Vassar is a left wing institution and this shows how deeply imbedded anti Semitism is on leftist schools.

Vile at Vassar 

A college finally cracks down on anti-Israel extremists

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

 

TAMAR THIBODEAU/VASSAR COLLEGECampus in conflict

After allowing an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel infection to fester for months, the president of Vassar College has finally taken a stand for academic freedom and decency. That it took a display of actual World War II Nazi propaganda for her to act is appalling.

President Catharine Hill slammed the anti-Israel Students for Justice in Palestine after the group attempted to tar pro-Israel advocates by displaying on the Internet a poster created in 1944 to sow anti-American feeling among the Dutch under German rule.

The cartoon image, under the heading “Liberators,” shows a monster stomping on a European city while wearing a Star of David, holding a money bag clutched by a long-nosed man, bearing a U.S. flag and cloaked in a Ku Klux Klan hood.

Stirring from her slumber, Hill announced a review of SJP’s status (the group had not yet been granted full campus credentials), said Vassar would probe use of the image “as a bias incident under college regulations,” ordered SJP to “cease representing itself as an official Vassar group” and asked that “the SJP Vassar membership take responsibility for its actions.” Fat chance.

SJP has been running wild on the Poughkeepsie campus — hosting an obscene “Israel Apartheid Week” and trying to disrupt a college course for students taking a Vassar-sponsored trip to Israel.

Hill gave a pass to that violation of academic freedom and campus conduct codes. All too predictably, an overflow campus forum discussing the Israel trip then degenerated into a near mob, with Israel-haters hurling invective at Jews and backers of Israel.

Faculty members have joined the depravity. Thirty-nine professors protested after Hill properly said in January that Vassar would not join the American Studies Association’s anti-Semitism-tinged call for boycotting Israeli universities.

The 39 backed the boycott, with some asserting that Hill’s action “silenced discourse on campus,” as one put it. Duh, they claim they want dialogue while supporting a boycott against dialogue.

Then it turned out that the 39 lacked the courage of their convictions. When Cornell University Law School professor Bill Jacobson challenged the entire group to debate the merits of boycotting Israel, they all ducked. So on May 5, Jacobson spoke — without fee — on campus at the invitation of the Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union, which is headed by a Muslim student.

The libertarian union had sought co-sponsorships for Jacobson’s talk from numerous student groups and academic departments. All refused, a fact that demonstrates how strongly anti-Israel sentiment holds sway at Vassar, perhaps inducing a climate of fear among those who feel otherwise.

Consider that five days before Jacobson’s visit, Israel-bashers Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal stopped at Vassar on a national road show selling separate books calling for Israel’s destruction. Paid for by student activity fees and departmental funds, their event was sponsored not only by SJP but by Vassar’s departments of religion, political science, sociology, English and geography.

For good measure, the Jewish Studies program, the International Studies program and a variety of student groups signed on in support.

In his talk, Jacobson demolished the rationales behind the BDS movement, a cause that seeks to delegitimize Israel through boycotts on trade, disinvestment in the Jewish state and economic sanctions. During 90 minutes, he proved that the boycott of Israel is based on factual, historical and legal falsities and is anti-Semitic.

SJP responded on the web by attacking Jacobson and the audience of “old white people” and rolling out its artwork. First were nasty cartoons from racist and “white power” websites. One showed Israel inflicting a Holocaust on Palestinians and the other said that the Nazi Holocaust cows the West from criticizing Israel.

Then SJP used the Nazi poster, putting the group beyond even Hill’s tolerance of intolerance.