Columbia University suspends anti-Israel groups SJP, JVP for violating school policies

[EllieBC]

Columbia University is suspending two anti-Israel groups — Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) — as official student groups through the end of the fall semester, the school’s senior executive vice president Gerald Rosberg announces in a statement.

“This decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated university policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation,” Rosberg says.

More: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/columbia-university-suspends-anti-israel-groups-sjp-jvp-for-violating-school-policies/

[EllieBC]

1. Statement From Gerald Rosberg, Chair of the Special Committee on Campus Safety

Found here: https://news.columbia.edu/news/statement-gerald-rosberg-chair-special-committee-campus-safety

Columbia University is suspending Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) as official student groups through the end of the fall term. This decision was made after the two groups repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events, culminating in an unauthorized event Thursday afternoon that proceeded despite warnings and included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.

Suspension means the two groups will not be eligible to hold events on campus or receive University funding. Lifting the suspension will be contingent on the two groups demonstrating a commitment to compliance with University policies and engaging in consultations at a group leadership level with University officials.

Like all student groups, SJP and JVP are required to abide by University policies and procedures. This ensures both the safety of our community and that core University activities can be conducted without disruption. During this especially charged time on our campus, we are strongly committed to giving space to student groups to participate in debate, advocacy, and protest. This relies on community members abiding by the rules and cooperating with University administrators who have a duty to ensure the safety of everyone in our community.

Gerald Rosberg
Senior Executive Vice President of the University and Chair, Special Committee on Campus Safety

[Sympthsical]

2. Wonder what the final straw was there

They're both egregiously antisemitic groups - they're proud of it.

And universities have been extremely tolerant of antisemitism.

So for the ban hammer to come down, that's interesting.

[Celerity]

4. In wake of war, leftist 'self-hating Jews' find a voice (The Times of Israel - 27 August 2014)

With attention-getting civil disobedience tactics, Jewish Voice for Peace is increasingly loved by unaffiliated US Jews — and loathed by the Jewish establishment

https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-wake-of-war-leftist-self-hating-jews-find-a-voice/



A packed hall at Anyplace University. The audience, lulled into a syntactic stupor by the lecturer’s academic drone, is unprepared for the evening’s surprise performance. Suddenly, a small group of activists jump from their seats. While one member films the ensuing chaos on his smartphone, the others brandish banners and take the podium to usurp the microphone and shout anti-occupation soundbites.

A quick exit — or ejection — from the hall follows. And another potentially viral YouTube video is quickly posted. Love it or loathe it, in using what some call “guerrilla” tactics to dissent from mainstream Jewry’s pro-Israel stance, far leftist activist group Jewish Voice for Peace is reportedly experiencing unprecedented growth since the start of Operation Protective Edge.



Whether staging a “die-in” in front of Hewlett-Packard‘s offices, storming US senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein’s offices, holding a public street performance of a human black-clad blockade outside NY’s Jewish Federation offices, or organizing pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli marches attended by tens of thousands, JVP is on the forefront of the leftist critique of Israel.

In the past two months of military operations in Gaza, the organization’s e-list has grown 37 percent and Facebook likes have more than tripled to upwards of 188,000 — “more than any other Jewish group working on this issue.” Twitter followers have also tripled to more than 34,000, and new chapters are forming in 18 cities, “representing 45% growth from our existing total of 40,” says Ari Wohlfeiler, the New York-based Jewish Voice of Peace development director.

snip

[Sympthsical]

6. I'll take the ADL's word for it

Maybe go after an antisemite once in awhile.

For balance's sake if nothing else.

[Celerity]

7. 'Maybe go after an antisemite once in awhile.'

What a dodgy, condescending comment.



I expected better from you, but I guess I was in error.

That article (the title of which was 'In wake of war, leftist ‘self-hating Jews’ find a voice') examining JVP was hardly a laudatory billet-doux , but apparently your mileage varies.......... a lot.

Brandeis University Prof. Ilan Troen is no fan of JVP, whom he calls “self-appointed saints with no mass following.”

“If you’ve ever dealt with the JVP, they themselves are a semi-terrorist group, promoting the disruption of free speech and the inability of others to conduct public discourse.”

He was personally twice interrupted during lectures, at Brandeis and at the University of California, Irvine.

“It is an intolerant extremist group masking itself under the banner of universalism,” says Troen, who heads Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies.

The author, Amanda Borschel-Dan, is now The Times of Israel's Deputy Editor.

[Sympthsical]

8. Here's the thing

I come here and spend time articulating my own thoughts and arguments for discussion and debate. What I don't do is barrage people with copy and paste in lieu of that interaction. I get a lot of homework from my professors. I do not seek - nor have the time - for more, especially after I've presented my own work. It's like reading a paper that is all citations being presented as individual work. Why? No one's going to read it. We can all cherry pick from google as we wish.

Second, if someone is dead quiet about rampant racism - doesn't whisper a word when people are under constant racist assault - and only chimes in to pick at people calling that racism out, I'm going to start wondering. I may even start making some inferences and assumptions.

Don't worry. There is error all around. I'm content with the fact I call out the things wrong I find with Israel and Islamophobia when I see it as well as being vigilant about the rise in antisemitism in America.

I thought I'd have more company in that in spaces and with people who spend so much time announcing how not bigoted they are. Well.

I don't know which is worse, the surprise or the disappointment. Although, I feel like the surprise is my own fault more than anyone else's. What did I expect from that ideology in the end? The writing's been on the wall for as long as I've been an adult.

[betsuni]

9. +1

[Celerity]

10. surely you are not trying to apply this part to me:

Second, if someone is dead quiet about rampant racism - doesn't whisper a word when people are under constant racist assault - and only chimes in to pick at people calling that racism out, I'm going to start wondering. I may even start making some inferences and assumptions.

Absolutely puzzling if you are.

I have constantly called out racism (sometimes augmented with references to the racism I have experienced in my 27 years on this mortal coil as a mixed race black human who has lived in multiple nations) since I joined this board in summer 2018. Same for homophobia (being a lesbian myself), and also misogyny (being a cis female myself).

I live in a county (Sweden) that has a large percentage of Muslims, many of them radical, anti-semitic haters who either have the potential for violence or have actually engaged into anti-semitic violence, whether here or abroad.

I have not, nor do I intend to, join in the anti-Israel protests here as I do not share AT ALL the the feeling (that many of protestors carry in their hearts and minds) that Israel (and all Jews in general for the truly radical ones) should be erased from the planet.

Not only that, but my wife and I have a standing offer to two uni students (2 Israeli young women here from the Tel Aviv area, studying for economic degrees, one of whom I happened to tutor a couple of years ago) to come and stay with us here in inner Stockholm if they continue to feel unsafe (they live together in Södertälje, a hotbed of hatred of Israel and Jews in certain parts) in their flat. They are close to taking us up on the offer. They both detest Netanyahu and the Likud types, btw, but are not at all anti zionists either. They hate Trump like we all do as well (partially, but absolutely not fully due to one of their parents losing their job in Tel Aviv when Trump moved the American embassy to Arnona, in Jerusalem).

I grew up in London (as you know), with a shedload of wonderful Arabs and/or Muslims as friends, but I also saw the anti-semitism flow from many outside of my in-group. I lost a good Arab Muslim friend (he was a bit of a mentor to me but I could no longer countenance his increasingly vitriolic anti Israeli stances) over the Labour anti-semitic dross.

I also have had and do have many close acquaintances and/or friends who were Jewish as well, more than a few of them who are Israeli. Hell, I myself am both part Sephardic Portuguese Jewish and part Lebanese Arab (both from my mum's side). I am innately intertwined in all this at multiple genetic, familial, professional, and personal association (friends, acquaintances, and surrounding humans) levels.

[Mossfern]

3. I'd take that to mean

that they were going to lose a bunch of funding.

[EllieBC]

5. That's what I think.

And I couldn’t care less. You support groups that lead to Jewish students being harassed? Donors should withhold donations.