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Pitzer College president Strom Thacker rejected an amended resolution recently adopted by students, faculty and staff that called on the college to fully cut ties with Israeli universities.
Thacker wrote in a statement on April 11 to the campus community that he believed an academic boycott conflicted with the college’s academic freedom principles and could create “the impression that some perspectives are more welcome on campus than others.”
“I will not accept recommendations that run contrary to Pitzer’s commitment to academic freedom, to creating a safe and productive learning environment for all, and to the core value of intercultural understanding,” he said.
Pitzer’s Student Senate and its College Council, made up of professors, staff and students, passed the resolution last week.
The resolution was originally written by pro-Palestinian student activists and called for the college to close its study abroad program at the University of Haifa in Israel. The authors amended the resolution to be more expansive after the Haifa program was removed, along with 11 other programs, from the college’s list of pre-approved programs earlier this month. The college’s Faculty Executive Committee voted that the Haifa program didn’t meet the criteria for pre-approved study abroad programs because of low enrollments, a lack of resources, and a lack of “alignment with Pitzer values.”
University leaders said the move had nothing to do with an academic boycott of Israel but other concerns such as the low enrollment. Student activists at Pitzer and other campuses in the Claremont Colleges saw the move as a win for the boycott movement and criticized Thacker’s rejection of a full academic boycott as being unaligned with the views of students, faculty and staff.
Izzy Kramer, a Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace organizer at Scripps College, noted that the resolution passed with a 3 to 0 vote in the Student Senate and a 48 to 19 vote in the College Council.
Thacker’s messaging is “actively acting against the interest of the students, faculty and staff and also acting against the interests of the college and the vision the college sets up for itself as a socially responsible institution,” she told Inside Higher Ed.
