Monday, January 23, 2017

How inclusive are American universities?‎ - Aviva Slomich




by Aviva Slomich

Will the social justice warriors who scream against cultural appropriation come to the ‎defense of their Jewish classmates?

What should be considered hateful behavior on American university campuses?‎ Using ethnic or religious slurs, as are heard on many campuses across the U.S.?‎

Intimidating students who don't agree with you to such a degree that they are afraid to attend ‎classes, as happened at the University of Michigan, or feel the need to transfer to another university, as happened to former Graduate Students Association president Milan Chatterjee at UCLA?‎

Creating videos that portray a particular ethnic group as monsters?

Supporting restarting the intifadas that have murdered hundreds of innocent men, women, ‎and children from various ethnic groups?‎

Sharing Nazi propaganda on a student organization's website, and selling shirts with the terrorist Leila Khaled emblazoned on them, as happened at Vassar College?‎

Hijacking every liberal cause on campus to target one ethnic group?‎

If you've answered yes to any or all of the above questions, then it should be clear: Students for Justice in Palestine is a hate group. All the above examples ‎have been orchestrated on U.S. campuses by that group or its affiliated organizations.‎

Does this mean every member of SJP is a hateful extremist? No. Does it ‎mean every organization that sponsors an event with SJP or co-signs a petition with SJP is a ‎hate group? No.‎

What it does mean is that every university that permits an SJP chapter to register as a recognized ‎student organization is abetting hate speech. Every group that ‎sponsors an event with SJP or co-signs a petition with the organization is legitimizing its hateful messages. ‎Every professor who serves as a faculty adviser, officially permitting SJP to ‎spread its hateful rhetoric on campus, is responsible for the manipulation of the ‎naive students who join SJP, thinking they are fighting for a just cause and against hate.‎

At the university level, we assume that students receive information from various ‎sources, and that their professors are guiding them to ask the right questions, to  follow no ‎one blindly, and to try their best to get an even-handed account on all issues that matter to them by ‎looking to differing perspectives.‎

That's not happening.‎

Instead, professors are taking advantage of their impressionable students, ‎who look to them as omnipotent mentors. With social media and Google filtering content by popularity, and with most millennials tending to follow ‎those who share the same opinions, it's almost absurd to think that university students are getting a well-balanced and unbiased education. ‎

One result of this is a spike in campus anti-Semitism.‎

At Brown University, Janet Mock, a transgender, black, native Hawaiian activist, was pressured ‎to cancel an event because Hillel, a Jewish institution, was sponsoring her talk.‎

Stanford alumna Molly Horwitz didn't receive a bid for Student Senate from the Students of ‎Color Association because she was Jewish and was thus suspected of having "duel ‎loyalties."‎

At the University of California, Santa Cruz, Daniel Bernstein was told that he must abstain on a ‎BDS resolution because he was "elected to the student government with a Jewish agenda." ‎

Recently, after a class at the University of California, Berkeley was suspended for a short period of time due to its ‎extreme bias on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the campus saw an outbreak of anti-Jewish literature.‎

The cases spark many questions. ‎

Will the social justice warriors who scream against cultural appropriation come to the ‎defense of their Jewish classmates? Will those who chant for lower tuition fees stamp out anti-‎Semitic absurd claims that Jews and Zionists are the reason for the high costs? Will feminists ‎jump to the side of the future Molly Horwitzes and Janet Mocks? Will those who battle Islamophobia protest until anti-Semites are kicked off ‎campus? Will LGBT activists support the only country in ‎the Middle East where gays feel safe? 

Lastly, will those who honestly want to help find a peaceful resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict denounce those who support the murder of innocents or will they trample on ‎those who speak for the peace of all peoples: Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs and Jews?‎


Aviva Slomich is international campus director for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America.

Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=18229

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Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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