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This op-ed was co-published by New Voices and The Jewish Daily Forward. Last year, the author wrote a longer article, originally published by the Leviathan Jewish Journal, detailing the ongoing struggle over the Title VI Civil Rights complaint filed at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which can be read at New Voices.
Last spring the United States Office of Civil Rights opened an investigation into allegations of anti-Semitism at my school, University of California, Santa Cruz. The investigation was prompted by a Title VI complaint filed by my own Hebrew teacher, Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. She complains that UCSC has violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because it has failed to address what she alleges to be university-sponsored anti-Semitism. The investigation is a waste of time — but worse than that, it’s also damaging UCSC’s Jewish community. I have seen friendships fall apart during arguments over the investigation as this situation has turned Jew against Jew. So as a Jew and a Zionist, one of the very students Rossman-Benjamin claims to protect, I have a few complaints of my own.
School spirit goes viral as more and more college students have taken to (sometimes not so) gently ribbing their college or university on the internet. As NewVoices reported last week, memes, it seems, are everywhere. Israel’s favorability rating stays high [JTA] Some 71% of Americans said they viewed the country favorably, making it the eighth […]
I have a confession to make: My name is Arielle Wasserman and I am a doodler. It’s shameful, I know. It started young; you can go and look through my grade one notebooks- all meticulously filed away by my uber-organized mother- and see the proof in the pudding. The once pristine sheets are rendered unrecognizable, […]
NYPD tracked Muslim students, organizations [Columbia] Recent news that the New York Police Department willfully performed surveillance on Muslim student organizations in the name of anti-terrorism measures has been met with harsh criticism by many. In light of the fears this news may provoke, the Spectator, newspaper for Columbia College, unpacks the threat to free […]
In his response to my op-ed, Harpo Jaeger touches on the issue of Israel’s treatment of Judea and Samaria – better known today as “the disputed territories.” Jaeger alleges that “millions of Palestinians…live under occupation” and that their lives are “endangered by checkpoints, raids and searches.” I take issue with the allegation that millions of […]
The David Project has long been known as one of the most aggressive, acrimonious pro-Israel voices on campus. But their new report, “A Burning Campus” Rethinking Israel Advocacy at America’s Universities and Colleges,” is starting to change that reputation. Full of new strategies for combating what they see as destructive efforts to delegitimize Israel on campus, they hope the report will form the basis for a new unifying strategy for all on-campus Israel advocacy organizations. At its core is a complete 180: the idea that vigorously attacking “anti-Israelism” on campus is counterproductive.
David Bernstein was hired as the executive director of the David Project two years ago. I spoke with Bernstein yesterday. We went beyond the new report and touch on everything from the definition of pro-Israel to the upcoming Israeli Apartheid Week — and Bernstein talked about correcting common misconceptions about what Jewish campus life is like today.
Wilensky: After working at the American Jewish Committee for several years, what drew you to the David Project?
Bernstein: I started out as a pro-Israel student activist in college. I was the head of the pro-Israel student group at [Ohio State University], an activist in the Soviet Jewry movement and I was on the national Hillel student executive committee. I’ve always felt a special kinship to the campus scene.
On a typical Friday morning, most college students would sleep in if they had the opportunity. Not in the nation’s capital, where some students don blazers and pantsuits to lobby on Capitol Hill.
For many years, students from American University, George Washington University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland have set out in person for lawmakers’ offices to lobby on behalf of Israel. All four schools coordinated to send a total of more than 60 students to 31 senators’ offices on a lobbying day last month.
No Jews in the Ivy League [Caroline Glick] Caroline Glick, deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post, rails against an upcoming conference at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government which begins with disputing Israel’s right to exist. “The embrace of the cause of Israel’s destruction by so many celebrity professors today is part and parcel of the […]