NOTE: Literally seconds after this went live I received a message that Vassar had taken down the Wall of Truth which is the subject of this post after it was defaced by anti-Israel students. The title and text of the post has been adjusted accordingly.
Vassar College has been a hotbed of anti-Israel agitation by Students for Justice in Palestine and supporters, as documented in the following prior posts:
The situation is so bad that a self-avowed left-wing Daily Kos Diarist and Vassar alumna/us wrote a stinging rebuke, Anti-Semitic Times at Vassar College:
I graduated from Vassar two years ago and I am a proud left winger, but I just can’t be down with the Students for Justice in Palestine group at my alma mater. The group is full of filthy anti-Semites, who are spectacularly ignorant about everything from Nazi propaganda to Israel’s defense of itself…..At Vassar, even for me, the unhinged left wingers could be too much….Vassar has become a reactionary, ignorant, illiberal place full of unlettered bigots. No longer will I aid those values with donations.
The Vassar Conservative-Libertarian Union (VCLU), which sponsored my speech at Vassar, decided that it was time to protest before students left campus for the summer.
VCLU erected a Wall of Truth to counter the many defamatory and false allegations made against Israel.
The Wall of Truth specifically was placed in the same location that Vassar SJP puts its misnomered “Apartheid Wall” during Israeli Apartheid Week:
Julian Hassan of VCLU told me on the phone this afternoon that when VCLU put up the Wall of Truth he was confronted by administrators telling him to take it down because it was putting the campus on edge, and that there was not proper permitting. Some students also went to administrators complaining that the Wall of Truth was biased and should be taken down.
Hassan said that he refused, insisting that if SJP had the right to picket classes and to erect a wall making false claims against Israel, VCLU had the right to put up the Wall of Truth in protest. Hassan emphasized that part of the protest was against faculty who VCLU feels have treated pro-Israel students unfairly. Hassan emailed the following statement:
We are protesting the climate of fear at Vassar College and the members of the faculty who willfully fuel the fire by teaching biased courses year after year. A faculty chair who led the February 28th open letter called for a boycott [see here] of our May 5th lecture “The Case for Israel and Academic Freedom” and berated us when asked to endorse an event invitation to their department’s students. We can no longer allow the Vassar community to turn a blind-eye to the indoctrination that is happening in place of a liberal arts education.Julian Hassan ’14President, Vassar Conservative Libertarian Union
Nonetheless, at approximately 3 p.m. today Vassar administrators took down the Wall of Truth.
Updates to follow.
The Wall of Truth was defaced by anti-Israel students before it was taken down:
This is a photo of security taking down the Wall of Truth after it already was defaced:
Update 8:05 p.m.: I was sent the photo below which the sender asserted was a student defacing the Wall of Truth. I hope that Vassar administrators will identify the person and determine what he was doing to the Wall of Truth. Here is how the person who took the photo explained the situation:
This was located in The Retreat which is a cafe style campus dining area located in the College Center. The poster just kind of appeared, there was no one there to explain it and there was no note on it to identify where it came from.There were a number of students (about 10) crowded around and I sat down at a table in front of the poster to hear what people were saying. I have attended a few of the talks on campus about the Israel-Palestine issue so this has been something that I’ve been following to some degree.The boy in this photo was using markers to cross out the word “truth” on the poster and immediately before him someone (I’m unsure whether or not it was the same boy) wrote the “racist bullshit” comment. There was also a written comment that said “this is not a conversation.”There were two professors who were looking at the poster but they did make any comments besides voice their confusion as to where the poster was coming from.The students were saying a number of things. Some declared the poster to be full of lies, that it was propaganda justifying the violence Israelis have used against palestinians and voicing their disgust that the poster said the conflict is not an apartheid. I even heard one student say “the Nazi propaganda that the SJP posted was online…this is totally different…it’s literally occupying The Retreat”
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