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Oberlin Alumni Group: School President Must Not Tolerate “Hostile, Anti-Semitic Behaviors”

In response to a public letter published by Carmen Twillie Ambar, president of Oberlin College, defending the school against charges of fostering a climate hostile to Jews and supporters of Israel, a group of alumni said that Ambar must defend the “traditions” upon which the school was founded and stop tolerating “hostile, antisemitic behaviors” that frequently occur on campus.

On their Facebook page, the Oberlin chapter of Alumni for Campus Fairness (ACF) said that it was “pleased” that Ambar had responded to their earlier open letter, but rebutted a number of points made by the school’s president.

“It is unacceptable for Jewish students to wake up on Passover and see a wall of posters representing the ten plagues as Israeli acts of aggression, and it is unacceptable for Jewish students to hear shouts of “Free Palestine” as they enter Rosh Hashanah services,” the ACF post argued. “Yet, these hostile, antisemitic behaviors are tolerated by the administration, despite being a mockery of the traditions upon which Oberlin College was founded and unbecoming to an institution that claims to honor diversity.”

The ACF post also said that Oberlin must “publicly acknowledge that for millions of Jews in the United States and worldwide, their Jewish identity is inseparable from the Jewish State of Israel, and that Zionism represents the same kind of national self-determination that is afforded to people all over the world.” Jewish students should not be harassed for expressing pro-Israel views, or be told that by expressing support for Israel they will be ostracized “as social outcasts.”

ACF also argued that despite Ambar’s claim that the school seeks to foster “diversity of perspectives” regarding Israel, such diversity “does not exist.” This is reinforced by a Dean of Students who embraces the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign to isolate and delegitimize Israel and the inviting of speakers who present only “one-sided and simplistic views without ensuring that students are also exposed to opposing narratives.” By failing to present balanced views regarding Israel, Oberlin “has chosen to substitute ideology for a marketplace of ideas.”

Despite Ambar’s insistence that “Oberlin’s institutional commitment to Jewish life and scholarship is broad and deep,” ACF observed that the head of Oberlin’s Jewish Studies Department recently retired and that Hebrew classes have not been offered in two years.

In response to Ambar’s implication that the members of ACF were unfamiliar with the current environment on campus, the group quoted from several Oberlin faculty and staff members, who requested anonymity, who echoed the concerns of ACF.

One thanked ACF for its efforts, but expressed, “regrettably I have given up on the college.”

A second wrote, “I became all too familiar with the dynamics of bullying used to silence and intimidate Jewishly-identified students, that is, even people taking Jewish Studies courses, let alone Hebrew,” and called the on campus politics “nasty.”

A third staff member wrote that while the ideologues “may not be as large as it sometimes appears, it is adept at bullying.”

The ACF post concluded that Oberlin ” is failing in its mission to educate students about antisemitism, including antisemitic forms of anti-Zionism as recently described by the University of California Regents.” It called on Oberlin to start hosting pro-Israel speakers and offered to take part in a task force to participate in a task force on anti-Semitism.

This issue of anti-Semitism on Oberlin’s campus surfaced two years ago, after The Tower reported on the anti-Semitic social media postings of a professor there. A few months later a report in the Daily Beast noted the intimidation Jewish students faced on campus and specifically that students feared “expressing pro-Jewish or pro-Israel views publicly.” The situation on campus by the Daily Beast is consistent with the environment as described by the faculty and staff members of Oberlin quoted above.

[Photo: stu_spivack / Flickr ]