The New School’s Jewish Students Start Returning to a Campus That Tried To Force Them Out

As students return to The New School ahead of the start of fall classes, newly graduated Michael Valdes says he is glad to be done with the place.In his three years as a Master of Fine Arts student at the progressive university, Mr. Valdes, who is Jewish, says he was verbally harassed, trudged past both student and faculty-led encampments protesting Israel, and headed off a 2024 student government resolution against Hillel, the world’s leading Jewish campus organization. That was all before the school’s landmark vote in May.This spring, while Mr. Valdes was serving on the executive board of the university’s Hillel branch, Hillel at The New School, the student senate passed a new bill to force the organization off campus. The vote marked the first time a U.S. student government has moved to sever ties with Hillel, which is active at 850 campuses worldwide.While The New School’s University Student Senate said in a statement that its members were “deeply troubled by claims that our resolution is meant to target anyone for their identity or political beliefs,” the measure was just the latest note in a drumbeat of antisemitic and anti-Israel occurrences at the university that have left Jewish students and their families reeling.“ There’s a lot of not-okay things that happened on that campus, and the climate, especially within the student body, was, frankly, horrendous,” Mr. Valdes’ told The New York Sun. A Landmark VoteThe Greenwich Village campus made headlines in May when the student senate voted to hold Hillel at the New School “not in good standing” and cut off its funding. The measure at the center of the vote assailed the chapter’s parent organization, Hillel International, for trips it organizes to Israel. Those include Hillel on Base, which sends students on 10-day volunteer missions to an Israeli Defense Force base, as well as visits to occupied Palestinian territories. The student senate’s introduced an amendment mandating that all university student organizations must abide by international law. Because the International Criminal Court has charged — though not convicted — Israel’s prime minister and minister of defense with war crimes and crimes against humanity over Israeli military actions in Gaza, the student government held that Hillel’s trips run afoul of the law and the senate’s policies.The student senate published a 38 page report detailing its rationale for the sanctions. One New School parent, Michael Glass, dubbed the document “riddled with material misstatements of fact, inaccuracies, falsehoods, and completely mischaracterizes Hillel” in response to a social media post defending the senate’s actions. Administrators at The New School moved quickly to denounce the vote as beyond the senate’s authority and affirm Hillel’s good standing. But a precedent had already been set. “We will continue to sanction Hillel at The New School,” the student senate said in response, doubling down on its promise that “they will not be receiving any funds from the student body through the Student Senate.”A public letter of support calling to oust Hillel from The New School has received more than 300 signatures, while anti-Zionist organizations continue to push similar campaigns under the #DropHillel initiative.The ‘Adults’ in the RoomAccording to Canary Mission, an anonymous, Israel-based website dedicated to naming and shaming those who “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews,” signatories of The New School petition include famous radical academics such as philosopher and gender theorist Judith Butler, who was the first person to sign it. Dr. Butler has denied that the bloody Hamas- led October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel were terrorism, instead calling them “an act of armed resistance.” Another notable signer is Democratic Socialist congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was filmed at an anti-Israel protest the day after the October 7th attacks.Of the 336 signatures on the petition, Canary Mission identified 28 professors at The New School. The New York Sun reached out to several of them, but received no responses. The New School previously made headlines in 2024 for hosting the country’s first faculty-led anti-Israel encampment. Mr. Valdes told The Sun his professors in the performing arts program provided a safe space for Jewish students by either checking in or steering their classes away from politics during the turmoil on campus in 2023 and 2024. Other students, he said, were not so lucky.“I don’t want to go to class,” was a common refrain at Hillel gatherings, Mr. Valdes said, where some students related their discomfort sharing a classroom with people who had harassed them from the encampments. Others recounted their professors encouraging their students to attend Free Palestine protests.“ It’s not their job to impose their own political or whatever beliefs on you,” said Mr. Valdes. “If you’re in a fashion merchandising class, or whatever it may be at Parsons, learning about Palestine or what’s happening in Gaza has nothing to do with fashion merchandising.” In February 2024 the U.S. Department of Education opened a civil rights investigation into The New School based on reports of antisemitic harassment. That probe remains open.A shrinking communityThe school’s Jewish population, which has previously been reported around 700 students, currently sits closer to 500, according to Leader Family Hillel at Baruch College, which oversees the Hillel chapters at nine New York colleges, including The New School. Leader Family touts itself as “The most Zionist Hillel in America!” on its website. The decline aligns with an overall decline in enrollment at The New School in recent years, which has exacerbated budget issues and added a layer of tension on campus as students and faculty protested against layoffs and buyouts. The Sun reached out to The New School’s administration for a comment on the climate facing Jewish and pro-Israel students heading back to school this weekend, but did not hear back in time for publication.Mr. Valdes credited the university’s president, Joel Towers, for standing up for the school’s Jewish community, but much of the damage had already been done when Dr. Towers arrived, he said.Years of FrustrationMr. Valdes was a student senator in August 2024 when he says three other members of the senate moved to showcase a bill much like the one passed this spring. He and another senator called on the university’s administration to stop it, which they did.“ What they didn’t do was they didn’t address that it even happened,” Mr. Valdes said, noting that one of the 2024 bill’s authors went on to become chair of the student senate shortly before May’s anti-Hillel bill was introduced. Mr. Valdes told The Sun he arranged a meeting with the senate’s advisors to voice his concerns over the senate’s leadership and warned that the body would likely take another stab at banning Hillel.“The advisors for the senate fully knew what was going on, and they did nothing to stop it, to my knowledge,” he said.The Sun reached out to Leader Family Hillel’s director, Ilya Bratman, regarding the campaign against his organization and hostility on campus. “Where have you been for four years?” Mr. Bratman said in a brief phone conversation.

The New School’s Jewish Students Start Returning to a Campus That Tried To Force Them Out

The New School’s Jewish Students Start Returning to a Campus That Tried To Force Them Out

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