This is the equivalent of deplatforming a speaker after he or she has been invited to speak. In fact, it’s worse, for it involves impeding a student’s career because of an associate professor’s ideological stand.  The professor is in cultural studies (of course), John Cheney-Lippold in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan. And the story is reported in both the Washington Post and the student paper, The Michigan Daily; click on the links below to read (h/t: Rodney).

Washington Post:

The Michigan Daily:

From the report in the Post:

The clashing visions turn on a reference letter, one of the most valuable currencies of the teacher-student relationship. At the University of Michigan, the letter of recommendation is now also a tool in the protest against Israel, as John Cheney-Lippold, a professor of cultural studies, this month rescinded his offer to write on behalf of his student’s semester abroad at Tel Aviv University. [JAC: The Michigan Daily identifies the student as “LSA junior Abigail Ingber”; “LSA” stands for “The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts”.]

His decision, first reported by the Michigan Daily campus newspaper, newly tests the line between opposition to Israel and hostility to Jews, while marking the latest chapter in the bitter debate about the movement known as BDS — Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. The movement seeks the end of Israeli occupation of “all Arab lands,” the full equality of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and the right of return for Palestinian refugees as stipulated in U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194.

. . . a query from a student arrived [in Cheney-Lippold’s box] in August. The student’s request was a standard one, made of professors around the world. After a back-and-forth, in which he asked for a clearer deadline from the student, identified by the Michigan Daily as a junior at Michigan’s College of Literature, Sciences and the Arts, Cheney-Lippold agreed to write on her behalf for a study-abroad program.

But when he received the form letter, Cheney-Lippold realized that he had missed a key detail. His student’s desired destination was Israel, whose academic institutions he has pledged to boycott as a way of protesting the state’s treatment of Palestinians. Cheney-Lippold is a member of the American Studies Association, whose members in 2013 voted by a ratio of more than 2 to 1 to endorse BDS.

Cheney then wrote the student this email response declining to recommend her (but offering to recommend her for other programs). Here’s his response, posted on the Facebook page of the University’s “Club Z”, a pro-Zionist organization that in turn obtained the email from another faculty member to whom Cheney-Lippold sent it:

Cheney-Lippold is a member of the American Studies Association, which has endorsed the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement, which is committed to ending Israeli occupation and, as is pretty clear, wants to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state (the founders’ statements were clear on this, it supports the “right of return,” and its supporters chant “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea”).  However, Cheney-Lippold’s statement that “many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel” is simpy wrong: no department at the University of Michigan, nor the University itself, support the BDS movement.

Cheney-Lippold argues that refusing to write the letter is in fact an act of academic freedom in support of his beliefs:

He had been careful in wording his email, wanting to impress upon the student that his decision was not personal. He rewrote the message twice to perfect its tone. But the choice was otherwise a simple one. “It was about consistency,” he said. “If I believe in this, I have to exercise my will as a professor.”

“If a union asks me not to buy a grape from a certain producer, or not to cross a picket line, I would support that,” he said. “It’s the same thing here. Following requests from Palestinian and Jewish activists, I find the boycott against Israeli state institutions to be a very useful way to put pressure where I can as an academic.”

His support for the boycott — an international protest that has been criticized as inhibiting academic freedom and free expression — did not interfere improperly with his student’s plans, he noted. Nor has his involvement been inconsistent with his teaching duties, he said, but rather is protected by his academic freedom. “I can’t prevent a student from going to Israel,” Cheney-Lippold reasoned. “But everybody has the right to withhold something, and I chose to exercise that right based on what the movement needs from me as a solidarity activist.”

. . . The reason [his email to the student] touched a nerve, he suggested, is not just because of the vexed debate over the Israel-Palestine conflict but also because of a misunderstanding of free speech and a professor’s role. He argued that rising tuition means a college education is increasingly understood as an investment, and a letter of recommendation as something owed to a student as a consumer. “Michigan’s brand is being stained right now,” he said.

That is a crock.

While I support Cheney-Lippold’s right to belong to BDS and promulgate its views however he wishes as a private citizen, it is not kosher (forgive the pun) to enforce those views on students in a way that impedes their careers. It’s one thing if he didn’t feel that he could write a supportive letter for the student because of her performance, and in that case he could have told her. But he clearly didn’t feel that way, and thus agreed to write the letter. He also, after he rescinded that offer, said he was happy to write other letters, implying that he could write a supportive letter. Once he agreed to write, though, he was duty-bound to follow through, regardless of what he felt about Israel, because the student wanted to study there as a way to forward her career. It is Cheney-Lippold’s academic duty to write that letter, for it’s part of his job.

If a professor claims the right to not recommend students to study in countries whose policies he opposes, or for programs he opposes, that would lead to chaos. There are, for instance, professors who feel that America is an imperialistic and oppressive state. Should a professor claim that he can’t recommend students for programs in America? Some professors feel that American law enforcement is structurally racist. Should a student not deserve a recommendation for a career in law enforcement? You can imagine many other situations like these, and I can’t imagine any for which I would withhold recommendations. The only reasons I wouldn’t write a letter is if the student wasn’t a good fit for the job, unqualified, or not diligent, and in such cases I would invariably tell the student that I couldn’t write a supportive letter. (Many faculty, however, would just write a letter without telling the student how positive it would be. That’s a matter of taste, though students usually ask for letters only if they’re pretty sure they’ll be positive.)

The University of Michigan’s response has been pretty tepid; here are statements from both papers:

Cheney-Lippold said that he hasn’t met with the “upper echelons” at the university, but that his department chair has been supportive. [Post]

What the bloody hell? His department chair, Alexandra Minna-Stern, should give Cheney-Lippold a trip to the departmental woodshed. And this is from the Michigan Daily:

University Public Affairs released a statement regarding the incident, reaffirming the consistent opposition of boycotting Israeli institutions of higher education. The statement upholds no academic department or unit officially maintains a boycott.

“It is disappointing that a faculty member would allow their personal political beliefs to limit the support they are willing to otherwise provide for our students,” the statement read. “We will engage our faculty colleagues in deep discussions to clarify how the expression of our shared values plays out in support of all students.”

That’s about as tepid a statement they can make. “We will engage in deep discussions. . ” Another crock. The University of Michigan should clarify to its faculty that it is the duty of professors to write letters of recommendations for students whose tone is independent of the professor’s political, religious, or ideological beliefs, and it is up to the professor whether to tell the student that the professor can’t write a positive letter on academic grounds. I will be writing to Cheney-Lippold, to his chair, and to the President and the Regents of the University of Michigan expressing my displeasure with Cheney-Lippold’s stand.

As for the students, the reaction is mixed. The Jewish students of course object, with some feeling that Cheney-Lippold’s act is anti-Semitic. Grania also feels this is anti-Semitic. I won’t go quite that far, but I do think the BDS movement, whose implicit aim is to eliminate the country of Israel, is essentially anti-Semitic, and was organized by anti-Semites. But in this case that’s largely irrelevant.

One student clearly was anti-Semitic, however, as reported by The Michigan Daily:

LSA junior Sophee Langerman said she fully supports Cheney-Lippold’s decision as a boycott, divestment and sanctions activist, but reaffirmed the complexity of the issue and the diversity of opinion among students on campus.

“I believe that this professor is 100 percent correct in his refusal of writing a recommendation letter in support of the BDS movement,” she said. “A trip to Israeli-occupied Palestine would mean the support of the mass murder and oppression of not only Palestinians, but Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi [Middle-Eastern] Jews, East-Asian immigrants and other non-white minority communities. BDS cannot support that. I would also like to point out that this professor was never under any obligation to write this student a letter of recommendation, and in fact, she got more than most students do by receiving a reply about why he would not participate.”

Even if this student isn’t a Jew-hater, she’s pretty much off the rails. First, note that she considers Israel to be “Israeli-occupied Palestine,” which means she thinks Israel shouldn’t exist.

Further, it is Israel who took in Ethiopian and Mizrahi Jews! And how a student’s study in Israel would lead to the “mass murder and oppression” of those groups, as well as of Palestinians, East Asian immigrants (to where?) and “non-white minority communities” is unclear. I think Langerman is just spouting nonsense here, throwing in every oppressed group she can think of to give some gravitas to her letter. But her claim that visiting Israel will lead to the mass murder of Israeli Jews from Ethiopia and the Middle East is clearly bogus and stupid. This is the result of the unthinking nonsense and propaganda that fills the head of many college students.