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Stanford. Antisemitic and anti-Israel vandals covered their political bases at Stanford University last week, with graffiti from both left-wing and right-wing agitators
defacing the school. First came the left, with markings on the school’s Memorial Church saying ‘free the Stanford 11,” a swastika and more in support of the students who broke into the university president’s office last fall during an anti-Israel protest and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Then, to balance the idiocy, the right wingers added graffiti claiming “Nick Fuentes was right about Israel.” You can read more from ADL
experts about Fuentes, an avowed white supremacist Holocaust denier.
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(Image Source: Stanford Review) |
TAKE ACTION: Has someone in your family experienced antisemitism? ADL Legal Action Network is designed to provide victims of antisemitism and extremism with access to legal services.
More from Stanford (this time, the good news): A pilot Israel studies program at the school has become permanent. It will offer courses, research and public programs. The program director Amichai Magen is gratified that the program will have an ongoing impact for Stanford students who face efforts to dehumanize Israel: “The best antidote for dehumanization is humanization, just as the best antidote to ignorance is well-grounded knowledge.”
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Pennsylvania. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has sued the University of Pennsylvania for refusing to hand over names
and contact info of Jewish employees and students, as part of its campus antisemitism investigation. In response, hundreds of Penn faculty, staff and students signed a petition condemning the list request as “alarming” and “terrifying,” with one professor drawing comparisons to Nazi-era registries. Penn Hillel and MEOR, while supporting the antisemitism probe, warned the EEOC’s
move “carries echoes of the very patterns that made Jewish communities vulnerable for centuries.” ADL Philadelphia, along with AJC Philadelphia/Southern NJ and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, issued a joint statement about producing such a list, writing “history has taught us to be vigilant when governments compile lists of people based on religious identity.”
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Harvard. Anti-Zionist activists at Harvard – egged on by the Harvard Crimson’s 2022 editorial endorsing a boycott of Israel - are insisting students “favor divestment” from Israel based on a survey the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) slipped onto an unrelated ballot. But the numbers tell a different story: only eight percent of undergrads actually said “yes,” while over 80 percent
either skipped the divestment question, declined to answer or selected a neutral option — hardly evidence of a campuswide consensus. Still, PSC declared a victory and promoted the flimsy numbers as a campuswide mandate. Harvard, for its part, reiterated that academic boycotts have no place at the university.
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New York. The graduate student union at Cornell, Cornell Graduate Students United – United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America Local (CGSU-UE), is currently voting on a BDS referendum so extreme it would make some actual BDS organizers blush.
The proposal declares support for Palestinians “resisting a genocide… by any means necessary,” accuses Cornell of “supporting genocide in Gaza” through research partnerships and calls for internal boycotts, divestment from Israeli-linked entities and “political education” on how the “Palestinian liberation struggle” connects to grad students’ work conditions. The referendum even blames “anti-labor interests” for “weaponizing false allegations of antisemitism.” The vote runs through Tuesday, but the absurdity is well under way.
DEEPER. Getting ready to consider colleges? One helpful resource is ADL’s Campus Antisemitism Report Card, which assesses how 135 schools, including Cornell, are addressing antisemitism.
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Guelph (Canada). For the second time in November, students at the University of Guelph were targeted with a swastika.
This time, the hate symbol was found on the door of a dorm room; earlier this month, a student leader of a pro-Israel student group found a swastika traced in the snow on his car. A university spokesperson offered support to the student, calling the vandalism “a malicious act that violates the safety and respect every member of our residence community expects and deserves.” You have to appreciate the blunt reply by Guelph Mayor Cam Guthrie against the cowardly incident: “Our city stands against hate in all forms. If you don’t like that we stand for these things, then get lost.” |
