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CUNY Report Faults Bklyn College for Ejection of Jewish Students at BDS Event

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Supporters of Israel demonstrated against the Brooklyn College BDS presentation in February.
Supporters of Israel demonstrated against the Brooklyn College BDS presentation in February.
An investigative report by the City University of New York has unambiguously criticized Brooklyn College’s administration for forcibly ejecting four Jewish students two months ago from a presentation by advocates of boycott and divestment of Israel. The event had generated outrage and calls for cancellation within the Jewish community due to its sponsorship by the college’s Political Science department, an unprecedented move given the extremist ideology of the speakers.

The primary finding of the report – which was issued by CUNY vice chancellor and general counsel Frederick Schaffer – was that there was no justification for the removal of the students from the controversial February event, as it was clear they were merely taking notes on the speakers’ comments and were in no way acting to disrupt the presentation. While the investigative report did not conclude that they were ejected due to their Jewish affiliation, it did state that “a more plausible inference can be drawn that the removal of the four students was motivated by their political viewpoint.”

The report’s central judgment was as follows: “The Brooklyn College administration did not handle this event well. It was probably a mistake, once the forum became such a large and controversial event, to give the students (and a few faculty recruited by the students) primary responsibility for maintaining order unless there was a threat to physical safety. Even if that was the correct decision, it was not sufficiently elaborated and communicated either to the student volunteers and faculty marshals or to the public safety officers. In particular, insufficient consideration was given to the question of how a verbal disruption would be handled; certainly, none of the public safety officers received clear instructions about this. Furthermore, no decision was made as to who would have the authority to remove members of the audience in the case of a verbal disturbance. As events unfolded, no senior administrator intervened to determine what the evidence was for the alleged disturbance or whether the facts justified the removal of the four students from the room and then the building. Nor did any of the public safety officers check with a superior before removing the students. Instead, all of the Brooklyn College personnel deferred to the request of a single, interested person, who, unbeknownst to them, was not even a student at Brooklyn College.”

The Schaffer Report additionally highlighted several previously unreported facts surrounding the actions against the Jewish students at the BDS presentation. These included the revelation that the falsely disseminated information about the students’ allegedly disruptive behavior was “based on official reports” did not emanate from the student organizers of the gathering, but rather from a Brooklyn College dean, Milga Morales, who was apparently responding to information provided to her by – as the report documents – the “public safety officers who removed the students” and who “had not witnessed the alleged disturbance.” Despite the lack of accurate firsthand knowledge, Morales communicated this misleading information to the college communications staff and, presumably, to the college’s senior administrators.

Another revelation in the CUNY report was the fact that a minimum of five “faculty marshals,” selected in consultation with the BDS event’s organizers, technically presided over the gathering, with responsibility for administering security matters. According to knowledgeable observers, these faculty marshals have a reputation on the Brooklyn College campus for being vocally unsympathetic to Israel’s security needs. Moreover in this regard, the report discloses that one of these “faculty marshals” described the atmosphere at the anti-Israel symposium a “love fest.”

The Schaffer Report also revealed that – in addition to the already documented fact that a reporter from the Daily News, which had editorialized against the BDS event, was prevented from attending the forum – another reporter known to be opposed to the gathering, representing Frontpage Magazine, was similarly denied entrance.

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