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US House Committee Announces Investigation Into Antisemitism at Rutgers University
The Endowment Justice Collective, a coalition of organizations at Rutgers University, held a “die in,” Piscataway, New Jersey, March 19, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
Rutgers University in New Jersey has been named as the latest school being investigated by the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce for allegedly ignoring antisemitism for years and allowing an open season on hate toward Jewish students.
“Rutgers stands out for the intensity and pervasiveness of antisemitism on its campuses,” Committee Chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) wrote to high-level university officials on Wednesday. “Rutgers senior administrators, faculty, staff, academic departments and centers, and student organizations have contributed to the development of a pervasive climate of antisemitism.”
With the announcement, Rutgers University joined a slew of colleges and universities accused of disregarding complaints of bullying, discrimination, and harassment reported by Jewish students. Foxx, as well as other lawmakers, have scrutinized this alleged pattern of behavior, which persists despite the fact that virtually all higher education institutions in the US impose robust anti-discrimination policies aimed at protecting minority groups from bigotry. Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of California, Berkeley are among the other schools currently being investigated by the committee.
In Wednesday’s letter, Foxx recounted numerous incidents as cause for a thorough examination of Rutgers University’s handling of antisemitism, zeroing in on the conduct of its officials employed by the Center for Security, Race, and Rights (CSRR). Foxx noted that after Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughtering of Israeli civilians, CSRR rationalized the terrorist group’s violence, saying in a public statement that it was the result of “decades of oppression and attempted erasure.”
CSRR also recruits figures accused of antisemitism, Foxx noted. Lara Sheehi, a former George Washington University professor who has been accused of abusing Jewish students and filing phony disciplinary charges against them, is listed as one of its affiliates, and just three days after Oct. 7, CSRR hosted an event featuring Sheehi in which she defended Hamas’ actions as a legitimate response to “Zionist settler colonialism,” which she called “the provocation.”
CSRR’s extremism has infected the student body, according to Foxx. Last month, during an event titled “Gaza, Genocide, and International Law,” anti-Zionist students heckled an Israeli professor and later accused him of stoking “hatred” and endangering their safety. One of them expressed her desire to pelt his “shiny pink head” with a bottled water.
The congressional letter detailed how other academic departments have exuded similar anti-Jewish attitudes. Last month, the program coordinator of the university’s Center for Latino Arts and Culture, Silismar Suriel, “refused to advertise” an event because it was co-organized by Rutgers Hillel. Foxx noted that Suriel was on record saying, “We are a f—king university serving capitalist issues, serving Zionists … do the Zionists own the university?” and “f—k you colonizer … f—k you, Zionist, why don’t you go and read a f—king book?”
As The Algemeiner has previously reported, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has been a wellspring of antisemitic rhetoric at Rutgers. The group was one of dozens of SJP chapters that cheered Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, an attack that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths and numerous rapes of Israeli women. As video footage of the terrorist group’s atrocities circled the web, Rutgers SJP shared on its Instagram pages memes that said “Glory to resistance” and “the clock started running when the majority of the Palestinian population was expelled from their land by Zionists during the Nakba.” It added, “You are watching an occupied people rise up against an apartheid nuclear power that has been occupying them and making their life unlivable since 1948.”
A milieu of extreme anti-Zionism at the school has resulted in at least one death threat against the life of a Jewish student since Oct. 7. In November, a local news outlet reported, freshman Matthew Skorny, 19, called for the murder of a fraternity member he identified as an Israeli, saying on the popular social media forum YikYak, “To all the pro-Palestinian ralliers [sic] … Go kill him.”
Similar incidents at Rutgers are not new. In the past few years, the school’s AEPi house has been vandalized three times. In one incident, in April 2022, on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, a caravan of participants from a SJP rally drove there, shouting antisemitic slurs and spitting in the direction of fraternity members. Four days later, before Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, the house was egged during a 24-hour reading of the names of Holocaust victims.
Foxx has requested from Rutgers “all reports of antisemitic acts or incidents” and “related documents” going back to 2021 that were made to the offices of the president, general counsel, dean of students, police department, human resources, and diversity, equity, and inclusion, among others. She also requested documentation on the school’s funding of Rutgers Students for Justice in Palestine and disciplinary measures taken against students who have been found guilty of antisemitic abuse.
“Congress’ oversight powers are derived from the US Constitution and have been repeatedly affirmed by the United States Supreme Court,” Foxx concluded, explaining the university’s legal obligation to provide the documents she requested. “I expect that this request will be conveyed promptly to all parities who would be reasonably expected to have responsive materials.”
The Algemeiner has reached out to Rutgers University for comment for this story.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post US House Committee Announces Investigation Into Antisemitism at Rutgers University first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Five windows were smashed at Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue in north Toronto—police are investigating
Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagouge at 2640 Bayview Ave. in Toronto on April 19, 2024.
The post Five windows were smashed at Kehillat Shaarei Torah synagogue in north Toronto—police are investigating appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Nearly One in Five Young People Sympathize With Hamas, 29% Say US Should Reduce or End Alliance With Israel: Poll
Illustrative: Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators from the Midwest gather in support of Palestinians and hold a rally and march through the Loop in Chicago on Oct. 21, 2023. Photo: Alexandra Buxbaum/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
A greater proportion of young Americans sympathize with the Palestinian people and government than with the Israeli people and government, while almost one in five sympathize with Hamas and a growing number want the US to end or reduce its alliance with the Jewish State, according to a new poll.
The national poll — released by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School — was of Americans aged 18-29. It found that while 52 percent of young people sympathize with Israelis, 56 percent sympathize with the Palestinian people.
The story remained the same when it came to governments: 32 percent of respondents said they sympathize with the Palestinian government, and only 29 percent said they sympathize with the Israeli government. The question did not make clear whether it was referring only to the Palestinian Authority (PA), which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank, or both the PA and Hamas, the Islamist terrorist group that rules Gaza.
According to the poll, 17 percent of young Americans said they support Hamas; however, when asked with the added context that Hamas is an “Islamist militant group,” support dropped to 13 percent.
Meanwhile, 29 percent said they believe the US should either no longer be an ally of Israel or reduce its allyship toward the Jewish state, and 32 percent said Israel’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre — when the terror group invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and took more than 250 hostages — was not justified. For both of these questions, though, a plurality of respondents said they were unsure.
Notably, support for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza was strong among young people — with 51 percent supporting it and just 10 percent opposing it. Only 6 percent of Democrats said they do not support a permanent ceasefire.
The question did not distinguish between a permanent ceasefire on the condition of the release of the hostages versus an unconditional permanent ceasefire, which would allow Hamas to keep all of its captives.
The Harvard poll was consistent with others on the opinions of young people regarding Israel and its war with Hamas. Traditionally, support for Israel has been strong among the American people. However, a greater proportion of young people are now questioning that support — and, in some cases, explicitly siding with enemies of the United States and Israel, such as Hamas.
A Harvard-Harris poll from October found young people (ages 18-24) were split almost down the middle when asked, as a binary choice, whether they support Israel or Hamas in the war. Additionally, a majority of young people have said they believe Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack was justified on the basis of legitimate grievance. Another poll found 51 percent said that Israel should be “ended” as a country and “given to Hamas and the Palestinians.”
These extreme views have manifested as concrete action, with large pro-Hamas protests occurring on college campuses. Most recently, at Columbia University in New York, anti-Israel demonstrators set up an encampment in the middle of campus. Protests that accompanied it — some off campus — included chants of “Al-Qassam [Hamas], you make us proud, kill another soldier now!” and “there is only one solution, intifada revolution.” Individuals also proclaimed, “We are all Hamas,” and one person yelled at two Jews, “Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10…100…1000…10,000…The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”
“Never forget the 7th of October. That will happen not one more time, not five more times, not 10…100…1000…10,000…The 7th of October is going to be every day for you.”
Protestors screamed this at two Jewish @Columbia students right outside campus gates tonight. pic.twitter.com/VYp0tFudGj
— Jonas Du (@jonasydu) April 19, 2024
The latest Harvard University poll was conducted from March 14-21 among 2,010 young Americans and has a margin of error of +/-3.02.
The post Nearly One in Five Young People Sympathize With Hamas, 29% Say US Should Reduce or End Alliance With Israel: Poll first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Police Stop Anti-Zionist Agitators From Accessing Florida University President’s Home as Students Revolt Nationwide
Illustrative: Pro-Hamas students rallying at Harvard University. Photo: Reuters/Brian Snyder
An extremist anti-Zionist group on Thursday was prevented by local police from marching to the Ronald W. Reagan Presidential House at Florida International University (FIU), which is the home of school president Kenneth A. Jessell.
According to the campus newspaper Panther Now, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) planned the action as part of “Palestinian Prisoner Day,” an event held by the group to honor terrorists who are detained in Israel. As the demonstrators approached Jessell’s home, a blockade of police formed to obstruct their path.
Despite the aggression displayed in marching a mob to someone’s residence, the students complained that the police’s response was disproportionate to any threat they may have posed.
“Take a look over there. Do you know how many cop cars are there? All these cops for a bunch of students who are just chanting,” SJP co-president Zuhra Alchtar was quoted by Panther Now as saying when the police arrived on the scene. “The ivory tower gets so shaken when a bunch of people speak. They can’t stand it. They have to call the big guns; they have to call the priority response team.”
The demonstration came as anti-Zionist students across the US have been recently crossing the line from peaceful expressions of free speech to riotous behavior, flagrantly violating school rules, disrupting business, and even exposing Jewish students to racist and antisemitic rhetoric unlike any uttered publicly in the US since the 1950s.
Earlier this month, Vanderbilt University suspended and expelled several protesters who occupied an administrative building and proceeded to relieve themselves and perform other private functions inside. To infiltrate the building, the students “assaulted a Community Service Officer” and “pushed” officials who suggested having a discussion about their concerns, according to school officials.
At Columbia University, students were reportedly suspended — although it has recently been alleged that the university reduced their penalties to probation — for inviting to campus a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group that has committed airliner hijackings and mass shootings. This week, two days of protest convulsed the campus and resulted in the arrest and suspension from school of US Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) daughter.
In several documented cases, anti-Israel protesters resorted to verbally abusing Black officials with racial epithets and violated their personal space. The Vanderbilt protesters told a Black police officer that his racial identity demanded his being an accessory to their machinations, according to video of the scene, and at Pomona College earlier this month, the school’s president reported that protesters called a Black administrator a racial slur.
A similar incident took place at George Washington University when US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited the campus last week. An SJP spinoff, formed after the school’s chapter was suspended, distributed pamphlets describing the ambassador as a “puppet” and a “Black body” who is “used … to carry out repression and dissent.” After the event concluded, a protester approached GW dean Colette Coleman and clapped her hands in the official’s face.
Such incidents have occurred alongside an unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents and extreme anti-Israel activity on US college campuses that have upended the lives of many Jewish students.
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) new annual audit, there were 922 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in 2023, a “staggering” 321 percent increase from the previous year. Across the nation, 8,873 incidents added up to the most ever counted by the ADL since it began tracking such data in 1979. Most of the outrages occurred after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and amid the ensuing war in Gaza.
In California, an elderly Jewish man was killed when an anti-Israel professor employed by a local community college allegedly pushed him during an argument. At Cornell University in upstate New York, a student threatened to rape and kill Jewish female students and “shoot up” the campus’ Hillel center. In a suburb outside Cleveland, Ohio, a group of vandals desecrated graves at a Jewish cemetery. At Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious university, a faculty group shared an antisemitic cartoon depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David dangling two men of color from a noose.
Other outrages were expressive but subtle. In November, large numbers of people traveling to attend the “March for Israel” in Washington, DC either could not show up or were forced to scramble last second and final alternative transportation because numerous bus drivers allegedly refused to transport them there. Hundreds of American Jews from Detroit, for example, were left stranded at Dulles Airport, according to multiple reports. At Yale University, a campus newspaper came under fire for removing from a student’s column what it called “unsubstantiated claims” of Hamas raping Israeli women, marking a rare occasion in which the publication openly doubted reports of sexual assault.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Police Stop Anti-Zionist Agitators From Accessing Florida University President’s Home as Students Revolt Nationwide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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