[Jewish] Fwd: campus tension -- We are not alone!

[Holly Snyder]

>"The debate is distorted, poisoning the academic environment."
>
>                 ------- HF: HILLEL-FACULTY -------
>
>Mideast conflict boosts tensions at U.S. colleges
>         Schools fear rise in harassment, stifling of debate
>
>By Ron Grossman, Chicago Tribune, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2002
>
>When the University of Chicago brought in counselors from the
>Anti-Defamation League this fall to train dormitory advisers in
>sensitivity to ethnic and religious minorities, it was one of many signs
>that another front in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has opened on
>America's college campuses.
>
>The highly unusual move came after allegations that supporters of Israel
>had been harassed on the Chicago campus and reflects similar concerns
>reported by Jewish students and professors nationwide. Meanwhile, some
>scholars of the Islamic world said they also have become targets of
>intimidation.
>
>Although most of the skirmishes have been rhetorical rather than
>physical, university leaders are increasingly concerned that the Middle
>East has become such a bitterly charged topic that legitimate debate is
>distorted or stifled, poisoning the academic environment.
>
>Last week, more than 300 college and university presidents issued a
>statement through the American Jewish Committee saying they feared that
>hostility over Israel threatened to erode the tradition of classroom
>civility and rational discourse upon which scholarship and learning
>depend.
>
>Indeed, on one North American campus, the subject virtually has been put
>off limits.
>
>Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to speak at
>Concordia University in Montreal on Sept. 9, but his appearance was
>canceled after several thousand pro-Palestinian demonstrators laid siege
>to the lecture hall. Tear gas was used to subdue protesters who broke
>windows and stormed the building, and a number of students were
>arrested.
>
>Declaring that the university needed a cooling-off period, Rector
>Frederick Lowy proclaimed a moratorium on events relating to the Middle
>East, including "public speeches, rallies, exhibits and information
>tables."
>
>The university presidents' statement expressed concern over how Jewish
>students and supporters of Israel have been treated in recent months,
>citing various threats and defacement of property.
>
>On the University of Colorado's Boulder campus, for example, a sukkah,
>or festive holiday booth, set up by the Jewish student organization
>Hillel was defaced with swastikas. Anti-Semitic graffiti were scribbled
>on a Jewish fraternity house.
>
>But the leaders also said something more insidious is occurring.
>
>"We are concerned that recent examples of classroom and on-campus debate
>have crossed the line into intimidation and hatred, neither of which
>have any place on university campuses," the statement said.
>
>At Harvard University this fall, President Lawrence Summers publicly
>noted that professors and students have a perfect right to question
>Israel's policies. Discussing thorny issues, after all, is at the heart
>of what universities are about.
>
>But too often, he said, that criticism is now betraying simple
>prejudice. "Profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding
>support in progressive intellectual communities," Summers said.
>
>Activists feel like outcasts
>
>Jewish student activists said the kind of campus climate Summers
>described-- which includes growing demands that universities divest
>their portfolios of financial holdings in Israel--has made them pariahs
>while silencing others.
>
>"It has become fashionable to be extremely anti-Israel on campus," said
>Talia Magnas, a recent graduate of the University of Chicago who pressed
>the school's administration on the issue. "I felt that by publicly
>supporting Israel, I took myself out of the academic discourse."
>
>The Council on American-Islamic Relations said it has received
>relatively few allegations--about a dozen--of discrimination against
>Muslim students and professors in the last year. One student at Central
>Missouri State University alleged that after a heated classroom
>exchange, a university administrator called the Muslim student
>"un-American."
>
>But John Woods, director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the
>University of Chicago, said some Jewish activists have unfairly targeted
>scholars, assuming that someone who studies Arabic is automatically
>anti-Israel and potentially anti-Semitic.
>
>Woods particularly objects to the Web site www.campus-watch.org, where
>scholars who back Israel have posted notices since September about
>professors and university departments considered anti-Israel. Thinking
>the enterprise smacks of McCarthyism, Woods recently sent an e-mail
>alerting colleagues to what he considers an intimidation campaign.
>
>Amy Newhall, executive director of the Middle East Studies Association,
>noted that Campus Watch urges students to report on their professors,
>potentially discouraging lecturers from talking freely--especially those
>not protected by tenure.
>
>"Now, professors have to worry that someone is secretly monitoring
>them," Newhall said.
>
>Campus conflict over the Middle East began to worsen toward the end of
>the previous academic year. In May, when the Hillel chapter at San
>Francisco State University attempted to hold a peace demonstration, San
>Francisco police officers had to escort Jewish students off campus after
>a threatening crowd surrounded them. A similar clash at the University
>of California at Berkeley, on Holocaust Remembrance Day, led to the
>arrest of 79 pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
>
>The Berkeley administration also felt obliged to take a hand in the case
>of a controversial freshman course offering, "English 1A: The Politics
>and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance." The last line in the course
>description read, "Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other
>sections"--implying that dissent from a pro-Palestinian position would
>not be tolerated.
>
>The English department later acknowledged "a lapse in oversight of its
>reading and composition courses," and the university stressed that
>students are not excluded from any courses on the basis of political
>persuasion.
>
>`Reduced to silence'
>
>Some Jewish student activists at the University of Chicago alleged that
>a similar pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli bias has crept into course
>offerings there. They said the university doesn't offer a course in the
>history of Israel, which, they said, only shows up as a "problem" in
>courses dealing with other Middle Eastern countries.
>
>"The Israeli perspective has been reduced to silence," said Yehuda
>Halper, a third-year student active in the campus group Chicago Friends
>of Israel.
>
>When an alumnus took the issue to the administration, Provost Richard
>Saller took a hands-off approach. "The university's long-standing policy
>does not call for the central administration to take an active role in
>presenting different views for the sake of balance," he wrote in a
>letter.
>
>Halper and other student activists also presented a list of other
>complaints, which prompted the invitation to the Anti-Defamation League
>to offer sensitivity training. Yet Saller said only a few of the
>students' allegations could be substantiated.
>
>"We have had a couple of incidents, in the form of defacing of posters,"
>Saller said. "In other cases, we were either unable to confirm them, or
>they were impossible to verify."
>
>Yet Woods said the campus has not been immune to the tensions other
>universities have experienced. Last spring, an Israeli student came into
>his office and broke down crying.
>
>"He said that another professor had equated Israelis with Nazis," Woods
>said. "I called a town meeting of the [Middle Eastern studies] center to
>discuss the need for civility."
>
>He added that the professor in question later left the university for
>unrelated reasons.
>
>University officials and Jewish students are now engaged in dialogue
>aimed at reducing tensions on campus.
>
>Similar motives inspired the college presidents' recent statement, said
>one of its principal organizers, Stephen Trachtenberg, president of
>George Washington University.
>
>"Those of us who are old enough to recall World War II," Trachtenberg
>said, "know that it's better to get into a defensive mode sooner rather
>than later."
>
>
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