Photo from Flickr. A second instructor at the University of Michigan has denied writing a letter of recommendation for a student to study abroad in Israel, according to The Washington Post.
On Oct. 1, junior Jake Secker, an economics major and entrepreneurial minor, asked teaching assistant Lucy Peterson to write him a letter of recommendation. Peterson at first committed to writing the letter, only to decline when she learned that Secker wanted to study in Israel.
“Along with numerous other academics in the US and elsewhere, I have pledged myself to a boycott of Israeli institutions as a way of showing solidarity with Palestine,” Peterson wrote. “Please know that this decision is not about you as a student or a person, and I would be happy to write a recommendation for you if you end up applying to other programs.”
Secker met with LSA Associate Social Sciences Dean Rosario Caballo on Oct. 5, where she offered to write him the letter of recommendation and pledged that “some sort of change” would come.
Similarly, on Sept. 5, professor John Cheney-Lippold told junior Abigail Ingber, a Literature, Science and Arts major, that he couldn’t write her the letter because “many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel.”
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement that the university needs to take action because such academic boycotts “have a chilling effect on Jewish and pro-Israel students on campus.”
“We are strong supporters of academic freedom. Certainly everyone, including professors, has a right to openly express their views of the policies of the elected Israeli government,” Greenblatt said. “But this should not be at the expense of students seeking to broaden their academic experiences.”
Greenblatt added, “These professors indicated they had no problem writing recommendations for students who might study in any other country in the world. Singling out Israel alone among all the nations of the world as worthy of boycott, according to the State Department working definition, potentially crosses the line from criticism of Israel to anti-Semitism.”
The university has previously said that they are staunchly opposed to an academic boycott of any kind; Rick Fitzgerald, the assistant vice president for public affairs at the University of Michigan told the Post that he couldn’t comment on the matter of Secker without his permission.
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