NYU Tel Aviv Students & Admin Criticize Department Over Boycott

Multiple Jewish students attending New York University’s study abroad program in Tel Aviv, Israel were disheartened that it was boycotted by a department at the school. Hundreds of the school’s faculty members as well as members of NYU’s general administration joined in expressing their disapproval.

On May 2nd, the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA) at NYU announced that it passed a resolution of non-cooperation with the school’s study abroad program in Tel Aviv. The SCA accused the Tel Aviv program of operating “in the shadow of racial, religious, and political profiling.” The SCA’s statement said that it passed the resolution “by a majority vote,” in response to Israel’s “longstanding practice of barring entry to persons of Palestinian descent, and its recent amendments to the Law of Entry prohibit entry to members of groups that are critical of government policies.” The SCA resolution’s five identified authors are known to be supporters of the BDS campaign.

As reported by The Algemeiner, while Israel’s entry law does bar access to foreigners who are identified as key proponents of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign, NYU’s spokesman confirmed that “no NYU student has been prevented from going to Israel.” NYU’s administration also pushed back against the SCA decision by stating that no SCA faculty were even involved with the Tel Aviv program, implicating that there was no “practical effect to the vote.”

The timing of the SCA’s announcement was also offensive. The measure was passed on Yom HaShoah, Israel’s national Holocaust remembrance day. “How am I as a Jewish student supposed to feel when an academic boycott of the Jewish state is declared … on the day in which we are meant to reflect on the tragedy and crimes committed against our people by the Nazis,” said Javier Cohen, a sophomore who attended NYU-Tel Aviv this past fall semester. “Anti-Zionist groups on campus love to criticize the ease with which pro-Israel students ‘pull the antisemitism card,’ but the obsession that we see on campus in targeting the one and only Jewish state while defending just about any other can’t be explained otherwise,” he added.

“Jews, non-Jews, pro-Palestinian students — we were all able to go to Tel Aviv for a semester,” said Ilan Bassali, a senior at the University, who attended NYU-Tel Aviv in spring 2017. He said his program included roughly 20-30 students who held extended discussion where “we both opened each others eyes to the other side, which is very valuable and doesn’t happen enough.” That a department at “the university I go to, pay tuition to, and spent four years of my life at is doing something like this” and is pursuing non-cooperation with the Tel Aviv program is “offensive and sad,” he said.

“The rising anti-Israel sentiment on campus has made Jewish students the targets of discrimination, and even harassment, regardless of their political affiliations,” said another undergraduate student, who wished to be identified only by her first name, Shai. “This is a problem that the administration needs to tackle with more than just an ‘institutional statement.’”

NYU spokesperson John Beckman responded, pointing out that the general administration does not agree with the position of the SCA. He said the administration “has unwaveringly supported NYU Tel Aviv and publicly criticized its opponents.” “The University will not allow the SCA vote to have any impact on NYU Tel Aviv, to prevent any students from studying there, or to disadvantage any student who chooses to study there,” Beckman asserted. “NYU has a firm, established track record of opposing BDS, of opposing ostracism based on support of Israel, of rejecting calls to close NYU Tel Aviv, and of supporting its Jewish community; it’s unfortunate that there are those who choose to ignore that,” he added.