NOVANEWS
The growing campaign to criminalize pro-justice Israeli-Palestinian campus
activism and even thought has come to UC Hastings.
The Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the San
Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council are probably
crowing over their successful effort to get UC Hastings Law school to distance
itself from a March 24 conference devoted to the legal rights of Palestinians called
“Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?”
(Read an excellent piece on the events by Lisa Hajjar over at Jadaliyya.)
But the truth is that their efforts to stop–in the name of Jews– a conference promoting
legal and human rights for an oppressed people is a profound embarrassment to any of us
who consider ourselves part of any Jewish community.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in an email to supporters, JCRC head Doug
Kahn called the conference, which featured an:
impressive range of human rights lawyers and professors from leading law schools,
“anti-Israel”. (The conference was organized by the brilliant and highly regarded legal
scholar George Bisharat whose primary crime seems to be that he is Palestinian.) Kahn
said the JCRC and the ADL, plus the American Jewish Committee met privately with UC
Hasting leaders days before the Hastings’ Board of Directors decided at a
closed-door, emergency meeting to “take all steps necessary to remove the UC Hastings
name and brand” from the conference. This included canceling a planned welcoming talk
by dean and chancellor Frank Wu.
But the pressure didn’t just come from these groups.
Another campaigner against the conference was the prolific anti-free speech crusader,
UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who
infamously led a successful effort to cancel a UC Santa Cruz speaking engagement by
Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who wanted to talk about the negative impact of
militarism on Israeli society. She said that allowing such a talk to happen on campus
created the same intimidating environment for Jewish students that a noose created for
African American students. (The peace activists were not amused. )
Benjamin, building on
longtime and successful efforts of the Zionist Organization of America to get the US
Department of Education to reinterpret the Civil Rights Act so that it could be used
to stop pro-justice Israeli-Palestinian activism, recently filed a nearly 30 page complaint
about anti-Semitism at UC Santa Cruz dwelling almost entirely on programming related
to Israel and Palestine. The Office of Civil rights opened an investigation based on her
complaint, and in asharply worded letter to UC Hastings’ Wu , which she ccd to every
Jewish pro-occupation group she could think of, she threatened the same including the
possible withdrawal of federal funds.
The pressure campaign also succeeded in getting the Cummings Foundation to withdraw
funding for the conference, though the ADL continued to bitterly complain that attendees
could still earn higher education legal credits and that the UC Hastings logo hadn’t been
removed from materials fast enough.
Meanwhile, advocates for legal rights for Palestinians are likely writing private thank you
notes to Kahn and company for politicizing an entirely new group of students, administr-
ators and academics who were profoundly ticked off by such a clumsy McCarthyite attempt
to use far-right talking points to smear lawyers and police thought in an academic setting.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the UC Hastings’ board decision to yield to the
external pressure campaign produced few good feelings:
The directors’ action dismayed Hastings’ faculty. Nearly all of its tenured professors
signed a letter to the board last week saying that academic freedom includes providing
forums for controversial topics, and that the attempt to disavow the conference
“undermines our commitment to maintaining both the college’s fiscal viability and its
high standards.”
Way to go Rossmore-Benjamin, ADL, AJC and JCRC! Next time you all shout anti-Semitism!
in a crowded room, I’m sure we can REALLY count on these folks (not) to come running for
help.
Presumably, while the ADL, AJC and JCRC insist on perpetuating the myth that such
embarrassing moves represent the will of the Jewish community, they would have absolutely
no trouble with a conference on the legal rights of the Israeli government to build settlements
on Palestinian land. Because that is exactly what they stand for when they take these actions.
The only word for the growing anti-human rights campaigns driven by old-school Jewish
organizations is Shandah, shame.
activism and even thought has come to UC Hastings.
The Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the San
Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council are probably
crowing over their successful effort to get UC Hastings Law school to distance
itself from a March 24 conference devoted to the legal rights of Palestinians called
“Litigating Palestine: Can Courts Secure Palestinian Rights?”
(Read an excellent piece on the events by Lisa Hajjar over at Jadaliyya.)
But the truth is that their efforts to stop–in the name of Jews– a conference promoting
legal and human rights for an oppressed people is a profound embarrassment to any of us
who consider ourselves part of any Jewish community.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, in an email to supporters, JCRC head Doug
Kahn called the conference, which featured an:
impressive range of human rights lawyers and professors from leading law schools,
“anti-Israel”. (The conference was organized by the brilliant and highly regarded legal
scholar George Bisharat whose primary crime seems to be that he is Palestinian.) Kahn
said the JCRC and the ADL, plus the American Jewish Committee met privately with UC
Hasting leaders days before the Hastings’ Board of Directors decided at a
closed-door, emergency meeting to “take all steps necessary to remove the UC Hastings
name and brand” from the conference. This included canceling a planned welcoming talk
by dean and chancellor Frank Wu.
But the pressure didn’t just come from these groups.
Another campaigner against the conference was the prolific anti-free speech crusader,
UC Santa Cruz Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who
infamously led a successful effort to cancel a UC Santa Cruz speaking engagement by
Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who wanted to talk about the negative impact of
militarism on Israeli society. She said that allowing such a talk to happen on campus
created the same intimidating environment for Jewish students that a noose created for
African American students. (The peace activists were not amused. )
Benjamin, building on
longtime and successful efforts of the Zionist Organization of America to get the US
Department of Education to reinterpret the Civil Rights Act so that it could be used
to stop pro-justice Israeli-Palestinian activism, recently filed a nearly 30 page complaint
about anti-Semitism at UC Santa Cruz dwelling almost entirely on programming related
to Israel and Palestine. The Office of Civil rights opened an investigation based on her
complaint, and in asharply worded letter to UC Hastings’ Wu , which she ccd to every
Jewish pro-occupation group she could think of, she threatened the same including the
possible withdrawal of federal funds.
The pressure campaign also succeeded in getting the Cummings Foundation to withdraw
funding for the conference, though the ADL continued to bitterly complain that attendees
could still earn higher education legal credits and that the UC Hastings logo hadn’t been
removed from materials fast enough.
Meanwhile, advocates for legal rights for Palestinians are likely writing private thank you
notes to Kahn and company for politicizing an entirely new group of students, administr-
ators and academics who were profoundly ticked off by such a clumsy McCarthyite attempt
to use far-right talking points to smear lawyers and police thought in an academic setting.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the UC Hastings’ board decision to yield to the
external pressure campaign produced few good feelings:
The directors’ action dismayed Hastings’ faculty. Nearly all of its tenured professors
signed a letter to the board last week saying that academic freedom includes providing
forums for controversial topics, and that the attempt to disavow the conference
“undermines our commitment to maintaining both the college’s fiscal viability and its
high standards.”
Way to go Rossmore-Benjamin, ADL, AJC and JCRC! Next time you all shout anti-Semitism!
in a crowded room, I’m sure we can REALLY count on these folks (not) to come running for
help.
Presumably, while the ADL, AJC and JCRC insist on perpetuating the myth that such
embarrassing moves represent the will of the Jewish community, they would have absolutely
no trouble with a conference on the legal rights of the Israeli government to build settlements
on Palestinian land. Because that is exactly what they stand for when they take these actions.
The only word for the growing anti-human rights campaigns driven by old-school Jewish
organizations is Shandah, shame.
