Campus Briefs
San Francisco Hate
Anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism erupt at San Francisco State
“Get out or we’ll kill you.” Not exactly words of peace. But, according to Seth Brysk, executive director of San Francisco Hillel Jewish Student Center, this is what students encountered at a “Peace in the Middle East Rally” at San Francisco State on May 7th.
At the end of the rally, Pro-Palestinian protesters ripped down and stomped on Israeli flags, shoved and spat on Hillel organizers, and yelled such derogatory comments as “Jews off our campus” and “Hitler did not finish the job.” San Francisco police had to be called to escort the Jewish students to the Hillel House.
The SF State Hillel had organized the demonstration in response to a General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) and Muslim Student Association (MSA)—sponsored rally last April titled “Genocide of the 21st Century,” and scheduled to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day. In preparation for the vehemently anti-Israel and anti-Jewish rally, students distributed flyers around campus with a picture of a baby and the caption, “Canned Palestinian Children Meat—Slaughtered According to Jewish Rites Under American License.”
Laurie Zoloth, director of the Jewish Studies Program at SF State wrote in a widely circulated letter, “This is not civic discourse, this is not free speech…this is the casual introduction of the medieval blood libel and virulent hatred smeared around our campus…”
Star Wars
Natalie Portman advocates for an accurate portrayal of Israeli society
Natalie Portman, an Israeli native and student at Harvard University, recently traded the intergalactic strife of her Star Wars films for a more territorial dispute.
Last spring, fellow Harvard student Faisal Chaudhry deplored US support of Israel’s “racist” and “colonial” policy in an opinion piece in The Harvard Crimson. Describing the conflict as “white Israeli soldiers” versus “the brown people they have dispossessed for decades,” Chaudhry concluded, “observers in the US need to question the policies of our own country.”
Portman responded with a letter to the Crimson. She wrote that Chaudhry’s description was a “distortion of the fact that most Israelis and Palestinians are indistinguishable physically.” Rather than a conflict of one “side” or “color,” contended Portman, “We must be ashamed of every act of violence and mourn every child as if they were our own. I pray for the safety of all those in the region and hope that we may someday use our unique human assets of language and empathy rather than military technology or propaganda to resolve this conflict.”
Tribe and Prejudice
Can a Jewish house divided against itself stand the heat?
Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi, a Jewish sorority at the University of California at Davis, has been inundated with scores of pledge applicants since finding fame as the setting for MTV’s hit reality show, Sorority Life. Trouble is most of these prospective members are not members of the tribe.
Sorority Life follows the booze-swilling, tabletop-dancing adventures of seven pledges living in lavish digs on MTV’s dollar. The rush to rush inspired by this pampered septet had the sorority’s suzerains baring their souls as well as their midriffs: “[We are] uneasy with the overwhelming amount of non-Jews who are pledging,” reads a statement from the sisters on MTV.com. An uneasy pledge committee questioned rushes about their religious affiliation.
Angry responses deluged MTV’s message boards. One rush chair’s comment—”Some of these girls aren’t right “—got her branded a “bitch.” Yet the sisterly inquisition had little effect—the new pledge class is mainly gentile.
Now the Sigmas must endeavor to preserve the house’s Jewish identity while rushing a majority of non-Jews. “All of our pledges have been eager to participate in our Jewish ceremonies without pressure to convert to Judaism,” the sorority insists in a fresh statement. But the Jewish faith seems to be all Greek to Candace, one of the show’s star-pledges, who, “felt like a dumbass” when she discovered that “they don’t believe that Jesus was God’s son.”
Sore over Suras
Tar-Heels caught in sticky religious freedom debate
A summer reading assignment of Koranic suras, or verses, selected to promote understanding of the Muslim world, has kindled an angry debate over religious and academic freedom at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Fox News commentators criticized the choice, the ACLU called it “constitutionally fishy,” and hate mail has piled up at Chancellor James Moeser’s door. One e-mail, cited in the The Daily Tar Heel, declared that Moeser is, “doing the work of Satan and will perish in the lake of fire.”
In July, the American Family Association filed a federal suit claiming a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. “The [university] should be ashamed of itself for forcing a religion on students that many will find not only offensive but totally opposed to their own religious views,” conservative Christian activist Terry Moffit told The New York Times.
But on August 19th, a federal appeals court ruled against the AFA, clearing the way for 3,500 freshmen to give their own verdicts. While student reaction was mostly positive, some objected to the reading. Freshman Casey Jennings told the Tar Heel, “Just because September 11 has made people more aware of different cultures doesn’t mean I have to be open to them.”
Jewish students party harder…
Who knew?
A recent UCLA study reports that 36% of Jewish freshmen party six or more hours per week vs. 29% of non-Jewish freshmen.
(Perhaps less surprising is that Jewish students also reported slightly higher levels of stress and intellectual confidence than their gentile peers.)
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