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Is Professor Weiss suppressing Israeli academia?

Professor Max Weiss has never met Slav Leibin. Obviously.

If he had, he would have understood that Leibin, the Jewish Agency Israel fellowat the University's Center for Jewish Life,was acting in a purely advisory capacity when he pointed out that Weiss’s support ofthe Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movementis at odds with the CJL’s Israel policy. He would know that Leibin does not “patrol” or “police” the CJL’s Israel-related programs but works with a diverse body of students who bring their own positions and convictions to bear on the coordination of these events. He would have walked into the tiny office on the second floor of the CJL building (if Leibin’s there, the door’s open) and started a civil conversation about Hillel policy instead of writing an op-ed that attacks someone he has never met for failing to invite him—a decision he seems toequate with banning, barring and silencing—to a panel about Israel’s recentoperation in Gaza.

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As the CJL response points out, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that Weiss supports calls for a “cultural and academic boycott of Israeli professors and institutions of higher learning.” This is the crowning irony of Weiss’s impassioned defense of free speech on campus: The position he wants to represent before the Princeton community is one that openly and intentionally marginalizes Israeli academia. As an expert in the modern Middle East, he must know that universities are the liberal bastions of Israeli society where some of the most influential voices calling for peace and the most strident critics of the Israeli government reside.How can he reasonably accuse the CJL of stifling free speech when the movement he supports is one that indiscriminately targets Israeli academia, thereby delegitimizing and repressing some of the most influential institutions working for change in Israel?Weiss repeatedly emphasizes the need for a “free and full exchange of ideas and opinions” at the University in his op-ed. He has somehow rationalized the hypocrisy of defending his “right” to be sponsored by the CJL while simultaneously championing a movement that attempts to repress the free and full exchange of ideas in the international academic scene. I wish he had shared that rationalization in his column.

In his column last week, Ben Dinovelli argued that the CJL has a moral obligation to create a forum where Weiss can air his views. He implied that by excluding Weiss, the CJL is limiting the Gaza panel to the “Israeli perspective.” Equating Weiss with all that is not pro-Israel is extremely misleading. The broad spectrum of positions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict includes many experts and activists who do not represent the Israeli perspective or support BDS; takeGhaith al-Omari, the executive director of the American Task Force on Palestine, who will be featured on theNov. 4panel that Weiss was not asked to join.

It is important to note that the CJL and its affiliate student groups’ reluctance to engage with certain positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict extends to both sides of the political spectrum. Samuel Major’16, president of Tigers for Israel, told me that under his leadership, the student group would not sponsor an event that hosted a Zionist speaker opposed to a two-state solution. This is not a moral failing on TFI’s part. The group recognizes that extremism does not create successful dialogue or change. For the CJL and many of the Princeton students organizing the panel on Gaza, any movement that aims to bypass discourse with economic, cultural and academic strong-arm delegitimation tactics is extreme.

Weiss, while the CJL will not hand you a soapbox for the dissemination of ideas that are fundamentally opposed to its support for, well, free speech, I know for a fact that you are welcome to discuss your views with students and staff of all political persuasions who frequent the center any time the fancy takes you. There’s this guy who works there, one of the most thoughtful, open and respectful individuals I know, who would be particularly happy to meet with you in order to clarify both his role at the CJL and broader Hillel Israel policy. His name is Slav Leibin.

Tehila Wenger is a politics major fromColumbus, Ohio. She can be reached at twenger@princeton.edu.

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