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Wesleyan University Brokers Deal to End Anti-Israel Encampment, Conceding to Key Demands
Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, has agreed on terms for ending a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had lived in for nearly a month, the school’s president, Michael Roth, announced.
According to details of the agreement shared by SJP, no one will be punished for violating school rules to hold the protest, a condition on which the group insisted in its original list of demands. Wesleyan has also agreed to create scholarships for “displaced” Palestinian students, form a working group comprising anti-Zionists which will “review” the possibility of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, disclose its investments in what SJP called the “military industrial complex” and Israeli companies — a provision of the deal the school has already satisfied —and consider investment recommendations by an anti-Zionist group of students and faculty.
“Later this month, representatives from the pro-Palestinian protest will meet members of the Investment Committee,” Roth said in a statement issued on Friday. “In the fall, the Committee for Investor Responsibility (CIR) — a standing representative body of students, faculty, alumni, and staff — will be able to propose changes to the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework for investment/divestment for consideration by the board at its fall meeting.”
SJP openly disputed Roth’s account of the agreement on Tuesday, denying that it stipulated their abstaining from staging protests at the school’s upcoming commencement ceremonies. Roth said, “The protesters agreed not to disrupt reunion and commencement events. Individuals who refuse to comply will be suspended and face legal action,” to which SJP responded by accusing him of communicating threats.
“Wesleyan President Michael Roth wrote that we agreed to not [sic] disrupt reunion and commencement,” SJP wrote on social media. “This is a lie. There is no language in our agreement preventing protesting this weekend, and we would never compromise our right to protest Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.”
The end of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Wesleyan came several weeks after Roth chastised the protesters for vandalizing school property and threatened the perpetrators with “suspension, expulsion, and legal charges.” He did not, in Friday’s statement, disclose the status of the university’s investigations into those acts.
Wesleyan is not the first school to accede to key demands put forward by anti-Zionist protesters. Indeed, campus antisemitism expert and founder of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that the role of faculty in forcing similar outcomes at other colleges needs to be scrutinized.
“These developments are not organic,” Rossman-Benjamin explained, noting that a highly esteemed Wesleyan professor — J. Kēhaulani Kauanui — is an active proponent of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. In 2013, Kauanui was the “architect” of an American Studies Association resolution to adopt BDS, which ultimately passed, and she is the principal founder of Wesleyan University’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter.
“In fact, she was teaching a course this semester on Anarchy in America and ‘shared her expertise’ with the encampment students a couple of weeks ago,” Rossman-Benjamin continued. “In addition, two Wesleyan faculty leaders — chair of Wesleyan’s Educational Policy Committee (EPC) Joseph Weiss and committee member Margot Weiss — are also founding members of the school’s FJP chapter, which has committed itself to endorsing and promoting academic BDS. Not surprisingly, according to the agreement with student protesters, the EPC gets to nominate three faculty to a working group which will determine the fate of Wesleyan’s study abroad programs in Israel.”
Rossman-Benjamin warned that these professors proclaim their anti-Zionist views in the classroom, radicalizing students while introducing them to antisemitic ideologies and others which trample academic freedom.
“It undoubtedly took lots of faculty clout to ‘convince’ Roth — who has been a vocal opponent of academic BDS, calling it a ‘repugnant attack on academic freedom’ — to cave to student demands, demands that directly harm and violate the rights of Jewish students, not Israeli students or Israeli faculty, but US students,” she said. “Not only is this faculty behavior wholly and shamefully unprofessional and antithetical to the educational and scholarly mission of the university, it is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. These same faculty who cry free speech and academic freedom every chance they get have dedicated themselves to shutting down the free speech and academic freedom of their students and colleagues who want to study in or about Israel, or who identify with the Jewish state. This abuse must be exposed and stopped.”
Earlier this month, Northwestern University in Illinois agreed to establish a new scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contact potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, and create a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim students. It also agreed to form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.
Days later, Brown University in Rhode Island announced that it will hold a vote on divesting from companies linked to Israel in exchange for the students disassembling their encampment and abstaining from holding more protests until the school’s commencement on May 26, according to the Brown Daily Herald. The student newspaper added, however, that the university will not “at this time” drop criminal charges filed against 41 students who illegally occupied an administrative building in December.
At least one school president, Mike Lee of Sonoma State University, has been disciplined for agreeing to boycott and divest from Israel. After announcing his committing to subject “all” the university’s financial endeavors to SJP’s scrutiny, implement a full academic boycott of Israel — including shutting down study abroad programs in the Jewish state — create a “Palestinian” curriculum within the department of ethnic studies, and issue a statement calling for a “permanent cease-fire in Gaza,” the California State University (CSU) system, of which Sonoma State University is a member, said the next day that Lee was placed on administrative leave.
CSU chancellor Mildred García described his actions as “insubordination.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Wesleyan University Brokers Deal to End Anti-Israel Encampment, Conceding to Key Demands first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election
Both Democratic and Republican parties are scrambling to galvanize Jewish support on the eve of the 2024 U.S. Presidential election.
In what is projected to potentially be the closest presidential election in over 20 years, both parties believe that Jewish voters could play a major role in determining the election’s outcome. As the race for the White House enters the final hours, Democrats and Republicans have deployed some of their most vocal pro-Israel allies in a last-minute pitch to the Jewish community.
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) visited Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to court Jewish voters who feel alienated by Rep. Summer Lee’s (D-PA) unrelenting anti-Israel rhetoric. Torres sought to assuage fears that Vice President Kamala Harris harbors similar views on Israel as Lee.
In addition, Torres defended the Biden administration’s record on Israel, arguing that a potential Harris administration would continue to strengthen ties with the Jewish state and mitigate any threats from Iran.
“I joined the Harris campaign in showing solidarity with the Pittsburgh Jewish community, which has been profoundly shaken by both the Tree of Life mass shooting and the post-October 7th outbreak of antisemitism,” Torres told Jewish Insider.
“I did my best to reassure the Jewish community that the Democratic Party — despite the background noise on Twitter, Twitch, and TikTok — has been and will remain fundamentally pro-Israel and that the Vice President herself falls squarely within the pro-Israel consensus that has historically governed American politics, rejecting both the [a]nti-Zionism of the far left and the America-[F]irst isolationism of the far right,” Torres continued.
On the conservative side of the aisle, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) filmed a video with the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) in support of former President Donald Trump.
“This is the most important election cycle in our lifetime, and as we have seen on college campuses, the rot of antisemitism is real in the Democratic Party.
She accused the Biden White House of betraying Israel and the Jewish people. She lambasted the Biden administration for their failure “to combat antisemitism”
“It is Republicans who have always – and will always – stand strongly with Israel, and stand up and clearly condemn antisemitism,” Stefanik said.
While serving on the Education and the Workforce Committee, Stefanik has lambasted administrators of elite universities for their mealy-mouthed condemnations of antisemitism and tolerance of anti-Jewish violence on campus. Last December, Stefanik engaged in a fiery back-and-forth with the presidents of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over a purported antisemitic campus atmospheres.
Early indicators suggest that Harris is expected to win a smaller share of the Jewish vote than previous Democratic candidates. Jewish voters, highly-concentrated in important areas such as the suburbs of Detroit and Philadelphia, could prove critical in Harris’s bid to win the White House.
Liberal CNN commentator Van Jones cautioned Monday that Harris has suffered an erosion of Jewish support in the Philadelphia metro.
Jones said that he’s “worried” that the “Jewish vote in the suburban areas” of Philadelphia have dramatically soured on Harris.
“Biden won the Jewish vote [in suburban Philadephia] by 70%” Jones said, referencing the 2020 election.
“Some polls show Kamala at 50-50” among Jewish voters in suburban Philadelphia, Jones lamented.
The post Democrats, Republicans Make Final Push for Jewish Voters on Eve of US Presidential Election first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’
In a gentrifying West Toronto neighbourhood full of signs advocating for Black lives, transgender youth and the unhoused, the clerk’s refusal to hang up a sign of my own design […]
The post Quiet antisemitism in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village leaves a resident wondering how this area is considered ‘progressive’ appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large
Orthodox Jews in New York City are again frustrated with a lack of law and order in the Five Boroughs following another attack against a member of their community, this time a child.
According to multiple accounts, an African American male on Monday morning smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The incident was the second known assault on an Orthodox Jew in the area in less than a week.
“He was riding his bike between Winthrop and Clarkson, near the hospital, when a man slapped him. He arrived at school shaken, and the school contacted his parents and Crown Heights Shomrim [a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and also serves as a neighborhood watch group],” Yaacov Behrman, a local Jewish leader, posted on X/Twitter.
Behrman — a liaison for Chabad Headquarters, the main New York base of the Hasidic movement — added that the boy was filing a police report.
A teacher of the young man, Yisrael Eliashiv, added that the assailant, who remains at large, “smacked [the boy] across the face for no reason other than hate. Thankfully, he got away before anything else happened.” The teacher then noted that his student did not initially think to notify the police because he doubted the attacker would receive any punishment.
“I’m fuming to the point I’ve got a migraine … You have kids who are 13 or 14 and have grown up with the attitude of ‘if you get assaulted in the street, just take it because nothing is gonna be done.’ Those are the symptoms not of a sick but of a dead and decaying society,” Eliashiv wrote.
Crown Heights, home to a large Orthodox Jewish population, has seen numerous antisemitic hate crimes in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face.
Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
Monday’s assault came just days after an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face as he was walking through downtown Brooklyn last week.
These latest attacks on the Orthodox Jewish community continue a trend.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Algemeiner review of New York City Police Department (NYPD) hate crimes data, 385 antisemitic hate crimes have struck the New York City Jewish community since last October, when the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas perpetrated its Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, unleashing a wave of anti-Jewish hatred unlike any seen in the post-World War II era.
Beyond New York, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US spiked to a record high last year, and American Jews were the most targeted of any religious group in the country, according to a report published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in September.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Boy Assaulted on Way to School in New York City, Assailant Remain at Large first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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