students who are occupying the campus building where the president’s office is located. The Hillel also issued a statement standing in solidarity with the movement’s goals.
Connecticut College sits along the Thames River in New London, Connecticut. It enrolls about 2,000 students. (Connecticut College)
A Connecticut College spokesperson told JTA that Bergeron and the school’s administration “take the issues that have been raised seriously,” and that it would conduct an independent review into “the workplace-related concerns.” The college also pledged “significant additional resources” into its diversity-focused efforts. It did not address how the planned fundraiser at the country club had come together. Bergeron has sent six letters to the campus community about the controversy since the diversity dean’s initial resignation.
The ease with which the campus’s Jewish community has fit into this movement is a testament to deliberate programming efforts at the Hillel to reach out to forge relationships between Jews and non-Jews on campus, Listgarten and Schein said. Hillel hosts events like “Unity Shabbat” designed to bring together other marginalized groups, and its center — which includes a game room — was envisioned by funder Henry Zachs as a common space for Jews and non-Jews alike, Schein said.
It wasn’t always this way at Connecticut College. In 2015, the school attracted national attention when a student decried as racist a months-old Facebook post by a Jewish professor about the previous year’s conflict in the Gaza Strip. The professor had ambiguously used an analogy of “rabid pit bulls,” without specifying whether he was talking about Hamas or all Palestinians.
In the resulting furor, hundreds of students and alums signed an online petition demanding the college condemn “the racism and dehumanization” of his post. Pro-Israel activists came to the professor’s defense and accused the campus community of being hostile to Jewish and pro-Israel views.
Today, Listgarten said, Israel hasn’t come up in this current period of student activism, and dialogue between Jews and non-Jews remains civil. He confirmed Bergeron has also hosted annual Shabbat dinners with Hillel students. But this year, after the fundraiser controversy broke into view, Hillel leadership elected not to dine with her for their scheduled Shabbat dinner, which would have taken place Friday.
“The Hillel Board has very clear values of tzedek,” Listgarten said, using the Hebrew word for “justice.” “As soon as this event occurred and it was clear that our values were drastically opposed to that of the president, we canceled.”
Despite their warm reception, Schulman said she’s “conflicted” by the fact that the other campus activists “consistently mentioned the Jewish community on campus and included us in the group of marginalized students.” To her and the other Hillel leadership, the Jewish community has “privilege” that students from some backgrounds don’t, and they’ve made that a central part of their messaging. They cite the existence of the Zachs Hillel House itself, and the fact that it is in better condition than other university spaces devoted to race and ethnicity programming, as one example.
“We don’t want to appear to be pushing any kind of agenda or whatever,” Schulman said. “We’re kind of taking a step back and supporting everyone who is expressing their feelings.”
This dynamic has been crucial to Hillel’s success at ingratiating itself with larger campus culture, Schein said. She invoked Jewish teachings by way of explanation.
“The country club issue that came up involved antisemitism, and I think that caught the attention of the Jewish students. But here they recognized it is not just about themselves, and that they have a responsibility to support others,” Schein said.
Citing the famous quote by Rabbi Hillel, the campus group’s namesake, she added, “They stepped into it. They could’ve been outside, but they said, ‘Now is the moment to support our DIEI colleagues.’ And that’s what the campus is doing. They said, ‘If not now, when?’”
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Cooper Union settles antisemitism case with 10 Jewish students who were barricaded in library after Oct. 7
(JTA) — The Cooper Union has settled a Title VI case of antisemitic discrimination dating back to a highly publicized incident in which Jewish students were trapped in a school library by protesters after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
The Manhattan engineering college has agreed to pay an unspecified sum to 10 affected Jewish students, create a Title VI coordinator position who will monitor cases “including discrimination or harassment based on antisemitism or anti-Zionism,” and ban masks at protests.
“This landmark settlement is the result of the extraordinary courage of the students who came forward to demand accountability from Cooper Union,” Ziporah Reich, an attorney with the pro-Israel legal group The Lawfare Project, said in a statement announcing the settlement. The Lawfare Project sued the school on behalf of the Jewish students.
Reich’s statement continued, “Jewish students deserve to learn without being targeted, harassed, or excluded because of who they are or what they believe. This case sends a clear message that universities have a legal duty to protect them and will be held accountable when they fail to do so.”
In a statement, Cooper Union’s president Steven W. McLaughlin said the settlement “reflects our ongoing commitment to maintaining a campus where every student in our community feels respected, safe, and included.”
McLaughlin, who became president last year following the resignation of the school’s previous president, continued, “We are dedicated to continuing our efforts to confront discrimination of any kind, including antisemitism, and to fostering a productive culture of curiosity and compassion. Settling this litigation is an important step as we move forward.”
Cooper Union Hillel/Midrash, a student-run Jewish organization that several of the plaintiffs belong to, did not immediately return a request for comment.
In the immediate weeks after Oct. 7, The Cooper Union was one of the first colleges thrust into the national spotlight for alleged antisemitic behavior on campus. Viral video showed Jewish students having barricaded themselves in the campus library for 20 minutes while pro-Palestinian protesters pounded on the doors and shouted slogans.
Under President Joe Biden, the Department of Education opened a Title VI civil rights investigation into the school. The Jewish students separately sued the school over their treatment, a suit The Cooper Union attempted to have thrown out. Last year a judge ruled the lawsuit could continue.
The settlement comes as the Trump administration has more aggressively prosecuted other elite colleges for fostering antisemitic environments, freezing federal grants and forcing large payouts. It also comes days after New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, reversed an executive order for the city to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Association’s definition of antisemitism.
As part of The Cooper Union’s settlement, the private school’s new Title VI coordinator “will implement all applicable guidance” established under Biden to consider IHRA in discrimination cases, the school’s statement said.
The post Cooper Union settles antisemitism case with 10 Jewish students who were barricaded in library after Oct. 7 appeared first on The Forward.
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Following pressure from Jewish leaders, Australian PM Anthony Albanese announces inquiry into Bondi attack
(JTA) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday the launch of a Royal Commission inquiry, the country’s highest level of inquiry, into the antisemitic terrorist attack on Bondi Beach last month.
The wide-ranging inquiry will also investigate the “nature and prevalence of antisemitism” in the country, provide recommendations to law enforcement to combat antisemitism and counter the “spread of ideologically and religiously motivated extremism in Australia,” according to a press release from the Prime Minister’s office.
“I’ve repeatedly said that our government’s priority is to promote unity and social cohesion, and this is what Australia needs to heal, to learn, to come together in a spirit of national unity,” Albanese told reporters on Thursday. “It’s clear to me that a royal commission is essential to achieving this.”
The announcement of the inquiry comes weeks after two attackers motivated by “Islamic State ideology” killed 15 people and injured dozens more at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. Until now, Albanese had largely dismissed mounting pressure from the victims’ families as well as Jewish groups to launch a Royal Commission.
“I’ve listened, and in a democracy that’s a good thing. To listen to what people are saying and what people are saying is, yes, we’re concerned,” Albanese told reporters. Last month, Albanese also announced a review of federal intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
In the government’s press release, it also pointed to its previous actions in the wake of the attack, which have included tightening gun ownership laws and introducing legislation to curb hate speech.
The president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Daniel Aghion, said that the Australian government had “made the right decision” in establishing the royal commission in a statement.
He added that the group expected the commission to “allow an honest examination of government policies and the conduct and policies of key institutions and figures in major sectors of our society in contributing or failing to adequately respond to the unprecedented levels of antisemitism in Australia over the past two years or more.”
He added, “This is the only way that Australia’s time-honoured standards of decency and fairness can be upheld.”
The inquiry will be led by former High Court judge Virginia Bell, whose appointment raised concerns among some Jewish leaders in Australia who pointed to her role in a ruling that was cited by the New South Wales Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a ban on a pro-Palestinian march in August, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
“The Prime Minister has been told directly by leaders of the Jewish community that they have serious concerns about this appointment,” said former treasurer Josh Frydenberg in a post on X. He did not elaborate on his opposition to Bell in the post.
Following the attack, Albanese also invited Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia. While the invitation was welcomed by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, some Labor party members and progressive Jewish groups called for Albanese to rescind his invitation.
The announcement of the inquiry comes as Gefen Bitton, an Israeli living in Australia who was critically injured while trying to confront the Bondi attackers alongside Ahmed al-Ahmed, was slated to be flown to Israel on Wednesday for continued medical treatment.
It also comes as al-Ahmed, a Muslim man who received widespread support from the Jewish community after he was shot while disarming one of the attackers, was feted in New York City by the Chabad movement, whose emissaries were holding the Hanukkah event and were among the dead. Al-Ahmed arrived in New York City on Tuesday where he visited the Ohel, the gravesite of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement’s late leader Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, before being honored at a gala recognizing defenders of the Jews.
“Ahmed did what he did that day because he believed that God placed him at the scene for a reason, and that’s what gave him the strength to save lives,” Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, whose son-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was killed in the attack, told Chabad.org. “This is something people from all walks of life can and must learn from.”
The post Following pressure from Jewish leaders, Australian PM Anthony Albanese announces inquiry into Bondi attack appeared first on The Forward.
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Trans screenwriter Our Lady J condemns anti-Zionism in LGBTQ spaces: ‘Zionism is not a dirty word’
(JTA) — Prominent transgender writer, actress and producer Our Lady J took aim at anti-Zionism within the LGBTQ community in a post on Instagram Tuesday.
“Until the LGBTQ community distances itself from all forms of antisemitism, including antizionism, our allies will continue to fall away, and we will remain defenseless in the face of attack,” wrote Our Lady J in the Instagram post.
The post, which at some point had its comments turned off, has ignited controversy in queer spaces, where anti-Israel sentiment has prevailed in recent years. “Check out Our Lady J’s Zionist page and unfollow them on Instagram,” wrote one user on X, while another referred to her as a “turncoat prick.”
Thousands of users also flooded the comment sections of posts from the LGBTQ magazine Them on Instagram and Facebook about her statement. “You can’t use trans rights etc to cover up a genocide,” wrote one user on Instagram.
In recent years, queer activism has grown increasingly aligned with anti-Zionist activism, a trend that has placed many Zionist Jews in the LGBTQ community at a crossroads. Over the summer, Pride celebrations were widely marred by debates over Israel. In Brooklyn, a Pride interfaith service was canceled allegedly over some groups’ opposition to the hosting synagogue’s “public alignment with pro-Israel political positions.”
In December, the pro-Israel LGBTQ group A Wider Bridge shut down its operations amid financial strain. While not cited as a reason for its closure, the group also faced criticism from other LGBTQ groups for “pinkwashing,” a claim that efforts to highlight Israel’s record on LGBTQ rights are used to distract from or justify its policies towards Palestinians.
Our Lady J grew up in an evangelical Christian family and, around 2015, became the first trans writer to be hired in a television writers’ room for the hit TV show “Transparent,” which follows the story of a Jewish family in Los Angeles whose parent comes out as trans. The show’s fourth season, while filmed in Los Angeles, shows the family traveling to Israel.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DTLV0AJCXLu/?img_index=1
In her post, Our Lady J claimed that “Zionists have always been at the core of LGBTQ progress,” citing prominent pro-Israel Jewish activists including Magnus Hirschfeld, Elizabeth Taylor, Larry Kramer and Eli Windsor.
“Zionism is not a dirty word. It is the belief in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Any definition of Zionism that aligns it with oppression or imperialism is a strategic attempt to undermine Jewish self-determination,” continued Our Lady J.
She concluded, “Not only does antizionism erode Jewish solidarity, it erases LGBTQ history, preventing us from understanding the foundation our own self-determination was built on.”
The post Trans screenwriter Our Lady J condemns anti-Zionism in LGBTQ spaces: ‘Zionism is not a dirty word’ appeared first on The Forward.