Tamara Zieve Jpost March 30, 2017 Campus antisemitism watchdog the AMCHA Initiative has unveiled four interactive maps that aim to expose sites of anti-Jewish activity at college campuses across the US. The maps can help one understand the distribution and geographical patterns of anti-Jewish incidents, AMCHA said on Wednesday. The Antisemitism Tracker Map includes all types of antisemitic incidents that were reported on US campuses since 2015. The Swastika Tracker Map homes in on swastikas and graffiti, signs, posters and letters found on campus since 2015, that call for killing Jews, such as “Kill all kikes,” “Gas Jews die” and “Gas the kikes.” The other two maps deal with BDS activity: One shows voting results of campus boycott resolutions from 2012 until today and the other maps faculty members who have signed one or more public documents endorsing an academic boycott of Israel. This map also contains subdivisions that calculate the number of faculty members who support the boycott per school, and their names. The initiative comes after the Knesset passed a law earlier this month that allows the interior minister to ban foreigners who support the boycott of Israel from entering the country. AMCHA told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that its new maps had no connection to the law and that the NGO has not taken a position on the legislation. “AMCHA is not an organization trying to protect Israel but to protect Jewish students,” Tammi Rossman- Benjamin, AMCHA Initiative founder and director, told the Post. She added that research has shown that there is a strong correlation between anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish hostility on campus. “In 2015 and 2016, acts of anti-Jewish hostility were nearly three times as likely to occur on campuses where BDS was present, and four times more likely to occur on campuses with one or more faculty members who endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, i.e., a boycott of Israeli universities and scholars,” she pointed out. “In fact, the more faculty boycotters and BDS activity, the more incidents of anti-Jewish hostility on a particular campus.” She noted that the lists of faculty members who have endorsed a boycott of Israeli academics have been available on the California-based AMCHA’s website since 2014. “The antisemitism plaguing our nation’s colleges and universities continues to grow,” Rossman-Benjamin said in a statement. “One of AMCHA’s main goals, one we take very seriously, is documenting and exposing the threat. “We hope these new education and research tools will prove helpful to advocacy organizations, government officials, university administrators, researchers and concerned parents, students and university stakeholders.” She encouraged US students to take an active role in documenting any antisemitism they witness, by uploading pictures to a new photo gallery section on AMCHA’s Facebook page. “It’s one thing to read about antisemitic incidents; it’s quite another to see them. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words,” she said, expressing hope that the social media tools would help generate awareness of the situation. Also addressing this issue on Wednesday, Aviva Vogelstein, attorney for the Washington-based Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, testified at a hearing at the Tennessee General Assembly about the spike in campus antisemitism and urged lawmakers to pass a recently introduced bill to address the threat. “Valid monitoring, informed analysis, and effective policy-making start with uniform definitions,” said Vogelstein. “The use of a uniform definition serves several important public policy objectives: enhancing clarity of policy and predictability of enforcement, improving prevention by increasing consistency, and facilitating comparison of intervention and prevention programs across jurisdictions and data collections.” Kenneth L. Marcus, the Brandeis Center’s founding president, said, “A resurgence in antisemitism has been spreading across our nation of late. It is particularly rampant on college campuses and, sadly, Tennessee has not been immune to this escalating hatred.” Original Article
Chas Sisk Nashville Public Radio March 30, 2017 When does criticism of the nation of Israel cross into anti-Semitism? Tennessee lawmakers are wrestling with that question as part of the debate over a measure that takes aim at the University of Tennessee, over its handling of some comments by Muslim students that critics say constituted hate speech. The dispute goes back to August, when several UT-Knoxville students were accused of comparing Israel to Nazi Germany. Aviva Vogelstein, a lawyer with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, says a clear message needs to be sent that such comments aren’t acceptable. “We frequently find that universities fail to treat anti-Semitism with the same resolve they apply to other problems because they lack a uniform standard for determining what is anti-Semitic and what is not,” she says. That’s where the Tennessee General Assembly comes in. The Brandeis Center wants lawmakers to write a definition of anti-Semitism into state law. House Bill 885 would place the definition alongside bans on sexual harassment and hazing on campuses. The Brandeis Center is not the only group pushing the proposal. Proclaiming Justice to the Nations, a pro-Israel group based in Nashville that’s perhaps best known for trying to block construction of a mosque in Murfreesboro several years ago, claims UT-Knoxville supports terrorism through student groups that it says are affiliated with Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. But Nashville Democrat Mike Stewart says there’s no evidence to support that. “Apparently some students got together and said, ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,'” he says. “I mean, I don’t really think that’s evidence of UT harboring or supporting terrorists.” Whether such statements amount to hate speech is at the crux of the debate. The Brandeis Center says they do, when they imply violence toward Jewish people or call into question Jewish loyalties. But some lawmakers say a ban on them would shut down all debate over the Middle East on Tennessee’s campuses. They delayed a vote on the measure until next week to give the University of Tennessee time to respond. The school says in a prepared statement that “the safety and well-being of its students is a top priority” and it is focused on creating a welcoming environment. “Any suggestion to the contrary is not reflective of our Knoxville campus or the greater Knoxville community,” it says. “We encourage and support dialogue among all of our students to promote better understanding and respect for differing points of view.” The university adds it looks forward to giving lawmakers more facts about the issue at future hearings. Original Article