University President Larry Bacow refused to sign a statement pledging to keep campus "intimidation-free" that has been circulating among college presidents for the last week, saying it was "cast far too narrowly."
The six-paragraph statement was drafted in August by former Dartmouth President James Freedman and several other university presidents in response to a clash between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian protesters. It calls for colleges to maintain "academic standards in the classroom and... sustain an intimidation-free campus." However, a portion decrying "death threats and threats of violence" against Jewish students and supporters of Israel has caused many in higher education to feel that the pledge is too exclusive.
"Other groups besides Jewish students have also been subject to intimidation on college campuses," Bacow said. "I believe Martin Luther King, Jr. said that we cannot prioritize incidents of injustice since injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere."
Bacow's stance separates him from 15 other New England college presidents who signed the statement, including the presidents of Brandeis, Boston University, Wellesley, Amherst, Bowdoin, Clark, and the University of Massachusetts at Boston. Brown University was the only Ivy League school to sign.
At Tufts, leaders in the Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities praised Bacow's decision not to sign the pledge, saying that the statement divides communities in a time when they should be uniting.
"Post Sept. 11, there has been a rise in intimidation attacks on Arabs and Muslims" in the US, Arab Students Association President Abdul-Wahab Kayyali said. The pledge is "a kind of segregation _ saying that some people deserve protection from intimidation and some don't."
Students also say there is no need for an "anti-intimidation" pledge at Tufts, as the University already maintains an open and accepting atmosphere.
"Disagreement exists between different groups on campus, but it is usually handled in a respectful, productive manner," Hillel President Erika Robbins said. Both Robbins and Rabbi Jeffrey Summit point to the dialogue between Jewish and Arab students that has been going on for two years as an example of how the Tufts community has used intellectual dialogue to set the norm that violence is not a way to resolve differences.
"I deeply value the relationship that has been developing between the Muslim and Jewish students at Tufts and the productive work of the Arab/Jewish Dialogue," Summit said. "Of course, we can't always agree but the point is to be civil, respectful and creative in educational programming."
Muslim chaplain Imam Nourredine Hawat agreed that this dialogue is the right way to solve problems of intimidation.
"Dialogue is the only way where people can express their minds," he said. "Dialogue is the only solution to solve problems."
Kayyali, the chaplains, and Bacow agree with the assessment of the atmosphere at Tufts.
"Our Jewish, Arab, and Muslim students have, to date, modeled the kind of behavior we would hope to see elsewhere," Bacow said. "While students have strong views which they express passionately, they have also done so respectfully."
Other college presidents, however, felt it was necessary to sign the statement _ despite a lack of problems on their campus _ to show support for students around the country and as a preventive measure for the future.
"Jewish students are being intimidated and harassed on many campuses in the country, and I felt that this should be brought into the open that this is not something for a few Jewish organizations to deal with," Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz said.
Reinharz defended the paragraph on Jewish students, saying that they have been "systematically intimidated" throughout the country and attention needs to be brought to the issue. The last paragraph of the statement, he said, showed that it applies to all groups.
There have been several incidents of intimidation of Jewish students on college campuses in the last year. When pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters at San Francisco State University clashed in August, one student allegedly said that Hitler should have killed all Jews.
Additionally, faculty at Harvard and MIT circulated petitions last semester asking that their universities' endowments not include investments in Israel until the country complied with United Nations human rights resolutions, while 16 people at Tufts signed a similar statement. In a speech that sparked much controversy in higher education, Harvard President Lawrence Summers called such actions "anti-Semitic in their effect."
These incidents prompted the drafting of the statement that is currently being circulated. Over 300 college presidents have signed it so far, according to Kenneth Brandler, the Director of Communications for the American Jewish Committee (AJC), which circulated the statement around the country and published it in a New York Times advertisement on Monday.
Though Summers has been outspoken on the issue of anti-Semitism in recent months, he did not sign the statement. His decision had nothing to do with the wording of the text, but with the fact that he generally does not participate in mass signature drives, according to Harvard Director of News and Public Affairs Joe Wrinn.
"He has certainly made his opinion known and his views very clear on it," Wrinn said.
Like Summers, former Tufts Provost Sol Gittleman criticized the response that many in academia have displayed toward the current situation in the Middle East, calling it "inappropriate." Israelis are being thrown off of editorial boards of scholastic publications, he said, and websites such as www.campuswatch.org, (which is maintained by a group that monitors scholars and activists on campuses and critiques opinions that it says misportray the conflict in the Middle East) take out the political conflict on scholars.
But these incidents do not merit singling out one group for special protection, he said. "I don't believe that anti-Semitism is on the rise... This country is probably more relaxed about race, religion, and ethnicity than it has ever been."
But Brandler, the AJC spokesman, called the response to the statement positive. "I would not read anything into the large number of presidents who have no signed the statement," he said. "It's an amazing return."
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