THE CORBYNIZATION OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY CONTINUES APACE: Under Federal Scrutiny, NYU Law School Faces Uproar Over Anti-Semitism.
New York University School of Law may be legally obligated to punish some of its star students after nearly a dozen student groups signed a statement that defended terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians and bemoaned the “Zionist grip on the media.”
The statement, drafted by NYU Law School’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, has elicited harassment complaints from Jewish students who say that the letter—and some of the responses it sparked from students—constituted vicious anti-Semitic attacks.
“The Zionist grip on the media is omnipresent,” the statement read. “Palestinians are not obligated to engage in racialized ‘nonviolence’ theory and wait around for a United Nations action that will never come as their homes are taken from them.”
Several students who signed and organized the statement are attending the law school on scholarship as part of the Root-Tilden-Kern Program, widely considered the most prestigious public interest law scholarship in the country. The scholarship’s winners have gone on to hold federal office: They include Lamar Alexander, a U.S. senator and former secretary of education, and Jenny Yang, who served as chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during former president Barack Obama’s second term.
Current scholars include Zaynab Said, who signed on behalf of NYU’s Black Allied Law Students Association; Maya Goldman, who signed on behalf of the Disablility Allied Law Students Association; Yosmin Badie, who sits on the board of NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine; and Allison Hrabar, who signed with the valediction, “from the river to the sea”—a call for the elimination of Israel.
NYU may have no choice but to punish these students because the university in 2020 agreed to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward anti-Semitism as part of a settlement with the Department of Education’s civil rights office, which was investigating a string of anti-Semitic incidents at the elite scool. The agreement obligates NYU to “take all necessary actions, including pursuant to its student discipline process,” to address anti-Semitism on campus. Should the Biden administration decide to enforce the terms of that agreement, inaction could jeopardize NYU’s federal funding under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Related: Pushing back against the Corbynization of the Democratic Party: Group launches ‘#EndJewHate’ national billboard campaign to denounce antisemitism. Including this hotbed of MAGA voters: Group floods San Francisco with digital billboards to #EndJewHate.
