THE AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE
January 17, 2003
To: Area Directors
From: Ken Stern
Re: Campus Divestment Campaign Against Israel
As you all know, some American colleges have seen anti-Israel petitions circulated, calling on the campus administration to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
To date no university has divested, and it is unlikely that any will.
However, anti-Israel forces should be expected to continue promoting divestment. They will use divestment as a tool to paint Israel as today’s greatest offender of human rights, linking it in students’ minds with apartheid-era South Africa, despite comments, such as Columbia University President Lee Bollinger’s that the comparison is “grotesque” and “offensive.”
While AJCommittee does not have a presence on campus, it can and must work against and expose these anti-Israel forces, not only because Israel is being treated unfairly, but also because we have repeatedly seen anti-Semitism crop up in the “debate” about Israel.
Please, therefore, do the following:
1. If you haven’t already done so, please circulate AJC’s new publication “Why Campus Anti-Israel Activity Flunks Bigotry 101” to all your contacts on area campuses. We can supply Hillels, Jewish Student Unions and others with as many free copies as they reasonably can use. Campus newspapers, college presidents, deans, department chairs and others should also receive copies.
2. Attached is a new paper written under the guidance of Rebecca Neuwirth which debunks some of the claims of the pro-divestment crowd. It is a useful factual resource, and should also be distributed to your campus contacts.
3. You should also distribute our longstanding publication “Bigotry on Campus” to your contacts. It passes the test of time, and is being used by our colleagues in Canada to help university administrations there understand the importance of speaking out against bigotry. It was also recently sent (along with “Bigotry 101”) to over 1,800 American campuses, as it provides a blueprint for combating bigotry while maintaining free speech.
4. You should also make people aware of the button on our home page “on the campus,” which provides .pdf files of posters, a link to takeactionnow.org, and other useful information.
5. A chapter president recently suggested that AJC ask its members to send in contact information for their children, grandchildren, or others they may know who are now attending college. Please collect this information (Name, college, address, email, and person sending info) from your chapters and send it to Gershon Rothstein at rothsteing@ajc.org. We will send the students a packet including the aforementioned items, along with other supportive information.
6. Attached is a grid prepared by Steven Koplin, detailing the status of divestment campaigns on certain campuses around the country. Some news stories have reported that there are 50 campuses (out of the more than 3,000 universities and colleges in the US) which have some divestment activity. Neither Hillel nor any other source can give a precise number of campuses, but we suspect it is much lower. The grid reflects all the campuses at which we could confirm some activity, gives information about anti-divestment forces, and provides contact information where available. Please note any area campuses on the list, and also please remind your members to send their campus affiliation forms to Gershon Rothstein, so that if a problem occurs on any campus around the country, we can collect AJC folk with connections to that campus and provide some assistance (after making contact with the local Hillel).
7. We are seeing an upsurge in anti-Israel programming on campus, from week-long “anti-Zionist” activities to speakers such as Adam Shapiro to mock “check points.” After involving Hillel or other appropriate campus-based Jewish groups, AJC might help organize a “Project Lemonade” response. Some chapters have used “Project Lemonade” (see attached memo) when a KKK group holds a rally. It can be used here too. But instead of raising money (based on pledges tied to the length of the anti-Israel activity) to community anti-hate projects, the money could be used to buy Israel Bonds to donate to the university, or for organizations such as Natal (Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War) see http://www.natal.org.il/eng/home.html, which help Israeli victims of terror.
Thank you for your help. If you hear of any anti-Israel or anti-Semitic activity on campus, or elsewhere in your community, please let me know right away. This is especially important as we are trying to better gauge the role anti-Semitism might play in a growing anti-war movement.
Best regards
KS:eg
Cc: Jon Levine, Deborah Sklar, Rebecca Neuwirth, Jeffrey Sinensky, Shula Bahat, David Harris
Encs.