Pitzer President Rejects College Council’s Vote to End Study Abroad in Israel

Updated (3/15/2019, 7:46 p.m.) to include a comment from the Faculty Executive Committee’s chair.

Melvin L. Oliver, president of Pitzer College, on Thursday rejected a vote by the College Council to end the California institution’s study-abroad partnership with the University of Haifa, in Israel.

Controversy over the Haifa partnership has troubled the campus’s governance system for months, drawing fire from students and professors, advocacy groups, and conservative news outlets. In November faculty members approved a recommendation to end the partnership. The vote then went to the larger College Council, which includes faculty members and students. The proposal would have removed the Haifa partnership from the college’s list of pre-approved programs, meaning students would have to petition to go to that university.

The 67-to-28 vote, and Oliver’s rejection of it, drew hundreds of spectators and sharpened long-debated questions about what constitutes academic freedom, anti-Semitism, and “double standards” when it comes to the college’s stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A stark divide has emerged between some faculty members and administrators: Supporters of the measure say that cutting ties with “complicit” Israeli institutions opposes discrimination and upholds the academic freedom of Palestinian universities. Leaders of Pitzer and Haifa say the proposal would do just the opposite, flirting with anti-Semitism and undermining principles of free exchange.

“To the best of my knowledge,” said Daniel A. Segal, a professor of history and anthropology who has worked at Pitzer for 32 years, Oliver’s decision is “unprecedented” in the college’s history.

Segal, a vocal organizer of the faculty campaign to cut ties with Haifa, has butted heads with Oliver for months. He has met with Oliver about the votes several times, he said. In an emailed statement this week, Segal said Oliver is undermining the college’s “democratic process” and “is doing grievous damage to the most plausible path to justice and a positive peace for all our sisters and brothers in Israel and Palestine alike.”

Oliver denounced that reasoning in a lengthy statement released after Thursday’s vote. Threaded throughout it was the view that “social justice is not, and in itself cannot be, the mission of the college, or our mission would become political and not educational.”

Ending ties with Haifa would force the college “to take an unavoidably political position on one of the most controversial issues of our time,” Oliver wrote. “It is rarely, if ever, the role of the college to be taking such positions.”

The recommendation also would threaten academic freedom by setting the college “on a path away from the free exchange of ideas, a direction which ultimately destroys the academy’s ability to fulfill our educational mission,” he added. “I categorically oppose any form of academic boycott of any country.”

And the recommendation would bring “reputational harm,” Oliver wrote. “By singling out Israel, the recommendation itself is prejudiced.”

‘Particularly Misguided’

Ron Robin, president of the University of Haifa, agreed. “Those who support these votes at Pitzer are actually undermining academic freedom and free speech by depriving students of their freedom to choose where to study abroad,” he wrote in a statement this week. The vote is “particularly misguided,” he added, because Haifa’s student body is 35 percent Arab and demonstrates “diversity, coexistence, and tolerance at its finest.”

Oliver said he would direct the Faculty Executive Committee, the FEC, to examine the study-abroad program for possible changes, including ways to teach social-justice issues in destination countries.

The executive committee has drawn scrutiny this week for barring “external” news outlets from the College Council’s meeting, and for limiting student representation on the council, days ahead of Thursday’s vote. Some student senators alleged the restriction was an attempt to “disenfranchise” students. Claudia Strauss, an anthropology professor and the executive committee’s chair, denied the accusation, saying the committee was correcting an apparent violation of the bylaws and was returning to a method of voting used five years ago.

Strauss joined Segal to introduce the amended study-abroad proposal that Oliver rejected. The executive committee was “deeply disturbed” by the president’s veto, its members wrote in a statement. “Although the president notified FEC a few minutes ahead of time,” the statement said, “he did not discuss the issue with us prior to releasing his statement.”

Faculty members will meet on March 28 to discuss the issue.

The debates at Pitzer reflect wider battles over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the boycott movement that has been advocated in different corners of academe for years. And Pitzer earned brief national attention in conservative media after Segal posted a photograph of Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Democrat from Michigan, with a slogan supporting the effort there.

US Congress member @RashidaTlaib supports faculty at @pitzercollege who voted overwhelmingly to suspend a study abroad program with Haifa University over Israel’s discriminatory policies against Palestinians.

The College Council must uphold the faculty vote. #SuspendPitzerHaifa pic.twitter.com/VHBY7pE9vF

— PACBI (@PACBI) March 12, 2019

Supporters and opponents of the council’s measure have battled, too, over whether it unfairly singles out Israel.

“China currently has one million Muslims imprisoned in re-education camps. Why would we not suspend our program with China?” Oliver said at a council meeting last November, according to the Claremont Independent. “Or take our longest-standing program in Nepal, where the Pitzer in Nepal program has been run for over 40 years. During that time they have had a bloody civil war that killed 19,000 people. Why Israel?”

Segal has argued there is no double standard because the college has taken similar steps before, citing a 1990 decision at Pitzer to ban ROTC programs on the grounds that they discriminated against gay and lesbian citizens seeking to serve in the military. “There is nothing at all Israel-specific, in short,” he wrote, “about the faculty’s objection to the college’s participation in academic programs to which access is limited by unjust discrimination.”

Follow Steven Johnson on Twitter at @stetyjohn, or email him at steve.johnson@chronicle.com.