Professor Jasbir K. Puar Spreads "Blood Libel" Innuendo

By now, the controversy created by Prof Puar's appearance at Vassar on February 3, 2016, is well known.  In her talk, “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters,” she promoted such distortions and falsehoods such as:

• [There have been] “more than 120 deaths by field assassinations of young Palestinian men, largely between the ages of 12 to 16, by IDF soldiers… Some speculate that the bodies were mined for organs for scientific research.”
  
  
• [Israelis seek] “…perfection of drone technology as a rationalization for the slaughter of Gazans…”
   
• [Israel employs] “…maiming as a deliberate biopolitical tactic…in the occupation of Palestine…”
   
• [Israel’s actions include] “…the policy of calorie restrictions, the bombing of numerous hospitals and a disability center, the destruction of the main electric power plant in Gaza, the flattening of homes, schools and mosques, and the targeting of youth and children, the likely use of white phosphorus…”
   
• “…we need BDS as part of organized resistance and armed resistance in Palestine as well.”
   
• “The Jewish Israeli population … need[s] the Palestinians alive in order to keep the kind of rationalization for their victimhood and their militarized economy.”

The lecture was publicized in advance, by Vassar, as follows:

This lecture theorizes oscillating relations between disciplinary, pre-emptive, and increasingly prehensive forms of power that shape human and non-human materialities in Palestine. Calculation, computing, informational technologies, surveillance, and militarization are all facets of prehensive control. Further, the saturation of spatial and temporal stratum in Palestine demonstrates the use of technologies of measure to manufacture a "remote control" occupation, one that produces a different version of Israeli "home invasions" through the maiming and stunting of population. If Gaza, for example, is indeed the world's largest "open air prison" and an experimental lab for Israeli military apparatuses, infrastructural chaos, and metric manipulation, what kinds of fantasies (about power, about bodies, about resistance, about politics) are driving this project?

FROM THE "NO COMMENT" FILE:

On February 11, SJP at Vassar posted this item on its Facebook page, in which it advertised the sale, at an upcoming SJP event, of what looks like a hoodie emblazoned with the image of Leila Khaled, a notorious Palestinian terrorist and hijacker, holding a machine gun.  (The language in the caption was later cleaned up.)

Round-up - While we were away ...

 Highlights of Fall 2015-Winter 2016 Events at Vassar Concerning Israel

September --  Angela Davis spoke on Sept. 16 at an event marking the 30th anniversary of Vassar's Women's Studies program.  Although the topic of her speech had no apparent connection of the Middle East, students who attended reported that she devoted considerable time to suggesting a link between racism in America and racism in Israel.  During the Q&A, she was asked about the connection between activism on behalf of Palestinians and anti-semitism.  In response, Davis endorsed BDS, pointed out that Jews are involved with BDS and suggested that this was because they didn't want the Holocaust "to happen again."  Video of that exchange was posted here by the community activist who posed the question.


October  --  Students for Justice in Palestine attempted to halt sales of Sabra hummus at the Retreat.  When FTI learned of it, members immediately alerted the administration, which confirmed that the Retreat would continue offering Sabra hummus for sale along with another brand.

 
November --

 "Conversation about Israel/Palestine" -- see article

The Anti-Defamation League and Chabad on Fulton sponsored a series of workshops for Vassar Jewish students during the 2015-2016 academic year.

"Conversation on Israel/Palestine" - a "Dialogue Across Differences" Panel at Vassar

Prof. Landau

Imam Antepli

Prof. Yehezkel Landau, Associate Professor of Interfaith Relations and Director of the Building Abrahamic Partnerships program at Hartford Seminary (CT), and Imam Abdullah Antepli, adjunct professor of Islamic Studies at Duke University, gave a joint presentation on November 12 described as a "Conversation about Israel/Palestine."  This event was sponsored by the Office of the President, the Office of Religious & Spiritual Life (RSL), the RSL Forum for Inter-Religious Dialogue, Africana Studies, Jewish Studies and the Department of Religion.  It was developed as part of the “Dialogue and Engagement Across Differences,” initiative created by President Hill to encourage civil and open discussion of contentious issues on campus.

Ziva Dahl, FTI Core Council member, attended the presentation and wrote a detailed report, which can be found here.

The Perilous Position of Being Jewish and Pro-Israel at Vassar College

Last week, FTI's Ziva Dahl published an op-ed on the challenges that Jewish and pro-Israel students face at Vassar.  Her article has been picked up by a number of news outlets, including this one.  (You may notice that Alan Dershowitz, in his NY Post op-ed today, clearly used Ziva's piece as a source for his reference to Vassar.)

Safe spaces for hypocrisy: The dangerous sensitivity double-standards at play on America's college campuses

Alan Dershowitz has an op-ed in today's New York Daily News, discussing the glaring double standards employed by activists on college campuses today when it comes to "safe spaces" and free speech for Jewish students.  He cites Vassar as a prime example.

Jill Schneiderman's Op-Ed at The Washington Post

  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.

New Webpage Documents Student Testimonies of Antisemitism on Campus

From The Algemeiner:

A new webpage was launched on Monday featuring over one hundred personal testimonies from Jewish students who have experienced antisemitism on campuses across the U.S. over the past year-and-a-half. 

Behind the project is the non-profit campus watchdog AMCHA Initiative which gathered the extensive testimony from public reports, and students at 47 colleges and universities in 20 states. 

In their reports on the site, some students said they felt intimidated and frightened. Others said they wanted to hide their Jewish identities for fear of being targeted by classmates. One student from University of Washington said that after seeing his Star of David, some people “brand me as someone toxic, someone worthy of their disdain and vitriol.” 

[ . . . ] 

Incoming VSA Prez Labels Campus Lecture "Islamophobic"

On April 24, the Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union (VCLU) hosted a lecture by American Enterprise Institute scholar and Vassar alumnus (class of '89) Marc Thiessen, who spoke on "America's Failed Response to Radical Islam."

Pro-Israel Professor targeted at Connecticut College

David Bernstein has been covering this story at The Volokh Conspiracy (Washington Post).  First here:

The hypocrisy and dishonesty of attacks on Connecticut College professor Andrew Pessin 

Andrew Pessin is a distinguished philosophy professor at Connecticut College. He is also, as I understand it, the only Jewish professor at the college who regularly speaks up on behalf of Israel in an intellectual climate that is often dominated by left-wing and foreign students hostile to Israel.
This made him the target of one Lamiya Khandaker, a student who took his intro to philosophy class without incident last Fall. . . .

The background and links provided in this article go a long way toward clarifying what at first appears to be a murkier picture.