Bias crimes plague Rutgers after Palestine Conference cancelled
Police are investigating a graffiti attack on several buildings on Rutgers University’s main campus in New Brunswick, including a Jewish community center and a fraternity house, as a bias crime.
On Saturday morning, swastikas were found spray-painted on Rutgers Hillel. They were also painted on the porch and front door of Alpha Epsilon Pi, an historically Jewish fraternity.
The attacks come just days after Israeli housing minister Natan Sharansky was pied by a member of the NJ Solidarity Movement moments before his on-campus speech, which transpired, incidentally, only two weeks after Rutgers cancelled the National Student Conference of the Palestinian Solidarity Conference which was to be held there.
The school’s president has issued a statement reading,
These insensitive acts are an affront to all of us in the university community. They violate the code of human decency that we must uphold in order to engage each other in an enlightened, intellectual and socially aware environment. As we vigorously defend the right of individuals and groups to express their views and opinions in a civil manner, we can never, for a moment, tolerate those who would commit acts that intimidate or physically harm others.
I dunno, I just think it was a little dumb to cancel that conference and then invite an Israeli leader to come and speak on campus, especially after what went down at Concordia last year. It’s not that the activists behavior should be tolerated or necessarily even forgiven… It’s just ultimately a provocation on the university’s behalf. The school should’ve expected this backlash, and thus, in the spirit of truly being fair, cancelled the Sharansky talk as well.
As for the activists…well, if they’re going to denounce Israel for being racist, they should equally be denouncing the behavior of their fellow activists as demonstrated by these attacks. I’m still waiting to see a statement from NJS on the subject however.
I really hope NJ Solidarity had nothing to do with this. It was wrong for the school to cancel the Palestinian Solidarity conference, but this was not the correct reaction. If they were behind it, activists everywhere should remove their support for NJ Solidarity.
the reason the conference was cancelled was because they expected even more rampant antisemitism on campus during the convention.
take a look at what’s going on on campuses around the country and the way that pro-palestinian campus groups are feeding antisemitic sentiments…
http://www.limitstogrowth.org/WEB-text/Jewish-Students-Attacked.html
http://www.hillel.org/hillel/NewHille.nsf/0/039d27fb094e07b385256c3e00734215?OpenDocument
http://www.yourish.com/archives/2002/sfsu.html
…you think rutgers wanted to host a hate fest that would welcome all these unsavory elements to their campus?
let’s use the same logic elsewhere. NYC should not allow anti-globalization protests because in other parts of the world, there have been violent clashes between police and “unsavory elements.” Do you agree?
I would hope not. And yes it is the same. Listen carefully, you cannot silent dissent just because there are a few dissenters who are violent/racist/sexist/homophobic.
we’re not talking about silencing dissent, we’re talking about allocating state and school funds to finance the vocalization of that dissent. the government nor any public education facility should not be pledging their support to anyone’s causes with their funds.
why should rutgers/the state of nj pay for racists to come to their campus and draw swastikas on the jewish student union building? why should rutgers/the state of nj pay for palestinian supporters to come and call for the destruction of israel? they shouldn’t…
you’re horribly mixing things up here. two conferences were organized. one got a permit, the other didn’t. therefore voices were silenced. whether or not a college should pay for one or the other is irrelevant; I’m not even sure that money is involved. We’re talking about a permit only I believe.
all on-campus events such as this are funded with school money. and what were the two conferences?