Challenges On Campus
Expert gives ADEs stance on U-M admissions lawsuit
along with update on nationwide anti-Israel unrest.
At Tel Aviv's Dizengoff polling station, Na'ama
Yuria, 21, a graphic designer for a newspaper, had
just voted for Meretz. She was unhappy that voters
appeared poised to re-elect Sharon as prime minister.
"I'm sick of the swaggering generals. There are
300,000 unemployed, the economy is the worst it's
been since the early 1950s, and all these guys want
to do is prove that they were right, that the
Palestinians started this war.
"So what?" she said. "They are not looking to
solve our problems, they are not looking toward our
future, but toward the past."
One voter had quite different considerations in
mind. A man who gave his name as Eric Of Alaska
cast his ballot minutes before Sharon appeared at the
Jerusalem polling booth. A Native American who
had immigrated to Israel, he said he was voting for
Yisrael Ba'Aliyah, an immigrant rights party led by
Housing Minister Natan Sharansky.
"Well, I'm an immigrant, and Sharansky is fight-
ing to lower our rent," Eric said. "He also has more
integrity than any other candidate."
❑
PARTY
NEW OLD
ESTHER ALLWEISS TSCHIRHART
Special to the Jewish News
A
s the Bush administration weighed in
against the University of Michigan's affir-
mative action admissions policy, the Anti-
Defamation League-Michigan Region
brought its national campus expert here to talk
about the U-M lawsuit and about anti-Israel actions
on college campuses.
Dr. Jeffrey Ross, national director of ADL's
Department of Campus Affairs-Higher Education,
spoke Jan. 16 before about 35 people at the Max M.
Fisher Federation Building in Bloomfield Township.
An author and former college professor, Dr. Ross
commented on the amicus brief ADL filed in the U-
M case in the U.S Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
He claimed it took "neither side" in the U.S.
Supreme Court case to be decided this summer.
However, he said the U-M process that automati-
cally gives 20 admission points to minority appli-
cants "based on pigmentation is an unfair, illegal
process."
Judging a candidate's merit is ultimately subjec-
tive, he acknowledged, but "fairness in society can't
be achieved by unfair selection." ADL contends, he
said, that "it's up to the university to devise a better
way" to achieve the worthy goal of student diversity.
Turning to the subject of campus anti-Semitism,
Dr. Ross, an expert on the subject, said anti-Israel
bias became a force after September 2000. The
increasingly bold terrorist acts by Palestinians caught
the Jewish community by surprise, he said.
Previously, hopes on campus, as elsewhere, had been
pinned on the Oslo talks achieving a lasting peace.
Now the line has been crossed, going from criti-
cizing what the Israeli government does to challeng-
ing the existence of Israel at all," he added. When
human rights violations are brought up, he notes
that Israel is singled out among all nations. Student
organizers promoting a divestment frOm Israel cam-
paign justified their stance by characterizing Israel as
an apartheid society.
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In some quarters, the anti-Israel bias has changed to
an anti-Jewish one. Dr. Ross quoted Lawrence
Summers, the Jewish president of Harvard
University, who said that the anti-Israel campaign'
on college campuses was "anti-Semitism — if not in
intent, in effect."
A significant action last year was a statement
signed by about 300 college presidents decrying
attacks against Jews on campus. Yet when this was
labeled "an unbalanced statement" because it did
not specifically address attacks against Arabs, blacks
and Christians, among others, some college leaders
who signed the statement earlier asked to have their
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signatures withdrawn.
For Dr. Ross, this incident is proof that groups
"within the circle of civility receive protection. If
you are not, no one comes to your defense." And
that is the status of Jews, he maintained. He asked
those in attendance to imagine college presidents
refusing to sign a statement denouncing attacks on
gays just because straights were not mentioned. It
wouldn't happen, he said.
Dr. Ross showed a poster that promoters of an
anti-Israel rally put up last April at San Francisco
State University. It was an ad for "Palestinian
Children Meat" — an update on the medieval blood
libel of Jews killing Christian children for ritual use
of their blood at Passover. The copy below a pre-
sumably dead baby says, "Slaughtered according to
Jewish rites under American license."
The ad attacks Jews and America more than Israel,
which ostensibly was the reason for the rally, Dr.
Ross said.
An alliance has
arisen on campus
between some
Palestinians,
Muslims, Arabs, the
hard left and the
anti-Semitic extrem-
ist right," Dr. Ross
said.
Why can't anti-
Semitism be eradi-
cated on campus,
ey Ross of the ADL
someone asked.
"Quite often, the
groups that peddle it
wrap themselves in the mantle of free speech," Dr.
Ross said. "Also, campuses love to see themselves as
having a progressive environment, but it often cross-
es the line into outright bigotry."
Jewish Response
The situation is not hopeless, he reassured the audi-
ence. Jews on campus have been "mobilized to seize
the agenda, not to be defensive or try to convince
the anti-Israel coalition that it's wrong."
Pro-Israel petitions Jewish students have circulated
are getting published in campus papers telling why
Israel is important to America, he said. The result is
that many students, not particularly involved with
Israel, are rejecting the anti-Israel movement because
they realize it is anti-American.
"It's great to highlight the issue of what's going on
on campus," said Jeff Brochstein of Detroit, who
recently moved back to the U.S. from Israel.
Another in the audience, Mike Lask of
Huntington Woods, said Dr. Ross spoke about
things that "most people are not paying attention to,
the manipulation of facts and history." ❑
1/31
2003
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