Sonoma State Univ. President Placed on Leave After Going Rogue Under Protest Pressure And Agreeing To Academic Boycott of Israel
“My goal when meeting with students at the encampment was to explore opportunities to make meaningful change, identify common ground and create a safe and inclusive campus for all. I now realize that many of the statements I made in my campuswide message did just the opposite”
The president of Sonoma State University in California has been placed on leave following the revelation that he made an agreement with anti-Israel campus protesters from Students for Justice in Palestine.
The agreement outraged local officials and people at the school because it met almost all of the protesters’ demands and made it appear that the school president agreed with them.
This is the most despicable university response yet. Sonoma State in California has not only agreed to the anti-Semitic demands of the encampment, but has converted the encampment into a permanent governing council. pic.twitter.com/aDK2dt1crF
— Kevin Kiley (@KevinKileyCA) May 15, 2024
The Times of Israel reported:
In first for US, California public university agrees to academic boycott of Israel
The president of a public university in Northern California announced Wednesday that was he on leave, less than a day after endorsing an academic boycott of Israel as part of an agreement with pro-Palestinian demonstrators to remove their tent encampment that was fiercely denounced by Jewish groups and lawmakers.
In addition to an academic boycott, Sonoma State University’s Mike Lee agreed Tuesday to the establishment of an “advisory council” of Students for Justice in Palestine — whose national umbrella organization praised the Hamas-led October 7 terror onslaught that started the war in Gaza — to ensure compliance with the deal, which also includes a section on “disclosure and divestment.”
The deal, which followed a number of other agreements that universities have announced in an effort to end the protest encampments that have been roiling campuses in the US, appeared to make the school the first American university to agree to an academic boycott of Israel.
“My goal when meeting with students at the encampment was to explore opportunities to make meaningful change, identify common ground and create a safe and inclusive campus for all. I now realize that many of the statements I made in my campuswide message did just the opposite,” Lee wrote in a school-wide email.
Just astonishing.
In a stunning turn of events, Sonoma State University President Mike Lee is now on leave after countless community members opposed his endorsement of the anti-Israel encampment demands. https://t.co/TAkiKkEMQF
— JCRC Bay Area (@SFJCRC) May 15, 2024
Politico reported on the aftermath:
California university president put on leave for ‘insubordination’ after meeting Gaza protesters’ demands
California State University placed Sonoma State campus President Mike Lee on leave Wednesday after he agreed to protesters’ demands to involve them in university decision-making and pursue divestment from Israel.
Lee sent a campus-wide memo Tuesday indicating that he had made several concessions to occupants of a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus. The memo was sent “without the appropriate approvals,” CSU Chancellor Mildred García said in a statement, adding that she and the 23-campus CSU system’s board are “actively reviewing the matter.”
“For now, because of this insubordination and the consequences it has brought upon the system, President Lee has been placed on administrative leave,” García said.
The punishment marks perhaps the harshest disciplinary action against a campus chancellor or president in California over the handling of protests of the war in Gaza.
Here’s a local news report:
How it started: Sonoma State University President Michael Lee capitulated to the antisemitic, pro terror mob on campus.
How it ended: Sonoma State University President Michael Lee placed on leave.
Bravo 👏 Sonoma State.https://t.co/o7FSOE2quf
— StopAntisemitism (@StopAntisemites) May 16, 2024
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Inscrutable
I’m shocked … that Lee was put on leave.
Did he really think he could do that unilaterally without consulting others?
He didn’t he used an inside outside game in order to try to get what he wanted. Fortunately it failed but he wasn’t doing it alone.
Yeah. He was more than consulting; he was colluding with others.
He just was not clear on who mattered more. The bet was the folks with positional authority over him wouldn’t pull the trigger under the PR and political pressure.
Key word: “insubordination.”
So, he’s going to ‘resign’, right? The Administrative Leave is only to give the lawyers time to draft up the documents, right?
He probably has a golden umbrella in his employment contract.
🎯
Good. He’s just sorry he got caught.
If only the Cossacks were still running the place.
his communist connections cant be far behind
His academic work should be reviewed for plagiarism. I bet he falls on the left side of the Asian Bell Curve.
Fire him now–anyone that stupid or unhinged is too stupid and unhinged to manage a university campus, or for that matter, the local McDonald’s
Well, yeah.
BUT we’ve already seen, it takes them 3-6 months to package up removal because “You’re to dumb to live, How do you even feed yourself?”
I have a cousin who taught at Sonoma State University and lives in Santa Rosa. She couldn’t wait to retire after the faculty, in her words, became “more Maoist than the Gang of Four”. She was a quiet teacher of Spanish and Portuguese literature and never got involved in faculty politics. She paid the price for it and remained an Associate Professor, though tenured, and was only offered Emerita status after her colleagues in another department intervened. Tells you a lot about loyalty and friendship amongst the whackademia set groupthink.
Lee’s note to self – Next time I surrender my university to Palestinian terrorists do not do it in writing in a campus-wide memo.
Maybe he can sue for people quoting him without his written consent.
“Placed on leave,” until the furor blows over. This reprobate should be swiftly fired.
Any person — especially those in positions of authority and influence — who capitulates to, kowtows to, appeases, whitewashes and enables goose-stepping, genocidal, obnoxious Muslim supremacists, Islamofascists and their non-Muslim, Dhimmi-crat allies in their genocidal Jew-hate and anti-Israel slanders, deserves the harshest treatment and condemnation.
“My goal when meeting with students at the encampment was to explore opportunities to make meaningful change, identify common ground and create a safe and inclusive campus for all. I now realize that many of the statements I made in my campuswide message did just the opposite,”
The Scarlet Overkill Hypno-Hat — now in keffiyeh!