Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Pro-Israel Fraternity Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where
Authorities Have Long Ignored Its Culture of Racism
________________________________________
Pro-Israel Fraternity Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where Authorities Have
Long Ignored Its Culture of Racism
By Sarah Lazare [1] / AlterNet [2]
February 15, 2016
The University of Chicago was thrust into the media spotlight this month
when leaked internal emails between members of its Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi)
fraternity revealed a series of lurid messages denigrating Muslims,
Palestinians, Arabs, black people, and women.
Exposed [3] by an anonymous whistleblower and published by Buzzfeed, the
emails were sent on a listserv of the AEPi fraternity between 2011 and
2015. The communications contained racist rants trashing Martin Luther King
Jr., referred to an abandoned lot as "Palestine," and maligned a Muslim
student activist as a "terrorist."
As the country's most aggressively pro-Israel fraternity, AEPi "works in
concert [4] with a highly organized cadre of anti-Palestinian groups to
combat divestment resolutions on college campuses across the country,"
according to journalists Rania Khalek and Nora Barrows Friedman. In 2011, a
UC-Davis graduate named Ryan Clifford filed suit against the fraternity,
alleging a culture of hazing that targeted non-Jewish pledges like himself
with particularly abusive rituals. Members of other AEPi chapters have
coordinated with right-wing pro-Israel groups to levy false charges of
anti-Semitism [5], implicated supporters of Palestine on campus as terror
sympathizers and worse.
In response to the racism scandal at U of Chicago, university administrators
Karen Warren Coleman and Michele Rasmussen distributed an open letter to the
student body last week stating that the attitudes and views the emails
express "are unacceptable, violate the University's core values, and
conflict with our strong commitment to ensuring that people with diverse
backgrounds and perspectives can thrive on our campus."
Yet nearly 50 campus groups, the student government, and a legal advocacy
organization charged that the administration has not gone far enough to
confront a longstanding culture of racism and harassment on campus. This
failure, they say, is due in part to the administration's seeming inability
to name-let alone confront-a key component of the problem: The pattern of
anti-Palestinian attacks that extend far beyond any single fraternity.
"We are trying to get the university to uphold their own values," Students
for Justice in Palestine (SJP) member Hoda Katebi told AlterNet. "It's
emotionally taxing."
A Wave of Homophobic and Racist Harassment by Pro-Israel Forces
It has been three months since attorney Rahul Saksena of the legal advocacy
group Palestine Legal delivered a letter [6] to the University of Chicago
administration expressing concern over a "documented pattern of suppression
to silence Palestinian human rights advocacy" at the premiere school.
Addressing President Robert Zimmer, the letter from Saksena highlights a
number of troubling incidents. A fake Facebook account under the name
"Rachel Corrie" - an American solidarity activist killed by the Israeli
military in Gaza in 2003 - harassed and threatened students who spoke out in
support of Palestinian human rights. The anonymously maintained profile
threatened to publish nude photographs of one SJP member, as well as
harassment in the form of transphobic messages to a queer and transgender
member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
A separate false account was reportedly created around the same time using
the profile image of a Palestinian student and member of SJP. The person or
people behind that account then left "a series of harassing, threatening,
sexual, and misogynistic comments on SJP's Facebook page," wrote Saksena.
In another example, public materials memorializing Palestinians killed by
Israeli forces were torn down and vandalized with epithets, including the
word "terrorist."
In each case, students reported the violation to the administration. And in
a press statement [7] dated last November, SJP called on the university to
protect their right to organize and condemn "the campaign of harassment."
Administrators say they responded by launching an investigation, in which
they were unable to determine who was responsible.
According to Saksena, university officials "have not, however, taken any
meaningful steps to ensure that Palestinian and Arab students and Palestine
solidarity activists on campus enjoy the right to speak out without fear of
harassment and intimidation, despite our reminder of their legal
obligations, and despite students' repeated demands."
It was during that period of inaction that the far more public AEPi scandal
broke.
"Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes"
According to a large swath of the University of Chicago's organized student
body, the school's racist culture runs deeper than last fall's string of
attack on Palestinian rights activists.
In a joint statement [8] released last week in response to the AEPi
revelations, the Muslim Students Association, Organization of Black Students
and SJP condemned the university's failure to "respond adequately to
anti-Palestinian and anti-black racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny in AEPi
and fraternity culture on campus."
Endorsed by nearly 50 student organizations, including the student
government, the statement highlights a number of disturbing incidents. In
one example, the Delta Upsilon (DU) fraternity reportedly "placed a
Confederate flag near what was then the Office of Multicultural Student
Affairs." Just days later, that same fraternity hosted a party titled "DU
Presents: Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes." The invitation, which called on
those attending to bring "an unlimited need to conquer, spread disease, and
enslave natives," attracted [9] some negative press at the time.
"Evidence of a toxic campus climate is highly prevalent," the students
argued. In the spring of 2014, a "Palestinian was repeatedly attacked with
false allegations of anti-Semitism in an attempt to prevent her from being
elected to a seat in Student Government due to her political activism," the
statement notes. And in May 2015, a Palestinian organizer with SJP received
"a threatening message addressed to her personal Facebook account warning
her against her continued activism."
The university's response to the AEPi scandal, students charge, has failed
to fully account for this history. In their letter sent last week to the
student body, Rasmussen and Coleman called the AEPi emails disrespectful and
harmful to "members of our Muslim and African-American communities and to
women." But the word "Palestinian" appears nowhere in their statement.
Katebi said the omission comes despite the fact that "we've been meeting
with the administration since the huge stream of harassment toward members
of SJP last quarter, trying to get them to release statement condemning what
happened."
"We have noticed the administration will only act if there is press," Katebi
continued. "All they care about is their ranking and how they look in the
press."
Hundreds of Incidents of Pro-Israel Suppression
A report released by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine
Legal in September of 2015 found [10] that U.S. campuses are ground-zero for
the suppression of advocacy for Palestinian human rights. Between January
2014 and June 2015 alone, Palestine Legal says it "responded to nearly 300
incidents of suppression; 85% of those incidents targeted students and
professors, on a total of more than 65 US college campuses."
According to the investigation, the most commonly used tactics include:
"false and inflammatory accusations of anti-Semitism and support for
terrorism," official denunciations, bureaucratic barriers, legislation,
threats to academic freedom, and criminal investigations.
In a separate report [11] also released in September 2015, Jewish Voice for
Peace corroborated the findings.
"Far-right political organizations, like StandWithUs and the Zionist
Organization of America, as well as many prominent Jewish organizations with
much broader communal mandates, such as Hillel International, Jewish
Federations (specifically their Israel on Campus Coalition), and the
Anti-Defamation League, intervene on campuses in efforts to muzzle political
criticisms of Israeli policies," the report stated.
AEPi is a central catalyst of the larger trend of pro-Israel intimidation on
campus. With over 180 chapters [12], the fraternity partners [13] with the
Jewish National Fund, a powerful Israeli organization actively involved in
the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel.
In 2014, AEPi became [14] the first student organization to fully join the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, with the
explicit goal of advancing pro-Israel advocacy. That same year, the
fraternity condemned [15] pro-Israel group J-Street for criticizing Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to undermine the nuclear deal
between world powers and Iran. AEPi's rebuke played a role in preventing
[16] J-Street from joining the Conference of Presidents, thereby aligning
the fraternity with Israel's far right.
Palestine Legal noted in its report that AEPi "frequently signs on to Israel
advocacy coalition letters calling for restricting criticism of Israel."
This includes a letter [17] in March 2015 urging the University of
California at Irvine to label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
Within this climate, students across the country "are demanding that their
Universities take a stand against institutional racism and discrimination,
as well as specific incidents like the AEPi emails," said Saksena. "This
includes anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim targeting."
Meanwhile, University of Chicago student groups say they will continue to
demand accountability and redress. "When students cannot simply exist in a
space without continuous harassment, hate speech, and threats of violence,"
the groups declared in their joint statement, "it is apparent that the
University of Chicago-our university-is failing us."
Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for
Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn
Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare [18].
Share on Facebook Share
Share on Twitter Tweet
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [19]
[20]
________________________________________
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/pro-israel-fraternity-scandal-erupt
s-u-chicago-where-authorities-have-long-ignored
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/sarah-lazare-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/leaked-racist-emails-reveal-toxic-c
ulture-at-university-of-c#.xw541Q2rW4
[4]
https://electronicintifada.net/content/frat-boys-who-slander-palestine-solid
arity/14277
[5] http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/escalating-palestine-solidarity/
[6]
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/564dfb2ee4b
00657ebb8fd37/1447951150892/Palestine+Legal+letter+to+UChicago+President.pdf
[7]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sgO0s4Wur4kD7HkuL_lFxKNWjuts5PQGk3OKyDVN
JUI/edit
[8]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tULWM3DJPgso12asOhrWoqt8gn_vXD3hlHNejtYa
DLs/edit
[9] http://chicagoist.com/2012/05/29/u_of_c_frat_in_trouble_for_conquist.php
[10] https://ccrjustice.org/the-palestine-exception
[11]
https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jvp-releases-first-ever-report-on-the-use-of
-false-charges-of-anti-semitism-to-limit-palestinian-rights-activism-on-camp
uses/
[12] http://www.aepi.org/about-aepi/history-of-alpha-epsilon-pi/
[13]
http://www.jnf.org/about-jnf/news/press-releases/jewish-national-fund-3.html
[14]
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/news/press/2014/jan7/conference-presid
ents-welcomes-aepi-newest-member
[15]
http://zoa.org/2014/05/10241629-conference-of-presidents-clearly-rejects-the
-extremist-group-j-streets-bid/
[16]
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Conference-Of-Presidents-v
otes-against-J-Street-inclusion-350972
[17]
http://www.amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/LETTER-FROM-22-ORG
ANIZATIONS-TO-UC-IRVINE-ANTI-ZIONISM-WEEK-5.5.15.pdf
[18] https://twitter.com/sarahlazare
[19] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Pro-Israel Fraternity
Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where Authorities Have Long Ignored Its
Culture of Racism
[20] http://www.alternet.org/
[21] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
Published on Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)
Home > Pro-Israel Fraternity Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where
Authorities Have Long Ignored Its Culture of Racism
Pro-Israel Fraternity Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where Authorities Have
Long Ignored Its Culture of Racism
By Sarah Lazare [1] / AlterNet [2]
February 15, 2016
The University of Chicago was thrust into the media spotlight this month
when leaked internal emails between members of its Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi)
fraternity revealed a series of lurid messages denigrating Muslims,
Palestinians, Arabs, black people, and women.
Exposed [3] by an anonymous whistleblower and published by Buzzfeed, the
emails were sent on a listserv of the AEPi fraternity between 2011 and 2015.
The communications contained racist rants trashing Martin Luther King Jr.,
referred to an abandoned lot as "Palestine," and maligned a Muslim student
activist as a "terrorist."
As the country's most aggressively pro-Israel fraternity, AEPi "works in
concert [4] with a highly organized cadre of anti-Palestinian groups to
combat divestment resolutions on college campuses across the country,"
according to journalists Rania Khalek and Nora Barrows Friedman. In 2011, a
UC-Davis graduate named Ryan Clifford filed suit against the fraternity,
alleging a culture of hazing that targeted non-Jewish pledges like himself
with particularly abusive rituals. Members of other AEPi chapters have
coordinated with right-wing pro-Israel groups to levy false charges of
anti-Semitism [5], implicated supporters of Palestine on campus as terror
sympathizers and worse.
In response to the racism scandal at U of Chicago, university administrators
Karen Warren Coleman and Michele Rasmussen distributed an open letter to the
student body last week stating that the attitudes and views the emails
express "are unacceptable, violate the University's core values, and
conflict with our strong commitment to ensuring that people with diverse
backgrounds and perspectives can thrive on our campus."
Yet nearly 50 campus groups, the student government, and a legal advocacy
organization charged that the administration has not gone far enough to
confront a longstanding culture of racism and harassment on campus. This
failure, they say, is due in part to the administration's seeming inability
to name-let alone confront-a key component of the problem: The pattern of
anti-Palestinian attacks that extend far beyond any single fraternity.
"We are trying to get the university to uphold their own values," Students
for Justice in Palestine (SJP) member Hoda Katebi told AlterNet. "It's
emotionally taxing."
A Wave of Homophobic and Racist Harassment by Pro-Israel Forces
It has been three months since attorney Rahul Saksena of the legal advocacy
group Palestine Legal delivered a letter [6] to the University of Chicago
administration expressing concern over a "documented pattern of suppression
to silence Palestinian human rights advocacy" at the premiere school.
Addressing President Robert Zimmer, the letter from Saksena highlights a
number of troubling incidents. A fake Facebook account under the name
"Rachel Corrie" - an American solidarity activist killed by the Israeli
military in Gaza in 2003 - harassed and threatened students who spoke out in
support of Palestinian human rights. The anonymously maintained profile
threatened to publish nude photographs of one SJP member, as well as
harassment in the form of transphobic messages to a queer and transgender
member of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).
A separate false account was reportedly created around the same time using
the profile image of a Palestinian student and member of SJP. The person or
people behind that account then left "a series of harassing, threatening,
sexual, and misogynistic comments on SJP's Facebook page," wrote Saksena.
In another example, public materials memorializing Palestinians killed by
Israeli forces were torn down and vandalized with epithets, including the
word "terrorist."
In each case, students reported the violation to the administration. And in
a press statement [7] dated last November, SJP called on the university to
protect their right to organize and condemn "the campaign of harassment."
Administrators say they responded by launching an investigation, in which
they were unable to determine who was responsible.
According to Saksena, university officials "have not, however, taken any
meaningful steps to ensure that Palestinian and Arab students and Palestine
solidarity activists on campus enjoy the right to speak out without fear of
harassment and intimidation, despite our reminder of their legal
obligations, and despite students' repeated demands."
It was during that period of inaction that the far more public AEPi scandal
broke.
"Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes"
According to a large swath of the University of Chicago's organized student
body, the school's racist culture runs deeper than last fall's string of
attack on Palestinian rights activists.
In a joint statement [8] released last week in response to the AEPi
revelations, the Muslim Students Association, Organization of Black Students
and SJP condemned the university's failure to "respond adequately to
anti-Palestinian and anti-black racism, Islamophobia, and misogyny in AEPi
and fraternity culture on campus."
Endorsed by nearly 50 student organizations, including the student
government, the statement highlights a number of disturbing incidents. In
one example, the Delta Upsilon (DU) fraternity reportedly "placed a
Confederate flag near what was then the Office of Multicultural Student
Affairs." Just days later, that same fraternity hosted a party titled "DU
Presents: Conquistadors and Aztec Hoes." The invitation, which called on
those attending to bring "an unlimited need to conquer, spread disease, and
enslave natives," attracted [9] some negative press at the time.
"Evidence of a toxic campus climate is highly prevalent," the students
argued. In the spring of 2014, a "Palestinian was repeatedly attacked with
false allegations of anti-Semitism in an attempt to prevent her from being
elected to a seat in Student Government due to her political activism," the
statement notes. And in May 2015, a Palestinian organizer with SJP received
"a threatening message addressed to her personal Facebook account warning
her against her continued activism."
The university's response to the AEPi scandal, students charge, has failed
to fully account for this history. In their letter sent last week to the
student body, Rasmussen and Coleman called the AEPi emails disrespectful and
harmful to "members of our Muslim and African-American communities and to
women." But the word "Palestinian" appears nowhere in their statement.
Katebi said the omission comes despite the fact that "we've been meeting
with the administration since the huge stream of harassment toward members
of SJP last quarter, trying to get them to release statement condemning what
happened."
"We have noticed the administration will only act if there is press," Katebi
continued. "All they care about is their ranking and how they look in the
press."
Hundreds of Incidents of Pro-Israel Suppression
A report released by the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine
Legal in September of 2015 found [10] that U.S. campuses are ground-zero for
the suppression of advocacy for Palestinian human rights. Between January
2014 and June 2015 alone, Palestine Legal says it "responded to nearly 300
incidents of suppression; 85% of those incidents targeted students and
professors, on a total of more than 65 US college campuses."
According to the investigation, the most commonly used tactics include:
"false and inflammatory accusations of anti-Semitism and support for
terrorism," official denunciations, bureaucratic barriers, legislation,
threats to academic freedom, and criminal investigations.
In a separate report [11] also released in September 2015, Jewish Voice for
Peace corroborated the findings.
"Far-right political organizations, like StandWithUs and the Zionist
Organization of America, as well as many prominent Jewish organizations with
much broader communal mandates, such as Hillel International, Jewish
Federations (specifically their Israel on Campus Coalition), and the
Anti-Defamation League, intervene on campuses in efforts to muzzle political
criticisms of Israeli policies," the report stated.
AEPi is a central catalyst of the larger trend of pro-Israel intimidation on
campus. With over 180 chapters [12], the fraternity partners [13] with the
Jewish National Fund, a powerful Israeli organization actively involved in
the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and Bedouin citizens of Israel.
In 2014, AEPi became [14] the first student organization to fully join the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, with the
explicit goal of advancing pro-Israel advocacy. That same year, the
fraternity condemned [15] pro-Israel group J-Street for criticizing Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to undermine the nuclear deal
between world powers and Iran. AEPi's rebuke played a role in preventing
[16] J-Street from joining the Conference of Presidents, thereby aligning
the fraternity with Israel's far right.
Palestine Legal noted in its report that AEPi "frequently signs on to Israel
advocacy coalition letters calling for restricting criticism of Israel."
This includes a letter [17] in March 2015 urging the University of
California at Irvine to label criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic.
Within this climate, students across the country "are demanding that their
Universities take a stand against institutional racism and discrimination,
as well as specific incidents like the AEPi emails," said Saksena. "This
includes anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim targeting."
Meanwhile, University of Chicago student groups say they will continue to
demand accountability and redress. "When students cannot simply exist in a
space without continuous harassment, hate speech, and threats of violence,"
the groups declared in their joint statement, "it is apparent that the
University of Chicago-our university-is failing us."
Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for
Common Dreams, Sarah co-edited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn
Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare [18].
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
Report typos and corrections to 'corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx'. [19]
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.[20]
Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/pro-israel-fraternity-scandal-erupt
s-u-chicago-where-authorities-have-long-ignored
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/sarah-lazare-0
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/leaked-racist-emails-reveal-toxic-c
ulture-at-university-of-c#.xw541Q2rW4
[4]
https://electronicintifada.net/content/frat-boys-who-slander-palestine-solid
arity/14277
[5] http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/escalating-palestine-solidarity/
[6]
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/564dfb2ee4b
00657ebb8fd37/1447951150892/Palestine+Legal+letter+to+UChicago+President.pdf
[7]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sgO0s4Wur4kD7HkuL_lFxKNWjuts5PQGk3OKyDVN
JUI/edit
[8]
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1tULWM3DJPgso12asOhrWoqt8gn_vXD3hlHNejtYa
DLs/edit
[9] http://chicagoist.com/2012/05/29/u_of_c_frat_in_trouble_for_conquist.php
[10] https://ccrjustice.org/the-palestine-exception
[11]
https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/jvp-releases-first-ever-report-on-the-use-of
-false-charges-of-anti-semitism-to-limit-palestinian-rights-activism-on-camp
uses/
[12] http://www.aepi.org/about-aepi/history-of-alpha-epsilon-pi/
[13]
http://www.jnf.org/about-jnf/news/press-releases/jewish-national-fund-3.html
[14]
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/news/press/2014/jan7/conference-presid
ents-welcomes-aepi-newest-member
[15]
http://zoa.org/2014/05/10241629-conference-of-presidents-clearly-rejects-the
-extremist-group-j-streets-bid/
[16]
http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/Conference-Of-Presidents-v
otes-against-J-Street-inclusion-350972
[17]
http://www.amchainitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/LETTER-FROM-22-ORG
ANIZATIONS-TO-UC-IRVINE-ANTI-ZIONISM-WEEK-5.5.15.pdf
[18] https://twitter.com/sarahlazare
[19] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?Subject=Typo on Pro-Israel Fraternity
Scandal Erupts at U of Chicago, Where Authorities Have Long Ignored Its
Culture of Racism
[20] http://www.alternet.org/
[21] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
