Vassar College acts against students calling to ‘slap a Zionist’

University authorities have put a stop to the distribution of a “Disorientation Guide” for new students advocating BDS and “slapping a Zionist.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Administrators at Vassar College, a residential liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, acted swiftly Friday to stop the further distribution of a self-proclaimed “Disorientation Guide.”

Sent to some 400 incoming students by a group of underclassmen, it contained anti-Semitic content as well as advocating disruptive and borderline legal behavior on campus.

Amanita Duga-Carroll, Vassar Vice President for Communications, said in a statement Monday that after learning of the email, which “was linked to a document on Google that is provocative of violence and anti-Semitism” and targeted many groups, including “Zionists,” the university immediately condemned it and launched an investigation to find those behind it.

“By Saturday morning,” she noted, “we had identified the students believed to be responsible for its creation and distribution and began the student conduct process. We have also worked to stop its distribution on our campus through electronic and print means.”

Among the list of guide-recommended activities to “create a culture of dissonance” – including vandalism of campus property, harassing the college president and hosting a Molotov cocktail-making workshop – was also the suggestion to “slap a Zionist.” In this context, the guide explicitly referred to Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager who was recently released after several months in prison for kicking and hitting IDF soldiers, as an example to be followed.

It also included a shout-out to Loyola College in Chicago, which in 2015 was ranked as the fourth-most anti-Semitic university in the United States by The David Horowitz Freedom Center, a conservative think tank. Vassar came in 10th on the list, which took into account the number and severity of anti-Jewish incidents and activities on campus such as harassment and violence against Jewish students and the hosting of anti-Israel speakers.

The document was also full of praise for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and decried the failure to pass a boycott resolution by the Vassar Student Association in 2016, which they attributed in part to the administration pushing “a full-on counter-BDS campaign” and “the overwhelmingly Zionist bloc within the alumni.”

In a campus-wide email sent in the form of a safety alert from campus security to the college community, Vassar authorities urged students to “report behavior/activity/situations which may pose a a safety risk or be criminal in nature” after noting that the guide many had received “contains statements and images that advocate certain violent or discriminatory behaviors including overall threats as well as a threat being investigated as potentially anti-Semitic.”

Ahed Tamimianti-SemitismBDS