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Separate and Unequal for Jewish Groups at Williams College

(Tablet) K.C. Johnson - In April, the Williams College student government, which previously had recognized a branch of Students for Justice in Palestine, rejected a request to recognize a group called Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI). In the previous decade, the College Council had not rejected any otherwise-qualified group. In short, the student government at one of the nation's finest liberal arts colleges utilized two sets of criteria - one for a proposed pro-Israel group composed mostly of Jewish students, another for every other current and potential student group on campus. During the April 16 debate on the issue, multiple anti-recognition students said they would experience unspecified forms of emotional or physical harm unless the council refused to recognize WIFI. Multiple Williams students deemed nondebatable the proposition that Israel has perpetrated a genocide against Palestinians. One student claimed that Palestinians currently were experiencing worse conditions than the Jewish people experienced during the Holocaust. The writer is professor of history at Brooklyn College.
2019-05-21 00:00:00
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