Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons On May 15th, 85 organizations, including the Louis D. Brandeis Center, signed a letter organized by the AMCHA Initiative that commended University of Michigan’s adoption of a Blue Ribbon Panel report, which stated that faculty should base decisions, such as letters of recommendations and other academic judgments, “solely on educational and professional reasons.” This panel was established by the University after professor Cheney-Lippold refused to write a letter of recommendation for a student who was planning on studying abroad in Israel. The goal of the panel was to investigate the question, “What ought to be the intersection between political thought/ideology and a faculty member’s responsibility to students?” The panel’s recommendations center around the belief that: “… As faculty members make judgments and act in their role as teachers, they must do so based solely on educational and professional reasons. The recommendation honors the dual rights and responsibilities of faculty members––their fundamental rights to academic freedom as scholars and their concomitant responsibilities as teachers employed by an educational institution.” Additionally, the report recommends “a supplemental governing principle regarding the need for a clear process for students or other faculty to bring concerns safely to the attention of the unit in which the faculty member teaches.” Finally, since the goal of the report is to “safeguard the integrity of the academic enterprise, these principles must also apply to the university’s practices and decisions.” The letter, addressed to University of Michigan (UM) President Schlissel and Provost Philbert, applauded the “adoption of this core statement of principles and your commitment to establishing explicit procedures for bringing forward concerns about faculty who violate it will make a significant and positive difference for the entire UM community.” AMCHA Initiative also said, “This is a precedent-setting report that we hope will influence school administrators on other campuses where faculty are brazenly attempting to implement an academic boycott of Israel and limit their students’ opportunities.” While the report was not specific to Israel-related incidents, students are experiencing an increase in backlash for their pro-Israel sentiment on college campuses. Professor Cheney-Lippold was acting in compliance with an academic boycott of Israel when he refused to write a letter of recommendation once he realized they intended to study in Israel. As the letter said, “Faculty who use their academic positions to implement an academic boycott of Israel, or to engage in any other type of ideologically-driven behavior, are impeding the educational rights of their students, blocking access to a body of knowledge critical for understanding a complex topic of global importance, and are in direct violation of UM’s new core statement of principles.”