Brandeis Center demands UMass President, Chancellor and Board of Trustees immediately reverse this discrimination
Washington, D.C. – Ahead of the upcoming Coalition of Women in German (WiG) annual academic conference at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which plans to exclude and boycott scholars receiving funding from “Israeli institutions,” the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is demanding that university leadership prevent this blatant and illegal national origin discrimination and flagrant violation of UMass policies.
In a letter sent today to UMass leadership and shared with the Special Commission on Combatting Antisemitism in the Commonwealth, the Brandeis Center implored UMass to require WiG to suspend its discriminatory Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) policy, which according to the Brandeis Center is a deliberate “fig leaf for unlawful national origin discrimination against Israelis themselves.”
The conference, scheduled to be held on the UMass Amherst campus on November 6-9 in full partnership with the University, prohibits anyone from relying on financial support from “Israeli institutions” to attend and participate. WiG makes clear that this includes not only funding from Israeli governmental agencies, but “all Israeli academic and cultural institutions.” In order to attend conferences and cover related expenses, though, Israeli scholars — like scholars worldwide — rely on the Israeli International Science Relations Fund, which is administered through Israeli universities.
Given this, according to the Brandeis Center, the “WiG BDS Policy is designed to ensure that Israeli scholars of German language, history, culture, and other overlapping disciplines, whether students, researchers, or faculty, are prevented from attending or giving lectures, presenting papers, participating in panel discussions, and otherwise enjoying the professional and personal benefits of the WiG Conference. The policy’s intent, purpose, and effect are to deny Israelis the same access, opportunities, services, and benefits that WiG offers to citizens and residents of every other country on earth.”
The Brandeis Center also points out that the WiG BDS Policy “makes a mockery of the University’s professed commitment to welcoming students and scholars from around the world.”
“This is essentially a UMass Amherst-sanctioned boycott based on Israeli national origin – one that is contradictory to UMass’ self-professed commitment to welcoming students and scholars from around the world and a clear violation of UMass’ anti-discrimination policy,” said Hon. Rory Lancman, Senior Counsel at the Brandeis Center and a former member of the New York State Assembly and New York City Council. “Putting in place barriers to entry to this conference not only harms the directly affected Israeli academics, but UMass students and faculty are also denied access to their scholarly contributions. UMass must require, as a condition for conducting its conference on the UMass Amherst campus, that the WiG BDS policy not be in effect for any part of the conference.”
The WiG BDS policy violates UMass Amherst’s anti-discrimination policy that “prohibits unlawful discrimination…on the basis of…national origin…in any aspect of the access to, admission, or treatment of students in its programs and activities.” The university’s policy goes on to explain that the prohibition against discrimination applies to “all those operating on the UMass Amherst campus – to guests and visitors as well as matriculated students and university employees.”
The WiG conference also likely violates Massachusetts state anti-discrimination laws, including the Massachusetts Public Accommodation Law and the Massachusetts Equal Rights Act.
“Israeli scholars must be allowed the same opportunities as scholars from every other country,” said Lancman. “UMass is better than this. Israeli scholars – and those UMass scholars who would benefit from whatever expertise and insight their Israeli colleagues might offer at the WiG conference – deserve better than this.”
The Brandeis Center has filed federal lawsuits against schools such as MIT and Stanford for vicious anti-Semitic targeting of Israeli and Jewish faculty. And in a precedent-setting agreement with Harvard earlier this year after allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, the university agreed to incorporate the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism with its examples consistent with Harvard’s non-discrimination and anti-bullying policies, and to explicitly state that conduct that would violate school rules if targeting Jews or Israelis can also be a violation if directed toward Zionists.
About The Brandeis Center
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is an independent, unaffiliated, nonprofit corporation established to advance the civil and human rights of the Jewish people and promote justice for all. LDB engages in research, education, and legal advocacy to combat the resurgence of anti-Semitism on college and university campuses, in the workplace, and elsewhere. It empowers students by training them to understand their legal rights and educates administrators and employers on best practices to combat racism and anti-Semitism. The Brandeis Center is not affiliated with the Massachusetts university, the Kentucky law school, or any of the other institutions that share the name and honor the memory of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice.
