Higher Education Quick Takes

The clashes between Israel and Hamas over the last month have left colleges and universities considering whether to bring students and faculty members there home. Institutions will face a new set of decisions with students about to depart for the region. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst has announced it will suspend study abroad to Israel in the fall, The Republican reported. Smith College has decided not to bar study abroad in Israel, but will require students and their families to sign an additional waiver.

Updates and new developments on tensions on American campuses over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict:

• Julio Pino, a historian at Kent State University, has published an open letter to "academic friends of Israel" in which he holds them responsible for recent deaths in Gaza. "I curse you more than the Israelis, for while The Chosen drain the blood of innocents without apologies you hide behind the mask of academic objectivity, nobility of research and the reward of teaching to foreign youth -- in a segregated university, of course. Lest you think this is a personal attack I swear it applies equally to all who engage in collaboration with fascism, and we both know the fate of collaborators. In the same manner, only with more zeal, than you have sworn to the Jewish State I pledge to you, and every friend and stooge of Zionism, Hasta la victoria siempre! Jihad until victory!" Kent State issued a statement condemning the letter. "We condemn the professor’s statement as reprehensible and irresponsible," the university statement says. "At Kent State, we value collegiality and mutual respect. Assailing the public with broad statements of culpability violates these principles."
• The Joint Council of United Auto Workers 2865, which represents teaching assistants and other student workers at University of California campuses, has announced plans to take a membership vote on backing the boycott of Israel. A statement issued by the council endorses the boycott and calls the "situation in Palestine one of settler-colonialism," and states that Israel "enforces an apartheid system." The Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a letter denouncing the UAW's action. "As Israel now defends herself and fights for her life in the face of thousands of incoming rockets -- something that ANY democratic nation would do -- the very UC tutors and assistants that thousands of Jewish and pro-Israel students rely upon daily now prepare to export their incendiary anti-Semitism to every UC campus," says the letter.
• The American Association of University Professors has issued a statement on the decision of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to block the hiring of Steven Salaita to teach in the American Indian studies program, apparently because of his anti-Israel tweets. The statement says that "there is good reason to fear that Professor Salaita's academic freedom and possibly that of the Illinois faculty members who recommended hiring him have been violated." Further, the statement says that Cary Nelson, former president of the AAUP, is not speaking for the organization when he has defended the decision made not to hire Salaita.
• More than 9,000 people have signed a petition to the University of Illinois demanding that it hire Salaita.

Adjunct union organizers at the University of LaVerne, outside Los Angeles, have pulled their petition for a union election from the National Labor Relations Board. The election took place in February but ballot-counting was on hold for several months, as the board considered numerous unfair labor practice claims filed by the Service Employees International Union.

The NLRB dismissed those claims last week. But organizers decided that ballot-counting should not go forward, saying that administrative interference in the election process could not have made for a fair election. Organizers said they would most likely file for another election again in the future.

Alisha Rosas, university spokeswoman, said via email that LaVerne had “consistently stressed the importance of counting the ballots so that our adjuncts’ voices can be heard. Unfortunately, because of the union’s efforts, that will never occur. In deciding to withdraw, we can only assume that the union believed that it would lose the election if the ballots were counted.”

The Montana senator accused of plagiarizing his final paper for his master's degree has ended his election campaign. John Walsh, a Democrat who was appointed by departing Sen. Max Baucus, and who was running for a full term this fall, came under fire last month after The New York Times reported he had apparently plagiarized large portions of his final paper at the U.S. Army War College. National Democrats initially supported Walsh, who attributed the flap in part to post-traumatic stress disorder from a deployment to Iraq with the National Guard. But public sentiment against the senator, including from Montana veterans, continued to grow. On Thursday, Walsh released a statement to supporters, reported by the Billings Gazette, saying "I am ending my campaign so that I can focus on fulfilling the responsibility entrusted to me as your U.S. senator." Walsh will serve out the rest of his current term, through 2015.