BLOOMINGTON, Ind — A group of Jewish IU faculty and staff spoke out Tuesday about the ongoing demonstration at the Bloomington campus and at other colleges across the country.
More than 65 IU faculty and staff both from Bloomington and Indianapolis signed a statement released April 30.
In it, some faculty members say while they’re “committed to free speech as a fundamental right,” they believe some of what’s happened at the encampment at Dunn Meadow has crossed a line from free speech into “harassment of Jewish students and faculty members” and antisemitism.
“It’s perfectly legitimate to criticize Israeli policies,” IU professor emeritus Leslie Lenkowsky said.
That’s not all that the faculty and staff who signed the statement Tuesday believe is going on at Dunn Meadow, where several hundred students and some IU faculty have been camped out since last Thursday, they say, in support of Palestinians and an end to the war in Gaza.
Students have also called for IU to cut ties with all companies and groups connected to Israel and the war.
In Tuesday’s statement, Lenkowsky and others said they were “concerned about the escalating rise of antisemitism and harassment of Jews besetting IU and other American campuses, pointing to, as examples, some of the chants they say have come from protesters at Dunn Meadow.
“When students or others are calling for Intifada, that’s what they’re actually calling for, they’re calling for the killing of innocent civilians,” Lenkowsky said.
In previous statements, the university’s administration said the arrests of dozens of protestors last Thursday and Saturday were the result of protesters refusing to take down tents they had set up in Dunn Meadow, and not because of their message. The university said erecting tents or structures went against a policy they changed last week, and now requires those wanting to set up tents at Dunn Meadow to get a permit first.
The previous policy only required tents set up in Dunn Meadow to come down at 11 p.m. but did not require permission to put them up during the day. The university said it adjusted its policy after watching encampments at universities across the country, in what has become a national movement of students supporting Palestinians and speaking out against the war in Gaza.
Lenkowsky referenced IU’s Code of Conduct, which prohibits harassment.
“Harassment includes speech, and there is no exception for speech that occurs at Dunn Meadow,” he said, adding that he and those IU faculty who signed onto Tuesday’s statement believed some protesters had violated the school’s Code of Conduct. “The Code of Conduct also includes the definition of antisemitism that includes the kinds of statements that protestors were making or had signs."
On IU’s website, under its Code of Conduct, it says, “Antisemitism is defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
“When they chant 'From the River to the Sea,' I don’t truly believe that they believe what that means,” said Luke Henne, who is an IU student and Jewish. “That means the annihilation of Israel. That’s what its rooted from the annihilation of the Jews in Israel."
Henne says watching the protests in Dunn Meadow is hard.
“I don’t feel unsafe, but I do feel hatred from the group,” Henne said.
Protesters, some whom said they are Jewish, are pushing back on the claim that what they’re saying and doing is antisemitic.
“From what the ‘River to the Sea’ means, at least to us, and I’d say most activists for the pro-Palestinian movement, is that it is not a call to kill all Jews like many say. I would not be supporting that, obviously, as a Jewish person, it just means freedom, liberation and equality,” said a student Lilia, who declined to give her full name.
“It means freedom for the Palestinian people from the 'River to the Sea,” said student Anne Kavalerchik, who is also Jewish. "We have been here since the beginning, and any allegation that there’s hate speech or antisemitism or any chants or sentiments regarding violence against the Jews or any people in this encampment is an unacceptable smear.”
There have been faculty who have been part of the demonstrations at Dunn Meadow. In total, 57 protesters have been arrested. According to IU, four of them have been faculty members.
IU Police told 13News they’ll be reviewing police body camera video to determine if any protesters were using any threatening speech, as has been claimed by faculty who signed on Tuesday’s statement. The statement spoke out against what the statement said were “pervasive, ill-informed, and mean-spirited indictments of Israel as a ‘racist, apartheid, fascist, and genocidal’ state.”
Organizers of the encampment said they had no plans to leave.
IU is set host graduation ceremonies on Saturday, May 4. IU Police said they would have extra officer support, as they would at any large event.
Here is the full statement signed Tuesday by 65 IU faculty and staff:
"We are a group of IU faculty and staff profoundly concerned about the escalating rise of antisemitism and harassment of Jews besetting IU and other American campuses, including this past week’s activities in Bloomington and at many other universities.
We are committed to free speech as a fundamental right. But there is an important difference between protected speech and harassment. We have received reliable reports that the behavior of some protesters has crossed over to targeted harassment of Jewish students. Freedom of speech is threatened by these kinds of violent actions, and we oppose them.
We urge our colleagues and friends at Indiana University to remember that Hamas’ atrocious assault on Israel on October 7, 2023 was the largest and most violent attack on Jews since the end of the Holocaust. It exemplifies the very definition of genocide: “the deliberate killing of a large number of a people or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation.” As clearly stated in its Charter, Hamas’s explicit aim is to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Thus, those at IU and other campuses who vocally align themselves with Hamas are enablers of annihilationist Jew-hatred. We are resolved to stand against them.
We also urge our colleagues and friends to remember that IU has a longstanding policy in place against proposals to boycott and “divest” from Israel. So does the state of Indiana. We wholeheartedly support our university’s academic ties to Israeli universities and welcome Israeli students, faculty members, and artists to Bloomington. Some of our leading faculty members and most outstanding students are Israelis. We are grateful to have them with us.
We also oppose the pervasive, ill-informed, and mean-spirited indictments of Israel as a “racist, apartheid, fascist, and genocidal” state. Israel is none of those things, but’s it’s now routinely denounced as such by those – including many on Dunn Meadow -- who chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and call for an “Intifada Revolution.”
The first of these calls, now chanted almost liturgically, would result in the end of the world’s only Jewish majority state, a democracy in which members of minority groups, including Arabs, enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens. Israel’s universities champion academic freedom, and all Israeli citizens have the right to vote and can freely choose their government. Thus, we regard the call to nullify Israel and all it has achieved over the past 75 years as reprehensible.
Do those who cry out “Intifada, Intifada” know that they are calling for actions that have led to some 140 terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians, which killed over 1,000 of them? Some clearly do. For according to eyewitness reports, there were people in Dunn Meadow who loudly proclaimed, “We are Hamas” and “Death to all Jewish people.” Did they know – or care – they were expressing sentiments of the most vicious sort?
These outrageous actions are deeply troubling to a great many people in Bloomington, across the United States, and around the world. Under the cover of a militant anti-Zionism, antisemitism has been heightened to a level of virulence not seen in decades. Left unchecked, it can do no end of damage, not only to Jewish lives but to the foundations of liberal democracy itself.
Over the years, IU has proven to be a welcoming campus for people of many different backgrounds, including large numbers of Jewish faculty members, students, and staff. We want to keep it that way, and we urge the IU leadership, as well as our colleagues and friends, to join us in opposing any and all moves to undermine the campus climate through virulent expressions of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel hostility. Such behavior is antagonistic to common decency and should have no place among us."