In a series of three videos, the APT documented its investigation into Islamic extremism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Zionism at Northeastern University. Professors and members of the Spiritual Life Office are shown abusing their classes and Northeastern Holocaust Remembrance Week to promote an anti-Israel and, at times, anti-Semitic agenda. Students for Justice in Palestine leaders are seen vandalizing the campus with anti-Semitic messages, glorifying terrorist groups, and chanting for the destruction of Israel. All videos can be seen at shameonneu.com.
For the first time since these videos were released, NEU has taken some serious steps to deal with this insidious behavior. On March 7, 2014 members of Northeastern University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were informed by the school’s Center for Student Involvement that their chapter had been suspended for at least a year.
NEU’s Director of the Center for Student Involvement, Jason Campbell-Foster, offered a litany of charges against SJP, including their distribution of fake eviction notices across Northeastern campuses – a tactic used to demonize IDF policies regarding terrorist safe houses.
Campbell-Foster wrote, “You have not shown a concerted effort to improve your practices and educate your members on how to properly operate your organization within the boundaries of university policy,”
Additionally, before SJP members would be considered for reinstatement they must participate in civility and tolerance workshops led by university administrators.
SPME President Richard Cravatts said, “Students for Justice in Palestine have a long history of bringing a corrosive and radical activism to campuses when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is debated. While SPME welcomes vigorous scholarly debate about a broad range of topics involving the Middle East, SJP’s tactics have included libels against Israel, vituperative attacks on the Jewish state, the demonizing of Zionism and Jews, and other extremist rhetoric which is not part of a civil dialogue about contemporary political issues.”
APT director Charles Jacobs said: “Years of anti-Semitic vandalism, glorification of terrorist groups, calls for the destruction of Israel, and other actions by Northeastern’s SJP documented by our organization have created a hostile learning environment for Jewish pro-Israel students on campus. Sadly, these days the only hatred tolerated on campus is the one directed at Israel and its supporters, and so administrations at dozens of other colleges continue to turn a blind eye to SJP bigotry. Hopefully, NU SJP’s justified suspension becomes a wakeup call for those schools as well.”
For further information please contact Asaf Romirowsky at: Aromirowsky@spme.org
About 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.
The peace we seek in the Middle East is consistent both with Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign Jewish state within safe and secure borders, and with the rights and legitimate aspirations of her neighbors.
Our mission is to inform, motivate, and encourage faculty to use their academic skills and disciplines on campus, in classrooms, and in academic publications to develop effective responses to the ideological distortions, including anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist slanders, which poison debate and work against peace. SPME welcomes scholars from all disciplines, faiths groups and nationalities who share our desire for peace and our commitment to academic integrity and honest debate.
About APT
Americans for Peace and Tolerance is a Boston-based 501(c)(3) non-profit organization dedicated to promoting peaceful coexistence in an ethnically diverse America by educating the American public about the need for a moderate political leadership that supports tolerance and core American values in communities across the nation.
