David Rubinstein tells a story here that has become all too familiar.
He writes at the Jewish News Syndicate:
Stop the weaponization of our student unionsRecently, the Cornell Graduate Student Union (CGSU-UE) issued a statement accusing Jews of “weaponizing antisemitism” and calling to “resist” against Israel “by any means necessary.” As a Jewish Ph.D. student with family in Israel, I am now expected, like all Cornell doctoral students, to financially support these very activists issuing these threats unless the union decides to grant me an exemption.When students reported feeling threatened, Cornell leadership refused to intervene. Instead, its bureaucracy swept complaints from Jewish students under the rug or told us to take our concerns to a federal agency in Buffalo, N.Y., 150 miles from our campus in Ithaca, N.Y. Instead of protecting its students, Cornell opted to relinquish their responsibility to others.The administration once insisted that it would safeguard students like me. When a bare majority of Cornell graduate students (58%) voted to unionize, the university pledged to protect those who objected to CGSU-UE’s extremism. University president Michael Kotlikoff wrote that mandatory union fees for Ph.D. students would be “contrary to our university’s core values” and “incompatible with our commitment to academic freedom.”This commitment turned out to be meaningless. When the union threatened to strike, Cornell reneged on its promises and agreed to force doctoral students to pay dues. The sole exception included what federal law largely requires: that religious objectors and a narrowly defined group with ethical and moral objections could seek an exemption to pay a charity instead.Cornell promised that objecting would be easy, entailing no more than checking a box on a form. That form never materialized because Cornell never insisted on contractual guarantees of an easy opt-out process.Jewish doctoral students must now beg the union, which is controlled by anti-Jewish radicals, for permission not to fund its hateful pro-terror activism. Instead of being given the chance to check a box, we are now forced to justify our personal beliefs in order for CGSU-UE to “evaluate” whether or not to exempt us from forced dues.
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