Shame on campus

Brooklyn College President Karen Gould botches handling of an anti-Israel conference
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So much for academic freedom at Brooklyn College.

There was no place at an anti-Israel, anti-Semitic campus program for four students who attempted to attend with the goal of expressing contrary views.

At the order of a representative of Students for Justice in Palestine, and while a school administrator stood by, campus security forced the four members of Hillel, a Jewish student society, out of the event.

The expulsions are a severe blot on the record of college President Karen Gould, as well as on the standing of Paisley Currah, chair of the political science department, which co-sponsored lectures devoted to the so-called BDS movement.Gould and Currah had defended the department’s co-sponsorship as an exercise in academic freedom. Gould, for one, urged people with differing views to attend and speak their minds.

“I encourage those who do attend with opposing views to participate in the discussion, ask tough questions and challenge any ideas with which they disagree,” she wrote. That’s not what happened for student Melanie Goldberg and three companions. She said she brought opposing fact sheets to distribute at the end of the program.

When a member of the sponsoring group saw her taking notes on the papers, she said, he demanded that she surrender them or be expelled. Goldberg refused. Security was called. Goldberg said she complained to college Vice President Milga Morales, only to be told, “It’s their event and they are calling the shots.”

Separately, after holding press conferences and inviting the media, Students for Justice decreed that the program would be closed to the press. While a New York Times journalist was admitted or found her way inside, campus security barred Reuven Blau, a reporter for the Daily News, which had published a series of opinions critical of the program.

By The Times’ description, the kids had much to hide. For example, one speaker, Omar Barghouti, praised attendees for resisting “racist, hate-mongering, bullying attempts to shut down this event.”

Worse, he drew a parallel between Israel and the predations of apartheid-era South Africa and declared that Israelis were infected with a strain of racism against Palestinians that is similar to the European anti-Semitism that led to Nazism.

For that grotesque slander, the audience gave Barghouti a standing ovation.The BDS movement views Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state as illegitimate. Activists call for undermining Israel by boycotting its commerce, disinvesting from its economy and imposing sanctions.

Students on campuses across the country entertain these ideas, and they are entitled to as part of their academic endeavors.

Here, the BDS lecture drew heated opposition because the political science department served as co-sponsor and endorser. Currah and his 16 departmental colleagues were similarly entitled to their misguided actions. But Gould had a high duty to protect all rights, including those of critics.

Allowing students to close public facilities to the press violated her obligation to be open with the public. And staging an event where students felt free to bar others based on their beliefs was an abomination.

CUNY Chancellor Matt Goldstein must act — and forcefully.

Shame on campus

Brooklyn College President Karen Gould botches handling of an anti-Israel conference
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SPME

Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME) is not-for-profit [501 (C) (3)], grass-roots community of scholars who have united to promote honest, fact-based, and civil discourse, especially in regard to Middle East issues. We believe that ethnic, national, and religious hatreds, including anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism, have no place in our institutions, disciplines, and communities. We employ academic means to address these issues.

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