AMCHA’S Responses to Antisemitic Activity at New York University
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2. 53 NYU Organizations Pledged to Boycott Two of the Largest Pro-Israel Student Groups on Campus
- INCIDENT: Fifty-three NYU organizations, signed a pledge to boycott the two largest pro-Israel student groups on campus, Realize Israel and TorchPAC. Then, protestors disrupted an event organized by those same pro-Israel groups with loud and disruptive chanting, the assault of an event participant and the theft and burning of an Israeli flag.
- 5/15/18 – AMCHA’S RESPONSE: AMCHA Initiative coordinated a coalition letter of 63 groups to President Hamilton that stated, “While acknowledging these students’ right to express their opinion, we must point out that the demand to exclude these two clubs simply because the student organizations do not agree with their opinions is hateful and discriminatory. Furthermore, the implications of this statement for the safety and well-being of Jewish and pro-Israel students on your campus are highly troubling… Following the student groups’ statement, the leader of an anti-Zionist campus group justified the planned disruption of a Realize Israel and TorchPAC event, which involved theft and destruction of the pro-Israel groups’ property and the burning of that property, as well as taking away the pro-Israel groups’ microphone, by explaining, ‘Our point is to make being Zionist uncomfortable on the NYU campus.’ As is evidenced by the stated intent of the organizers, this behavior is not going to minimize by itself.” The groups then offered suggestions for steps the administration can take to “ensure that ALL students at New York University– including students who identify as Zionists — are free to express their opinions, beliefs and identities and to fully participate in campus life, now and in the future.”
1. NYU was mentioned in AMCHA’s report, “The Impact of Academic Boycotters of Israel on U.S. Campuses.”
- 10/14/17 – INCIDENT: NYU was listed in Table 4, “Middle East, Ethnic, and Gender Studies Departments and Programs that Sponsored the Most Events with One or More BDS-Supporting Speakers in 2015 and 2016” of AMCHA’s new study, “The Impact of Academic Boycotters of Israel on U.S. Campuses.”
- 11/15/17 – AMCHA’S RESPONSE: AMCHA wrote a letter to President Hamilton to commend him for his previous condemnation of an academic boycott and to share, “new research that demonstrates the extent to which the on-campus implementation and advocacy of an academic boycott of Israel directly harm American students and faculty at U.S. universities.” The letter went on to detail how AMCHA’s study “found that pro-BDS faculty were between five and twelve times more likely to sponsor events with BDS-supporting speakers, and schools that hosted these events were twice as likely to have acts of anti-Jewish hostility.”