Wesleyan agreed to ‘review’ the possibility of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, disclose its investments in what SJP called the ‘military industrial complex’ and Israeli companies.

By Dion J. Pierre, The Algemeiner

Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, has agreed on terms for ending a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on campus that Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had lived in for nearly a month, the school’s president, Michael Roth, announced.

According to details of the agreement shared by SJP, no one will be punished for violating school rules to hold the protest, a condition on which the group insisted in its original list of demands.

Wesleyan has also agreed to create scholarships for “displaced” Palestinian students, form a working group comprising anti-Zionists which will “review” the possibility of an academic boycott of Israeli institutions, disclose its investments in what SJP called the “military industrial complex” and Israeli companies — a provision of the deal the school has already satisfied —and consider investment recommendations by an anti-Zionist group of students and faculty.

“Later this month, representatives from the pro-Palestinian protest will meet members of the Investment Committee,” Roth said in a statement issued on Friday.

“In the fall, the Committee for Investor Responsibility (CIR) — a standing representative body of students, faculty, alumni, and staff — will be able to propose changes to the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework for investment/divestment for consideration by the board at its fall meeting.”

SJP openly disputed Roth’s account of the agreement on Tuesday, denying that it stipulated their abstaining from staging protests at the school’s upcoming commencement ceremonies.

Roth said, “The protesters agreed not to disrupt reunion and commencement events. Individuals who refuse to comply will be suspended and face legal action,” to which SJP responded by accusing him of communicating threats.

“Wesleyan President Michael Roth wrote that we agreed to not [sic] disrupt reunion and commencement,” SJP wrote on social media. “This is a lie. There is no language in our agreement preventing protesting this weekend, and we would never compromise our right to protest Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.”

The end of the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Wesleyan came several weeks after Roth chastised the protesters for vandalizing school property and threatened the perpetrators with “suspension, expulsion, and legal charges.”

He did not, in Friday’s statement, disclose the status of the university’s investigations into those acts.

Wesleyan is not the first school to accede to key demands put forward by anti-Zionist protesters. Indeed, campus antisemitism expert and founder of antisemitism watchdog AMCHA Initiative Tammi Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner on Tuesday that the role of faculty in forcing similar outcomes at other colleges needs to be scrutinized.

“These developments are not organic,” Rossman-Benjamin explained, noting that a highly esteemed Wesleyan professor — J. Kēhaulani Kauanui — is an active proponent of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.

In 2013, Kauanui was the “architect” of an American Studies Association resolution to adopt BDS, which ultimately passed, and she is the principal founder of Wesleyan University’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) chapter.

“In fact, she was teaching a course this semester on Anarchy in America and ‘shared her expertise’ with the encampment students a couple of weeks ago,” Rossman-Benjamin continued.

“In addition, two Wesleyan faculty leaders — chair of Wesleyan’s Educational Policy Committee (EPC) Joseph Weiss and committee member Margot Weiss — are also founding members of the school’s FJP chapter, which has committed itself to endorsing and promoting academic BDS. Not surprisingly, according to the agreement with student protesters, the EPC gets to nominate three faculty to a working group which will determine the fate of Wesleyan’s study abroad programs in Israel.”

Rossman-Benjamin warned that these professors proclaim their anti-Zionist views in the classroom, radicalizing students while introducing them to antisemitic ideologies and others which trample academic freedom.

“It undoubtedly took lots of faculty clout to ‘convince’ Roth — who has been a vocal opponent of academic BDS, calling it a ‘repugnant attack on academic freedom’ — to cave to student demands, demands that directly harm and violate the rights of Jewish students, not Israeli students or Israeli faculty, but US students,” she said.

“Not only is this faculty behavior wholly and shamefully unprofessional and antithetical to the educational and scholarly mission of the university, it is breathtaking in its hypocrisy. These same faculty who cry free speech and academic freedom every chance they get have dedicated themselves to shutting down the free speech and academic freedom of their students and colleagues who want to study in or about Israel, or who identify with the Jewish state. This abuse must be exposed and stopped.”

Earlier this month, Northwestern University in Illinois agreed to establish a new scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contact potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, and create a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim students.

It also agreed to form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.

Days later, Brown University in Rhode Island announced that it will hold a vote on divesting from companies linked to Israel in exchange for the students disassembling their encampment and abstaining from holding more protests until the school’s commencement on May 26, according to the Brown Daily Herald.

The student newspaper added, however, that the university will not “at this time” drop criminal charges filed against 41 students who illegally occupied an administrative building in December.

At least one school president, Mike Lee of Sonoma State University, has been disciplined for agreeing to boycott and divest from Israel.

After announcing his committing to subject “all” the university’s financial endeavors to SJP’s scrutiny, implement a full academic boycott of Israel — including shutting down study abroad programs in the Jewish state — create a “Palestinian” curriculum within the department of ethnic studies, and issue a statement calling for a “permanent cease-fire in Gaza,” the California State University (CSU) system, of which Sonoma State University is a member, said the next day that Lee was placed on administrative leave.

CSU chancellor Mildred García described his actions as “insubordination.”

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Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, said he will ask to ‘promptly initiate applicable reinstatement proceedings for all individuals who have been placed on involuntary leaves of absence.’

By JNS

Ten days before its commencement ceremony is scheduled, Harvard University cut a deal with anti-Israel protesters who created an illegal encampment on campus.

Alan Garber, Harvard’s interim president, announced on Tuesday that he will “facilitate a meeting with the chair of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and other university officials to address questions about the endowment.”

“In keeping with my commitment to ongoing and reasoned dialogue, the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences and I will meet with students to hear their perspectives on academic matters related to longstanding conflicts in the Middle East,” Garber added.

Now that the “disruption to the educational environment caused by the encampment” has ended, Garber said he will ask the university’s schools to “promptly initiate applicable reinstatement proceedings for all individuals who have been placed on involuntary leaves of absence.”

“I will also ask disciplinary boards within each school to evaluate expeditiously, according to their existing practices and precedents, the cases of those who participated in the encampment,” he added, acknowledging “the profound grief that many in our community feel over the tragic effects of the ongoing war.”

Harvard Out of Occupied Palestine, which goes by HOOP, organized the anti-Israel protests at the university. It claimed victory and vowed to keep fighting.

“As a precondition for decamping, administration will retract suspensions,” it wrote on Instagram. “Administration has also offered us meetings regarding disclosure and divestment with members of the Harvard Management Company and ‘conversations’ regarding the establishment of a Center for Palestine Studies at Harvard.”

“We are under no illusions: We do not believe these meetings are divestment wins,” added the group, which called Harvard “the rotten heart of a dying empire.”

“These side deals are intended to pacify us away from full disclosure and divestment,” it added. “Rest assured, they will not.”

The Harvard Crimson reported that “despite Garber repeatedly insisting that the university would not negotiate with the protesters, the outcome of the 20-day occupation of the yard demonstrated that he ultimately preferred to continue seeking a negotiated end to the encampment than sending in Harvard University police officers to clear the tents and arrest protesters.”

An anti-Israel encampment on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Mass., on May 12, 2024. Credit: PhillipJR/Shutterstock.

Dr. Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard’s medical faculty, wrote that “it is good that the encampment is coming down without police involvement.”

“But as one among many who does not view the institution at which I have lived my professional life as ‘the rotten heart of a dying empire’ (in the statement by HOOP this am), we are at a moment when Harvard leaders and faculty (or a major fraction of them) must set a path for a better future,” added the Harvard professor of physiology and medicine and a distinguished service professor. “One where the agenda is not set by those holding such disdain for Harvard and its rules and values.”

Harvard’s mission should be restated “with clarity, seriousness and integrity,” with “a deeper explanation of the agreements that were made” and “a commitment to producing a plan for response to future events with content-neutral policies linked to identified consequences for violations,” Dr. Flier added.

Carole Hooven, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who recently left Harvard after being caught in a diversity, equity and inclusion “web,” wrote that she was “relieved” to see the encampment end peacefully.

She added that Harvard administrators should not “have caved in to demands and rewarded students’ disruptive, rule-breaking behavior with benefits that rule-followers aren’t entitled to.”

“I wanted to meet with Garber (when he was provost!),” she wrote. “I politely made my case, and he refused. Perhaps I should consider alternative tactics.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Harvard student who has filed a lawsuit against the university, wrote that its deal with the protesters is an illustration of “Harvard’s antisemitism in real-time.”

“Harvard has agreed with almost all of their demands. I’ve never been this disillusioned than this morning,” he said. “The encampment espoused near daily antisemitism, harassed and followed Jews, called for the violent destruction of the Jewish state and violated school policy.”

“Not once has Harvard publicly condemned the objective antisemitism that we Jewish students have faced as a result. Not once has the antisemitism task force said anything. More importantly, not once have they done anything to combat antisemitism here at Harvard,” he added.

“Jews here have no allies, no voice, and no advocates. The only way Harvard will ever change is sustained outside pressure. Please help us.”

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