CCSU Signs Anti-Intimidation Statement: UConn. Declines, says Statement Isn’t Enough
By Marty Toohey
WASHINGTON, Oct. 08, 2002–Three months after taking fire for facilitating a forum many felt favored Palestinians over Israelis, Central Connecticut State University’s president signed a statement that appeared in a full-page advertisement in Monday’s New York Times decrying intimidation on college campuses, particularly that directed at Jewish students.
Richard Judd, CCSU’s president, is one of about 300 college and university presidents to sign the statement, which comes after a nationwide rash of anti-Semitic since January. Those incidents include vandalism of synagogues and an attack of a Jewish student at the University of California-Berkeley by a group of men who allegedly were praising Hitler.
“We want students to know that colleges are places that are safe and inclusive and protect free expression,” Judd said in an interview Tuesday. “The statement made a lot of sense to me.”
The statement was sponsored by six college presidents, led by Dartmouth president James Wright, and was organized by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group. The statement ran as a full-page ad on page A13 of Monday’s Times.
The statement wasn’t inclusive enough for several college presidents, however. Absent from the list of names was that of Philip Austin, president of the University of Connecticut-Storrs. Austin didn’t learn of the statement until Tuesday morning, but wouldn’t have signed it anyway because of concern for student groups not mentioned in the statement, particularly Arab and Islamic students, said Karen Grava, an Austin spokeswoman.
Austin “has sent out numerous letters to the community” about ensuring the safety of Jewish students, “but has reservations about signing something that isn’t inclusive,” Grava said.
Four of the five paragraphs in the statement didn’t mention any group specifically. The fourth paragraph, however, reads: “In the past few months, students who are Jewish … have received death threats and threats of violence … creating an atmosphere of intimidation.”
Austin isn’t the only president with misgivings about the statement. Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University, declined to have his name included on the list because it refers only to Jewish students specifically. He contends that the statement should cover all groups that could be threatened.
Grava also pointed out that presidents of several prominent institutions, including Yale and Harvard, didn’t add their names to the statement.
Judd, however, said that he would sign any statement endorsing students’ rights.
“I think they have a right to that view, but I think that protecting any group at any time is the right thing, the morally correct thing, to do,” Judd said. “If such a statement circulated for Palestinian students or other groups, I would sign that, too.”
A press liaison for the American Jewish Committee said the phones were ringing “all morning” on Tuesday with requests from colleges for information about the statement.
Although many colleges don’t track the number of Jewish students enrolled, because a person can be of Jewish faith without being of Jewish ethnicity, UConn and CCSU say they have active Jewish student populations.
Judd and CCSU took criticism in August, when Connecticut Jewish leaders charged that a Middle East teachers’ training forum at CCSU was “hostile to Israel” and unbalanced. The forum featured several professors sympathetic to the Arab point of view.
Yossi Olmert, a former director of Israel’s Government Press Office and an adviser to former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, lectured before two CCSU journalism classes Monday morning and offered an Israeli perspective on the conflict. School officials have denied bringing in Olmert to provide a counterbalance to the summer training forum.
Published in The New Britain Herald, in Connecticut.
