PJA Condemns Hillel International's Legal Threats Against Swarthmore

The Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance condemns Hillel International’s threats of legal action over Swarthmore Hillel’s​ plans to host longtime Jewish civil rights activists in their Jewish community.

Earlier this month, we were proud to host one of these activists, Dorothy Zellner, on an interfaith panel on religious traditions and racial justice in Harvard Hillel. This conversation, convened by PJA, the Black Students Association, the Harvard Islamic Society, and the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, brought together four activists from a variety of backgrounds who discussed their work on civil rights and racial justice fights past and present. Dorothy Zellner also discussed how her experiences in the U.S. civil rights movement have led her to support boycotts, divestment, and sanctions to end the Israeli Occupation and achieve full civil rights for Palestinians. 

We strongly believe that American Jews must not shy away from conversations about civil rights and social justice, but rather must engage with these key issues of our day.

We are shocked and outraged by Hillel International's attempts to stifle these conversations and intimidate their own students into silence. We support Jewish students at Swarthmore -- as well as Jewish students at MIT and UMass Amherst, who were barred from hosting Jewish civil rights activists in their Hillels -- who are working to bring conversations about civil rights and racial justice into their Jewish communities. We call upon Hillel International to withdraw its threats against Swarthmore. We further call upon Hillel International to eliminate its exclusionary Standards of Partnership, which stymie open discourse in Jewish spaces on campus.

Progressive Jewish Alliance Statement of Solidarity with #BlackLivesMatter

We, the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, condemn the recent grand jury decisions to not indict the police officers responsible for killing Michael Brown and Eric Garner. We condemn the racist police violence that has killed not just Brown and Garner but also Aiyana Stanley Jones, Islan Nettles, Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Rekia Boyd, Tamir Rice, Deshwanda Sanchez, and countless others. We are horrified that in the United States, police kill a black person once every twenty-eight hours.

We condemn the many aspects of the American criminal justice system that have given rise to these injustices: an overly militarized police force, minimal police accountability, rampant and unchallenged racism in policing communities. Recent events remind us once again that racism quite literally kills and that the fight for racial justice is far from over.

We stand in solidarity with black student organizers at Harvard who have brought the Harvard community together to say that #BlackLivesMatter and to protest these recent decisions and the systemic problems from which they stem. We were deeply disappointed by the brevity of President Faust’s recent statement, which failed to address the grave and pressing nature of the issue at hand. We call upon Harvard to follow the lead of students of color at this university and lend its institutional power to the fight for racial justice in the Boston area and around the country.

We stand in solidarity with protesters in the Boston area and across the United States who are taking to the streets to demand change. In a world in which “normalcy” consists of white supremacy and systematic state violence inflicted upon communities of color, we applaud efforts to disrupt this normalcy to pressure national, state, and local governments to change their policies and promote racial and economic justice.

We further commend the many individuals and organizations in the Boston Jewish community and the American Jewish community who have taken action to address the issue of racist police violence. We are proud to have signed the Jewish communal letter calling for police accountability and we urge all other Jewish organizations to sign on as well. We are proud to have participated in the national #BlackLivesMatter Chanukah action last week and look forward to participating in similar actions in the future. We urge all Jewish leaders and community members to address this issue through actions as well as words.

Finally, we call upon Harvard Hillel and Hillel International to stand in opposition to racist police violence and in support of recent racial justice protests around the country. As the self-proclaimed Center for Jewish Life on Campus, Hillel must stand in support of black Jewish students, as well as Jewish students of color more generally. Furthermore, as Hillel International seeks to honor historical civil rights struggles and the role that American Jews played in these fights, it must unequivocally affirm this commitment to anti-racism by standing up for racial justice and civil rights today.

PRESS RELEASE: Burg Barred from Speaking at Harvard Hillel

PRESS RELEASE: Israeli Politician Avraham Burg Barred from Speaking at Harvard Hillel

November 20, 2013, Cambridge, MA— Avraham Burg, the former speaker of Israel's Knesset, spoke in an undergraduate dormitory at Harvard College last week after being barred from speaking at Harvard Hillel.

"It's such a shame that Harvard Hillel would not allow an open discussion about Israel to take place within its walls," said Sandra Korn '14, who helped organize the talk. "Hillel should be a space for students to engage with Jewish issues, regardless of religious or political beliefs."

Burg was allowed to attend an invitation-only dinner in the Hillel building, but was forbidden from hosting the event there since it was co-sponsored by the Harvard College Palestinian Solidarity Committee. The other co-sponsoring student groups included J Street U Harvard and two Hillel-affiliated groups, Harvard Students for Israel and Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance. The event took place in the Quincy House Junior Common Room instead.

"This is an attack on free speech in its most naked form," said Ann Finkel '15, a Harvard student who attended the event. "I'm not sure what they were afraid of - people with all kinds of political views had a very constructive conversation with Mr. Burg."

CONTACT: Rachel Sandalow-Ash
(617) 417-0481
rsandalowash@college.harvard.edu

Criticism of Israel is Not Anti-Semitic

Over the past week, a dangerous rumor has circulated accusing the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) of targeting Jewish students in its campaign to raise awareness about the demolition of Palestinian homes. We, the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance, strongly refute these lies and affirm that Jewish students were not targeted. While we do not endorse PSC’s campaign, we support their right to draw attention to problematic Israeli policies and believe that flyering is a legitimate and reasonable way to do so.

As part of Harvard Israeli Apartheid Week, PSC flyered student dorms with mock eviction notices in order to raise awareness about the demolition of Palestinian homes in the Occupied Territories. Such flyering is a common means of advertising and campaigning utilized by a wide variety of student organizations. PSC placed these notices on all suite doors in any given dormitory. However, in response to these flyers, several publications began circulating the falsehood that PSC specifically targeted Jewish students in its campaign. This claim is completely wrong, and it is clear to students who live in the dorms that Jewish students were not targeted.

Moreover, several publications have accused PSC of employing anti-Semitic rhetoric in its campaign. These claims are baseless; as PSC affirms in a public statement on its website, these accusations “conflate [PSC’s] criticism of Israeli human rights violations with hatred of the Jewish people.” Indeed, in its mission, PSC “condemn[s] any hatred or discrimination against any racial, ethnic, or religious group." Anti-Semitism is a serious problem, and these claims minimize the seriousness of real anti-Semitism as well slander and harm the falsely accused. 

We condemn all organizations and publications both within and outside Harvard that continue to spread lies about PSC, and we ask them to immediately publish corrections stating that PSC did not target Jewish students or engage in other anti-Semitic behavior. In light of the anti-Semitic and racist incidents at Oberlin College over the past month, we hope that individuals and organizations devoted to fighting anti-Semitism will not diminish the significance of true anti-Semitism by branding criticism of Israeli policies as anti-Semitic.

Press Release: PJA Launches Open Hillel Campaign

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

JEWISH STUDENTS ASK HILLEL TO END POLITICAL LITMUS TEST

Students at Harvard Hillel and campuses across the United States have begun a petition asking Hillel International to remove its Guidelines for Campus Israel Activities, which they say pose a political litmus test for who can belong to the campus Jewish community.

The petition, launched Thursday as part of the Open Hillel campaign on openhillel.org, has already garnered over one hundred signatures.

The petition states, “we believe that campus Hillels should acknowledge and engage with a full spectrum of political views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We see cooperation with Palestinian groups on and off campus as an essential step towards peace. Furthermore, if Hillel truly wants to be ‘The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life,’ it cannot exclude Jewish groups simply for their political beliefs.”

Hillel International currently posts guidelines which state, "Hillel will not partner with, house, or host organizations, groups, or speakers that as a matter of policy or practice... support boycott of, divestment from, or sanctions against the State of Israel." The guidelines also include other restrictions on the political views of those who may affiliate with a campus Hillel.

“Hillel should be a place for the entire Jewish community, and a space to have the difficult discussions surrounding Israel and Palestine,” says Elena Hoffenberg, a first-year at Harvard and board member of the Harvard College Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA). “It’s especially valuable to have those discussions in Hillel as it is representative of viewpoints held in the Jewish community.”

Students in PJA, an affiliated group of Harvard Hillel, say they first learned of Hillel International’s Guidelines for Campus Israel Activity when they tried to co-sponsor an event called “Jewish Voices on the Occupation” with the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC). PJA was told that the event could not take place in Harvard Hillel because PSC supports the Palestinian call for international boycott of, divestment from, and sanctions on Israel.

And two years ago, the Brandeis chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace was denied affiliation with Brandeis Hillel because of the same guidelines, put in place in December 2010.

“College campuses are a wonderful place for people from different backgrounds to come together in dialogue and cooperation,” says Emily Unger, a senior at Harvard and former chair of PJA. “Hillel is my community, and I want its policies to fully uphold its values of pluralism and support an environment in which these important conversations can take place.”

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Please find more information and updates on Open Hillel online at http://harvardpja.blogspot.com, http://www.openhillel.org/, and https://twitter.com/harvardpja.

Contact: Rachel Sandalow-Ash
Cell: 617-417-0481
Email: rsandalowash@college.harvard.edu