Every spring the Middle East comes to Northeastern.
It usually begins with Students for Justice in Palestine’s “Apartheid Week.” SJP makes some lavish display that offends pro-Israel students, who respond with their own rhetoric. Then comes Holocaust Remembrance Week, which Huskies for Israel and NU Hillel have used in the past to show their support for the Israeli state.
SJP responds. There are protests and counter-protests. Sit-ins and walk-outs and letters to the editor. This year the conflict has been much more pronounced because of SJP’s controversial suspension for distributing fake eviction notices in residence halls. It can be a maddening time of year for the casual observer.
It makes sense that these two sides are so enthusiastic; the Israel-Palestine conflict is a pressing issue and college campuses are the perfect place for a robust, intellectual debate. As has been previously written on this page, the university should absolutely allow students to speak out on this and other issues of import – even if their speech annoys or discomforts some students.
The issue has reached a new sense of urgency lately. President Joseph E. Aoun weighed in Wednesday with an email to the Northeastern community calling for a return to civil discourse.
“We have seen passionate, respectful discourse give way in some instances to crass stereotyping, gross distortions of facts and personal demonization,” Aoun wrote. “We can and must do better.”
There is a troubling trend underlying this ideological clash on campus: the increasing participation of outside groups.
Chief among these groups is the perfidiously named Americans for Peace and Tolerance. APT and its leader, Charles Jacobs, have been spending the better part of the last five years trying to connect the Islamic Society of Boston to terrorism. They are now trying to do the same thing to SJP.
APT’s director of research, Ilya Feoktistov, penned a March 18 article on SJP’s suspension in the notoriously right-wing Front Page Magazine, which has since made its rounds on campus. Many of the facts stated by Feoktistov are taken out of context or exaggerations of subjective truths. The article is peppered with generous definitions of what constitutes a call for the destruction of Israel or support of terrorism. Feoktistov liberally confuses the difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism. Only a reader with a keen eye and prior knowledge of APT can spot the article’s origin.
APT has had Northeastern in its sights since it got the university to fire its Muslim chaplain in Sept. 2012, and has since been trying to convince the world that Northeastern is a hotbed of anti-semitism. The group operates a Facebook page under the name “Exposing Islamic Extremism at Northeastern University,” though it has no official ties to the school.
In a March 25 Facebook post, the Northeastern University College Democrats decried the group’s response to SJP’s suspension, and called on the university to prohibit APT from using the school’s logo on the aforementioned Facebook page.
“We view [APT’s] response as ignorant, hostile, ethnocentric and inciting a further devolution of dialogue and tolerance on campus,” the post said. “Frankly, we find it appalling that Northeastern’s administration allows our university’s logo on the Facebook page of Exposing Islamic Extremism at Northeastern University.”
This post could not have said it better. Although APT is the most vocal offender, outside groups have been fueling this conflict on both sides. Last week a group called Queers Undermining Pinkwashing (QueerUP) took to campus to protest the screening of a documentary about gay rights in Israel. “Pinkwashing” refers to the promotion of Israel’s favorable gay-rights to take attention away from its record in Palestine.
With groups like this putting their hands all over the university’s business, what could have been an apolitical event was dragged into this battle – and SJP was even behind it. Northeastern should not be a proxy war for outside political activists. Students should be free to speak, protest and advocate, but they should also be free from such outside meddling. These groups are fueling conflict and ill-will, and dumbing down good debate. Instead of silencing student groups, the administration should keep groups that want to turn Northeastern into a battleground for their own fancies off campus.
