Category: News

Alums for Campus Fairness Oberlin Chapter “Oberlin Alumni Against Anti-Semitism” presses Oberlin Board for action on Professor Joy Karega

Alums for Campus Fairness Oberlin Chapter “Oberlin Alumni Against Anti-Semitism” presses Oberlin Board for action on Professor Joy Karega

ACF’s Oberlin Chapter uncovered Karega’s anti-Semitic posts early in 2016. After an unsatisfactory response from President Krislov, the ACF alumni reached out to the Board of Trustees, whose chairman strongly condemned Karega’s posts and called for a prompt investigation. This summer, seeing Karega’s name still listed in the Fall 2016 course catalog, our chapter contacted the Oberlin Board. Subsequently, it was announced that Karega has been placed on paid leave and will no longer be advising or teaching students.

 » Read more

The controversy about Oberlin professor Joy Karega

The controversy about Oberlin professor Joy Karega

The Tower, a site focused on news and commentary about Israel and the Middle East, recently featured a post revealing that Joy Karega, an assistant professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Oberlin College, “has written and shared a series of Facebook posts claiming that Jews or Israelis control much of the world and are responsible for the 9/11 and Charlie Hebdo attacks and the rise of ISIS.” Karega’s promotion of various conspiracy theories was documented in screen shots, and it was noted that “[t]he revelations about Prof. Karega’s Facebook posts come amid growing concern that Jewish students at Oberlin are facing a rising wave of anti-Semitism. This January, the frequency of anti-Semitic events on campus spurred 225 alumni and students to form Oberlin Alumni and Students Against Anti-Semitism.”

 » Read more

An Open Letter to Vassar on Antisemitic Policies and Double Standards [updated]

An Open Letter to Vassar on Antisemitic Policies and Double Standards [updated]

Note: The following open letter by Laurie R. Josephs, Vice President and Secretary of Alums for Campus Fairness (ACF), was first published at The Algemeiner; it is updated here with an additional email message sent to Vassar’s Jewish Studies department. Some further context for the criticism is provided in a recently published Commentary post and a post at Legal Insurrection.

 » Read more

BDS bullies disrupt lectures

BDS bullies disrupt lectures

In a recent Ha’aretz op-ed, Brown University student Jared Samilow made the case that self-professed “pro-Palestinian” activists on US campuses are intent on cowing anyone who is “expressing or associating with pro-Israel views.” Even lectures on Israel-related subjects have been targeted, as Samilow noted with regard to two recent cases, when activists disrupted lectures at the University of Minnesota and at the University of Texas at Austin.

 » Read more

Bernard-Henri Lévy on the BDS movement

Bernard-Henri Lévy on the BDS movement

In a scathing op-ed marking the 10th anniversary of the founding of the BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) movement that targets Israel, the celebrated French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy reminds his readers that “the idea of boycotting Israel is not as new as it appears.” Lévy points out that the Arab League decided already in December 1945 to impose a boycott on the Jewish community in what was then British Mandate Palestine, and he notes sarcastically that “the promoters of this brilliant idea [included] Nazi war criminals who had settled in Syria and Egypt, where they gave their new masters lessons in marking Jewish shops and businesses.” Rejecting efforts to present the modern boycott campaigns against Israel as a fight for the rights of Palestinians, Lévy forcefully makes the case that “the BDS movement is nothing more than a sinister caricature of the anti-totalitarian and anti-apartheid struggles. It is a campaign whose instigators have no aim other than to discriminate against, delegitimize, and vilify an Israel that in their mind never stopped wearing its yellow star.”

 » Read more

The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel

In the summer issue of Democracy Journal, David Greenberg reviews “The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel,” edited by Cary Nelson & Gabriel Noah Brahm. Greenberg highlights that this volume “encompasses a broad range of opinions, with left-leaning contributors (Michael Bérubé, Martha Nussbaum, Mitchell Cohen) nestled alongside right-leaning ones (Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Richard Landes). The contributors’ differences suggest a raucous seminar more than a manifesto, and the diversity of opinion stands as a refreshing counterpoint to the propagandistic nature of so much literature on both the BDS left and the chauvinistic pro-Israel right.”

 » Read more

Pin It on Pinterest