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ANALYSIS: In seeming violation of agreement, profs won’t write letters for ‘specific institutions and/or opportunities that are out of ethical alignment with [their] own political principles‘
Anti-Israel faculty at Haverford College appear to be defying a recent settlement with a pro-Israel organization by publicly stating they will not write letters of recommendation for students wanting to attend schools in Israel.
As reported by the AMCHA Initiative on X, the college’s settlement with The Deborah Project notes “it is a violation of Haverford College’s antidiscrimination policy for faculty to refuse to write letters of recommendation on the basis of students’ Jewish, Zionist, and/or Israeli identity.”
But the Bi-College Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine says in a recent Instagram statement it will not abide by this part of the settlement due to Israeli universities’ complicity “in the maintenance of apartheid and genocide”:
“[I]t would be in violation of our professional ethics – whether or not it was also in violation of Haverford policy – to refuse to write a letter of recommendation for a student on the basis of any aspect of their ethnic or political identity. We’ve never done that and we never will.
“Having said that, we reserve the right – as all faculty should – to refuse to write letters for specific institutions and/or opportunities that are out of ethical alignment with our own political principles” (emphasis in the original).
The Bi-College Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) purports to lament the “difficulty” of older Jews in “navigat[ing] the growing popularity of anti-Zionism among their younger family members, but emphasizes the “most important” thing is that a “genocide in Palestine rages on” perpetrated “predominately by Jewish people serving in an official capacity as representatives of a Jewish supremacist state.”
The FSJP also implies Haverford and the Deborah Project don’t want a lot of coverage about the settlement due to its alleged lack of a “convincing” case, and its members openly chide aspects of the agreement.
They claim the establishment of an antisemitism committee will essentially do nothing, and that annual training on antisemitism has an “extremely high chance of backfiring” and “implies that support of genocide is an essential component of Judaism.”
Referencing Harverford’s anti-discrimination policy in its admissions materials (which, as noted, includes mentioning Zionists and “Israeli identity”), the FSJP reiterates that its members “never,” and will never, “harass or discriminate against community members on the basis of any identity whatsoever” — despite its belief Zionism and Israel are genocidal.
As an example of this alleged commitment to treating “all students with respect while also refusing to shy away from political self-expression,” it cites Haverford Professor Tarik Aougab’s (pictured) “Talking across difference re: Palestine” which links to his piece claiming, among many other things, that at the time “over 20,000 Palestinians ha[d] officially been murdered” by Israel.
Aougab also authored this February op-ed on “de-platforming Zionists on college campuses,” which claims the debate over such “isn’t about free speech but whether Zionism deserves a platform in a civilized learning community.”
(Two months later in April, Aougab helped spearhead an effort to move a mathematics conference outside of the United States due to President Trump’s “unbridled hatred of immigrants,” the U.S. being “on the verge of martial law,” and, naturally, the country’s “aiding and abetting the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”)
Perhaps most ironically, given its constant invocation of Israel’s “genocide,” the FSJP blasts the “terrible shortcomings” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of “antisemitism,” which Haverford plans to “publish in a FAQ.”
MORE: Philly-area pro-Palestinian college students engage in sit-ins, won’t leave until demands met
