JTA. The above Crabgrass headline obviously simplifies. However, it also reaches into the heart of propagandist philanthropy, which in fact if not in theory can put a heavy thumb on the scale of open academic discourse. "My money, my outlet" can sometimes be crude and stand wrongly upon things needing a more delicate outlook
How does this near-to-the-end item excerpt sit with you?
University spokesperson Victor Balta told JTA in a statement that, “Informed through her research area of expertise, the faculty member supported by the endowment expressed views that were not shared by Mrs. Benaroya [a foundational project donor]. Our mission as a university demands that our scholars have the freedom to pursue their scholarship where it leads them. After several months of good faith conversations between the faculty member, UW leadership and the donor, Mrs. Benaroya requested that her gift be returned and we agreed this was the best path forward.”
The statement added that the school “is committing to provide $20,000 each year for the next three years as research/discretionary funding to support Prof. Halperin’s work,” and that UW would continue to be in conversation with Stroum Center faculty “on next steps to realize the mission of the program.”
According to The Cholent, [link] Benaroya is redirecting her gift to StandWithUs, a pro-Israel advocacy group that organizes on college campuses and elsewhere. A person familiar with the meetings between Benaroya and university officials told JTA that Randy Kessler, executive director of StandWithUs’s Seattle office, had been present.
StandWithUs confirmed that it had played a role in Benaroya’s discussions with UW, but would not comment to JTA on the status of the donation.
“Mrs. Benaroya contacted StandWithUs after learning her endowment was no longer fulfilling the intent of her gift,” Roz Rothstein, the organization’s CEO and co-founder, told JTA in an email. “We helped her engage with the university to address her concerns but the parties were not able to reach an agreement.”
Rothstein said that, “as anti-Israel and antisemitic activism rises on college campuses,” StandWithUs regularly engages with university donors “concerned about the use of their gifts,” and that the group outlines “the steps donors can take to ensure their generosity is being respected and used for programs consistent with the understandings they had reached with universities.”
A recent op-ed penned by the director of StandWithUs’s legal department advises would-be university donors to insert language into their endowments requiring that they only be used to fund pro-Israel speech and scholarship – and ensure that donors have “continuing oversight of their gifts”.
BDS off limits,VERBOTEN; academic freedom be damned? Is a campus of ideas best set as a campus of indoctrination? Theory and fact may not square.
Try this earlier pair of item paragraphs -
Gorasht and his daughter, Jamie Merriman-Cohen, told The Cholent that their efforts to create the Israel Studies Program in 2016 to rival its acclaimed Sephardic Studies Program were conceived as a way to counter what they believed was rising anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses, including at the University of Washington.
“There came a time when the university was inviting rabid anti-Israel, BDS, rabid antisemitic people to come speak. The community was up in arms about it. They looked to the Jewish studies program to stop that,” Gorasht told The Cholent. “Of course, it’s a place where people have a right to speak, so we had a sense that, sure, academic freedom, people have a right to speak, but you can’t present one side of the story.”
In an ongoing story where there are two sides, one side's "rabid" name calling might require a long stare into the mirror by the orator; and the naked admission of "buying propaganda" seems, not rabid, but an honest admission that is best posed out front, not in behind the scenes shenanigans. Out front, it can be studied.
____________UPDATE___________
A week later, JTA posted its follow-up, here, largely plowing the same turf, but clarifying the donor give-back as not killing the program, nor its academic freedom.
New to the follow-up report -
Liora Halperin, the faculty member who is currently the Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies and whose signature was a target of Becky Benaroya’s criticism, will also become a “new endowed chair” within the program, Balta said — this one unnamed.
Balta said that the major change to the program “will be the level of available discretionary funding.” Although “community fundraising” for Israel Studies will continue, the program will not be able to offer the same level of support for public events and research.
Halperin, who previously criticized the university’s decision to return the money, declined to comment to JTA on the latest developments related to her position. A person familiar with the situation said that the money would principally be used to cover the university’s financial obligations to Halperin, rather than fully funding the program in the manner it had been previously, and that the program’s ongoing funding remained in question.The fact that Halperin and a handful of other UW faculty had signed the 2021 letter was the latest in a string of simmering disputes that had opened up between the Stroum Center and Seattle’s largely Sephardic donor class. Donors had told The Cholent that they felt disrespected by some faculty members when they saw courses being described in UW catalogs with the phrase “Israel/Palestine”; that Devin Naar, chair of the center’s celebrated Sephardic Studies program, had caused a seismic rift at his local Sephardic congregation by signing the 2021 letter and encouraging others at UW to sign it on Facebook; and that Halperin, Naar and Stroum Center director Noam Pianko were undermining donors’ initial goal of funding a program specifically to counter anti-Israel speech on college campuses.
Before withdrawing her endowment earlier this year, Benaroya had requested — and received — months of meetings among herself, Halperin and university administration at which she attempted to amend the terms of her agreement “to prohibit the holder from ‘political statements or signing agreements hostile to Israel’ and requiring them to teach about ‘Israel, not Israel/Palestine,’” among other proposed amendments, Balta said.
But, Balta said, the university “would not agree to these amendments.” Eventually, the two parties made the mutual decision to refund the money. Benaroya then reportedly redirected the funding to the pro-Israel activist group StandWithUs, which had advised her on how to negotiate with the university over the funds and whose representatives had been present at the meetings between her and the university.
The executive committee of AJS, an organization for Jewish Studies faculty, said in a Feb. 25 letter that UW’s decision to return Benaroya’s endowment “sets a very dangerous precedent by empowering the donor to enforce their political will — and to punish a faculty member for their beliefs — through the sheer fact of money given and the threat of withdrawing it or withholding future gifts.” The letter was addressed to UW President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Mark Richards.
Pianko, who remains the Stroum Center’s director despite a different Jewish Studies donor requesting that he be removed for choosing to hire Halperin in the first place, is a former president of AJS. He resigned from that position in 2021 after revealing that he had met with a professor who had admitted to a years-long pattern of sexual misconduct.
In addition to AJS, more than 600 Jewish and Israel Studies academics have signed an open letter supporting Halperin. The letter, which predated JTA’s story and states that “Halperin was recently informed of her removal from the endowed chair she held in Israel studies,” was spearheaded by David Myers, the president of the New Israel Fund, professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Halperin’s former instructor.
Also criticizing the university’s handling of the controversy was the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a civil liberties group that focuses on campus speech. In a statement, the group said it was “concerned” by the school’s returning of Benaroya’s donation and called upon the university to disclose the terms of the endowment, saying, “If the decision was consistent with the terms of the endowment, the university should not have accepted it in the first place.”
In response to a JTA question about the university’s gift agreement policy, Balta said agreements “do permit amendments, including recission in cases where, as in this case, both parties mutually agree that is the best course of action.” Returning a gift, he said, “has been an extremely rare occurrence.”
Activism over gifts to university Jewish and Israel studies programs has come from both sides of the conflict. Last year, pro-Palestinian student activists at the University of California, Berkeley attempted to pressure its law school to reject a $10 million gift from the Helen Diller Foundation to bolster an institute focusing on Israel and Jewish studies. The effort failed, and today the money supports the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish Law and Israel Studies.
The specific named organization "StandWithUs" has two separate goals. Promoting Israeli existence, actions and policy; and opposing antisemitism. Those ARE separate goals, not the same, though the SWU folks may think there is congruence.
It is just as BDS is NOT "antisemitism" (where anti-jewishness might be a better term than antisemitism since Arabs are a Semitic people and Arabic is a Semitic language - ask a linguistics specialist - and anti-Zionism or especially "anti-occupied-territory-settlements" might be a better way of understanding BDS sentiment and intent).
It is a thicket. The websearch = ""stand with us" minnesota"
aimed at discovering whether the particular organization had a specific Minnesota branch, when tried, showed a disturbing range of returns, confusion rather than showing the aimed-for result. Someone caring enough could lodge a document request with the University of Minnesota system to see if a comparable morass exists as at the University of Washington. Crabgrass has not done so, nor is any such request anticipated.
All of the complications and nuances of the UW situation are well covered by the two JTA items, which seem balanced in reporting, and factual more than ideological.
Of interest, the websearch = StandWithUs minnesota
was more particularized and productive. There is a Wikipedia page, and that second websearch reveals there was a 2019 U. Minn. related petition.
__________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Original text study is always helpful. The letter that initiated controversy is presented with commentary, online here. Not knowing of it until reading today of the UW endowment funding controversy, I tracked it down and find it far from offensive. Readers are invited to read the original source of disagreement, and form their own opinions. Breach of peace and conflict causation each always need fair analysis, as to who did what, whether severe overreaction happened; and ultimately where fault and blame lie.
A websearch link.