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Cardozo Award to President Carter Draws Protest, Threat of Funding Cutoff

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Former President Jimmy Carter’s consistent record of blatant hostility towards Israel was apparently not enough to dissuade Cardozo Law School from honoring him for his international conflict resolution activities. Photo Credit: Carter Center.
Former President Jimmy Carter’s consistent record of blatant hostility towards Israel was apparently not enough to dissuade Cardozo Law School from honoring him for his international conflict resolution activities. Photo Credit: Carter Center.
While the event itself apparently went off without a hitch, the presentation of an award by Yeshiva University’s Cardozo Law School to former president Jimmy Carter last week sparked intense opposition from the law school’s alumni, including a threat to cut off future donations to their alma mater if the honor would not be withdrawn. There had also been a call by at least one Cardozo alumnus to have concerned school graduates physically block Carter from accepting the award, but that specific form of protest never actually materialized.

Carter was given the International Advocate for Peace award by the student-run Journal of Conflict Resolution, which took note of his central role in arranging the 1979 peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, as well as the SALT II nuclear weapons treaty with the Soviet Union. Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

However, the ex-U.S. leader’s actions and statements regarding Israel in his post-presidency years have aroused the wrath of the Jewish state’s supporters, with many viewing him as virtually anti-Semitic. In particular, Carter has strongly criticized Israel for fostering increased settlement activity in Judea and Samaria, he has met formally with the terrorist group Hamas, and – most egregiously – he authored a book in 2006 with the incendiary title Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which essentially accused Israel of functioning in the historically racially separatist style of South Africa in its treatment of the Palestinians under its rule.

Most recently, Carter declared last year that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not serious about finalizing a two-state solution for the Palestinian conflict – a statement that contradicts the prime minister’s official position. “Jimmy Carter has an ignominious history of anti-Israel bigotry,’’ a newly formed group known as the Coalition of Concerned Cardozo Alumni posted on a website created to express outrage at the public award presentation.

Adding his voice to the protest, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz offered to debate Carter on his human rights record. “He’s never met a terrorist he didn’t love, and never met an Israeli whom he did,” Dershowitz said.

Richard Joel, the president of Yeshiva University, responded to the controversy by stating that while the Y.U. administration objects to Carter’s positions on Israel, the university is a “free marketplace of ideas,’’ and it was within the students’ rights to honor the former president.

In an exclusive interview with the Jewish Voice, Richard Allen, a pro-Israel activist whose group JCCWatch periodically takes Jewish organizations to task for apparently detrimental actions to Israel, condemned the famed law school for hosting such an award ceremony. “Cardozo has blackened its name,” Allen asserted, “and it will have to live with the consequences. Specifically, many of its alumni will cease to make donations to both Yeshiva University and Cardozo Law School.” According to Allen, it is disingenuous for Cardozo’s administration to claim that it is not responsible for the decisions of one of its student groups, as ultimately the school allowed the event to occur under its domain. “It is simply unconscionable for a Jewish affiliated school to honor someone who has played such a high profile role in demonizing the Jewish state,” Allen stated.

Allen said that the award to President Carter has generated significant animosity both among many of the school’s alumni as well as within the Jewish community at large. “I never believed that Yeshiva University would retract the invitation to Carter,” he remarked, “as the Dean of Cardozo, Matthew Diller, has a viewpoint that does not include Israel at the forefront of his school’s priorities. His chief concern is to burnish the law school’s credentials.”

Gary Emmanuel, a securities lawyer who organized the alumni protest, called Carter’s appearance at a Jewish educational institution “a slap in the face’’ to the school’s graduates. “If Cardozo students had invited former Klan member David Duke,” he said, “you can be sure they would say, ‘Absolutely not.’ There is a red line somewhere and it’s a matter of where you draw it. That’s where the disagreement lies.’’

Maria Chickedantz, 32, a Cardozo alumna and labor lawyer, was one of those at the event taking the opposite viewpoint from the dissenters. “Not all Cardozo alumni support bullying of public figures for making a critique of Israeli policies,” she insisted. “We don’t equate that with an attack on Judaism or on the existence of the state of Israel.”

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