Campus Watch Feb. 16, 2023

Rep. Josh Gottheimer Urges Education Dept. to “Expedite Rulemaking Efforts” In Light of GWU Antisemitism Allegations

Representative Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) wrote a letter to the Department of Education urging them to take action against George Washington University over allegations from StandWithUs that Assistant Professor of Psychology Lara Sheehi discriminated against Jewish and Zionist students in her class.

In the February 7 letter obtained by Jewish Insider, Gottheimer wrote that Sheehi, who is not named in the letter, also wrote “accusatory, hateful comments about Jewish students,” citing a February 3 piece she wrote for the anti-Israel website CounterPunch defending herself from the allegations in the complaint. “This is not an isolated incident. Recent trends show that now, more than ever, there is widespread belief in anti-Jewish tropes and Israel-focused antisemitism,” Gottheimer wrote. “A recent report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), noted that in 2021, 85% of Americans believe at least one antisemitic trope, compared to 61% found in 2019. ADL found that 40% of Americans at least slightly believe that Israel treats Palestinians like Nazis treated the Jews, and 18% of Americans shared they are uncomfortable spending time with a person who supports Israel.”

Gottheimer noted that a regulation codifying the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition keeps being delayed. “Our students deserve to be safe,” he wrote. “I respectfully ask that you expedite rulemaking efforts, as this important step in combating hate is long overdue.”

NY Congressional Delegation Denounces “Anti-Israel” State Standardized Test Questions

A New York congressional delegation sent letters to the state government questioning a couple of standardized test questions that are “anti-Israel.”

Jewish Insider (JI) reported that Representative Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) sent a letter  to New York State officials — as did a cadre of congressional Republicans — over one question saying that “the Holocaust” is the event that “most directly influenced” the changes in the 1947 United Nations partition plan and Israel’s borders in 1949 and 2017. The congressional members were also irked at another question saying that “Zionists and Jewish immigrants” were the “group [that] benefited the most from the changes.” Torres told JI that these test questions “play into the character assassination of Israel as an aggressor with ever-expanding borders, the settler-colonialist caricature” and “reduces Israel [to] nothing more than a response to the Holocaust. The notion that the movement for Jewish self-determination has no raison d’etre outside the Holocaust is as offensive as it is ahistorical.”

The New York State Department of Education told The New York Post that the questions have undergone several layers of vetting.

Chants of “Intifada Revolution” at Brandeis University

Video of students chanting “intifada revolution” at Brandeis University circulated on social media February 8.

Stop Antisemitism posted a video of the chanting to Twitter and then announced that they have filed “a formal letter of complaint to Brandeis University Pres. Liebowitz due to yesterday’s calls for violence against Jews on his campus Brandeis was founded as a safe haven for the Jewish people … We must never allow anyone to alter that!” they added.

StandWithUs CEO and Co-Founder Roz Rothstein similarly told The Daily Caller, “Dangerous calls for violence, which diminish the value of Jewish life and can’t help but make Jewish students feel unsafe on campus, should prompt administrations to strongly condemn such extremist calls for the elimination of one country in the world, which happens to be the only Jewish country in the world.”

CUNY Watchdog Says University’s Online Discrimination Portal “Enables” Antisemitism

Students and Faculty for Equality at the City University New York (SAFE CUNY) is accusing the university’s new antisemitism portal of “enabling” antisemitism rather than ameliorating it.

United With Israel reported that SAFE CUNY Professor Jeffrey Lax wrote in an email that “the portal does nothing to specifically combat antisemitism. All it does is create a mechanical process to collect ALL discrimination complaint for ALL protected classes (in the same way it had previously done manually). That’s perfectly fine, but it is dishonest to tout that as somehow combating the well-documented and widespread antisemitism problem at CUNY.” Lax added that while the portal does link to IHRA, it also provides a link to the Jerusalem Declaration of Antisemitism (JDA) that “among other things, defends ‘opposing Zionism as a form of nationalism’ and declares boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as ‘not, in and of themselves, antisemitic.’” Lax noted that the JDA definition of antisemitism is supported by the anti-Israel group Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

“The JDA seeks to reinterpret and define IHRA by people and organizations with an insidious and antisemitic agenda,” Lax wrote. “By including the JDA on its discrimination portal page, CUNY has legitimized that agenda.”