On July 3, 2015, this op-ed by Vassar Professor of Geology and Earth Science Jill Schneiderman was published in The Washington Post.[ . . . ]
I am a tenured geology professor at Vassar , an elite liberal-arts school . I research, teach and write about the complex and intimate connections between land and water resources and social justice. For the study trip I led to Israel and the Palestinian territories, I created a syllabus designed to explore difficult issues and engage diverse perspectives that was vetted by Vassar’s faculty and administration. I have successfully led numerous similar trips to locations such as the Appalachian Mountains and the Mojave Desert. My modest goals for such trips are to impart knowledge and share experiences with my students that can be realized only by traveling to the regions we are examining. In studying arid regions without seeing the situation with their own eyes, it is difficult for students from places where water is relatively abundant to think about solutions to the problems that occur when local residents must share a meager supply.
Several months before my trip, the American Studies Association voted to support an academic boycott of Israel, a position that several faculty members at my college also held. Apparently, my course and the study trip associated with it were subject to the boycott, and the trip became a flash point for the boycott, divestment and sanctions — BDS, for short — debate on campus. Protesters bearing anti-Israel signs stood chanting outside my classroom; students were pressured by their peers to drop the course. My integrity was attacked in a standing-room-only forum at Vassar’s campus center led by pro-BDS faculty members. The stress affected my health, and my faith in longtime colleagues and the college administration was shaken. If not for the support of my family and reluctance to yield to such tactics, I very well might have backed out of the trip. And I and my students would have missed out on an educational opportunity of a lifetime.
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Please note that many of the comments posted to this op-ed are vile and blatantly antisemitic, demonstrating yet again how anti-Israel activism can foster and encourage Jew hatred. In addition, two letters have (so far) been posted responding to the article, one by a Vassar student who is a member of SJP defending the BDS movement and the second congratulating Prof. Schneiderman for "her courageous stand against such intellectual bullying."
But while Prof. Schneiderman is indeed to be applauded for that stand, there's a lot more to this story and the op-ed is somewhat misleading. The trip she led was in fact focused solely on the "Palestinian narrative" of the water resource issue and was bereft of any input from Israeli water experts or government officials. And yet, her class was still picketed by Students for Justice in Palestine. For a comprehensive and deeply disturbing report on Vassar's 2014 International Studies Program trip to Israel, please click here.
