We went through this problem twice at George Washington University
during the past 6-7 years: a similar policy proposed by the Office
of Study Abroad, and then fairly quickly vetoed at a higher
(presidential) level. Without going into details, I recommend the
following strategies:
1. Get the faculty on board by defining this as an important issue
of principle: in the case of the leave of absence and transfer
credit, the decision to award credit for work done at another
university is an academic decision, to be made by an academic body
on academic grounds alone, and not by bureaucrats who want to
safeguard insurance and protect the university from any possibility
of exposure. To cede this decision to bureaucrats would be a serious
infringement of the rights of the faculty.
2. Go right to the top level of the administration and communicate
that the director of Jewish Studies program and the director of
Hillel are feeling pressure to write to the entire mailing lists of
the two organizations, including alumni, to express their outrage
over this misguided policy. (When this policy was made public the
first time at GWU through an article in the Jerusalem Post, the
president received a barrage of communications from outraged alumni).
I’m sure that that the overseas offices of the Hebrew University and
Tel Aviv University will provide a list of other American
universities (including Harvard) that have abandoned this type of
policy within the last few years.
(At one point, there was a question as to whether the Hebrew
University on Har ha-Tsofim was included in a State Department
advisory that applied to the West Bank; but Tel Aviv University seem
incredible to include in the same category. Whatever advisory are
currently in effect about travel to the West Bank and Gaza, it is
certainly of a totally different nature than anything said about
travel to Israel.)
Finally, be clear that the position you are arguing recognizes the
right of the university legal office to require its students
studying abroad to sign any waiver of rights to make a claim against
the university that the legal office can devise.
