On Wednesday, the Claremont Independent, which is an “independent journal of campus news and political thought serving the colleges of the Claremont Consortium” in Southern California, broke the news that Claremont’s Pitzer College will ban the Independent from attending a student council meeting wherein the council will decide whether or not to sever all ties with the College’s only study abroad program in Israel.
Per the Claremont Independent:
Pitzer College informed the Claremont Independent today that tomorrow it would no longer be allowed to attend a Pitzer College Council — a governing body composed of faculty and students that usually decides college policy — vote on whether to suspend Pitzer’s only study abroad program in Israel with the University of Haifa as student media. Despite being a registered student club at the Claremont Colleges Consortium, which Pitzer is a member institution of, and the first publication to break the news on the Pitzer faculty voting in favor of suspending its study abroad in Israel in support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, Pitzer College’s Office of Communications told the Independent that only the student government-funded media outlet The Student Life would be able to cover the vote as student media. The vote will take place on the afternoon of March 14.
When an editor from the Independent called Pitzer’s Office of Communications to enquire about the details about the vote and whether student media can attend, Pitzer’s initial response was affirmative. However, when the Independent sent Pitzer’s Office of Communications a list of staffers who will be in attendance, Pitzer spokesman Mark Bailey wrote that the initial response was a mistake, and that attendance would be limited to “students, faculty, staff and student members of The Student Life staff.”
The Independent refers to The Student Life as “a left-leaning publication.”
Elliott Hamilton, a former Daily Wire writer and Pitzer College alumnus, has previously reported on the Pitzer College student senate’s passing of a BDS resolution. As Hamilton noted for The Daily Wire at the time, the student senate passed the BDS resolution during Easter and Passover observance.
While 17 student senators were absent either observing Passover or Easter, the Pitzer College student senate passed an anti-Semitic resolution preventing the Student Activities Fund from purchasing Israeli products. This resolution was passed with 22 yes votes, 4 abstentions, and zero votes in opposition. …
According to The Claremont Independent, Pitzer’s senate moved forward with this resolution a week after Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine Jewish Persecution hosted its annual “Israeli Apartheid Week” and when there would be considerably less opposition to the blatantly anti-Semitic language specifically calling out Israel for supposed human rights violations. The resolution did not address countries like Lebanon and Jordan, which impose devastating apartheid laws on Palestinian-Arab refugees in their respective countries.
Reached today for comment by The Daily Wire, Hamilton said:
None of this surprises me. The Pitzer faculty and administration have long been indifferent toward the concerns of its Jewish student body and they don’t want to be held accountable for their internalized bigotry. Their concerted effort to keep journalists from reporting objectively on this vote says everything you need to know about their lack of moral character.
This administration seems to have failed to apply Pitzer’s supposed dedication to liberal arts with regard to Israel in favor of indoctrinating its student body with neo-Marxist revisionism.