RUTHFULLY YOURS

The latest distribution of mock eviction notices being distributed in the dorm rooms of students – primarily Jewish – in order to inflict upon those American students what they claim are the “horrors of life” for Palestinian Arabs took place at New York University on Wednesday evening, April 23.

The mock eviction notices were distributed in Palladium Hall, a dorm at NYU which most students acknowledge is known for having a heavy representation of Jewish students.

These notices misrepresent reality and are a cowardly method of harassment. It allows anti-Israel students and their leadership both to make themselves feel as if they are actually doing something constructive and also to make life unpleasant for Jewish students. It has happened at enough campuses –  half a dozen others already this year alone – that one would expect university leadership would be fully prepared to respond quickly and effectively.

But if you were expecting that, you’d be wrong.

NYU students at Palladium Hall woke up early on Thursday morning and found the mock eviction notices in their rooms.

A current NYU student, Laura Adkins, wrote about the matter in a blog at the Times of Israel. Variations of the story appeared throughout the day, including at the influential legal blog, Legal Insurrection.

The Jewish Press reached an NYU spokesperson mid-afternoon on Thursday and was told the school was still “investigating and preparing a statement.”

WERE JEWS BEING TARGETED BY THE LEAFLETS?

When the school finally released its official statement late in the day, the school insisted that it did not believe that Palladium Hall was targeted because it has a disproportionately large number of Jewish students (the presence of a Sabbath elevator in the building was explained by a stairway issue and security concerns).

It is unclear why the flyering took place in this particular dorm; we don’t believe there is perception of this dorm as having an a high percentage of Jewish students (the presence of a Sabbath elevator is the result of a stairway that empties to the street and cannot be entered through the lobby behind the security desk, not because of a disproportionate presence of Jewish students in the building).  However, were it to be the case that the flyering was done there because it was perceived be a dorm with a higher proportion of Jewish students, that would be troubling, dismaying  and a matter of deep concern for our community.

The notice was sent out under the name of John Beckman, who is NYU’s vice president for public affairs. The person with whom we spoke in the Public Affairs office, Philip Lentz, is the director for public affairs.

Lentz insisted that the research done by NYU revealed that Palladium is not known as a dorm known as having a large Jewish population. Students and hard evidence prove otherwise.

While NYU went to some length to explain away the existence of a Shabbat elevator in Palladium, a simple visit to the building would have revealed that it is there to serve the Jewish population in the building.

Adkins, an economics major from Springfield, Missouri who is the vice president of TorchPac, NYU’s pro-Israel advocacy organization, said that as long as she has been on campus Palladium has had, and is known as having “a large Jewish population,” even for NYU, which itself has a large Jewish population. It is listed as number one in the “Top 30 Private Universities by Jewish Population,” according to a 2013 Hillel survey. NYU’s Lentz was adamant that the school does not keep information about student housing location by ethnicity, which is good, but ignoring the facts on the ground is hard to understand.

According to Adkins, Palladium is a building which Jewish, particularly Orthodox Jews, prefer. Whether the Shabbat Elevator was installed specifically to serve an Observant community or if the Observant community began to choose Palladium because there was a Shabbat Elevator in the building does not change the current reality.

STUDENTS FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY

By late Thursday afternoon, those responsible for the distribution of the anti-Israel mock eviction notices claimed responsibility. The NYU Students for Justice in Palestine group admitted that they crept into the building (it turns out, probably at a later time, another building, Lafayette, had been “dorm stormed” – that’s the catchy name for the flooding of a dorm with the mock eviction notices -) and shoved the notices under the doors of the sleeping students. SJP has been behind most, if not all the mock eviction notices on the other campuses. It was one of the things that led Northeastern University to suspend the SJP organization on that campus earlier this year.

The NYU public affairs office, however, remained steadfast in their position that they did not know who was responsible for distributing the flyers or whether any particular students, i.e. the Jewish ones, were targeted. As of late Thursday afternoon, after SJP NYU had already posted that it had distributed the notices, The Jewish Press was told that NYU planned on “investigating” to determine who was responsible.

According to its official statement, even if the school finds out that Jews were targeted, the most NYU was prepared to publicly state is “that would be troubling, dismaying  and a matter of deep concern for our community.”

Adkins told The Jewish Press by telephone that the response from the school was inadequate.

“The distribution of those leaflets with false claims against Israel is classic anti-Semitism,” Adkins said. “Their actions violated university policy.  The SJP should be investigated and, when found to have violated university rules – they already admitted they did it – there should be serious consequences.

“Aside from the anti-Semitism and slurring of Israel, having people skulk around at night and slide things under your door while you are sleeping is absolutely chilling, it’s creepy.”

William Jacobson, the Cornell law professor who writes at Legal Insurrection goes a step further. He explained that many universities ban the practice. That is because they are deemed to have a legitimate interest in protecting students’ privacy in their homes (dorms) and bedrooms (dorm rooms).

When the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed a similar situation – people sliding things under one’s door in the dark of night – it has upheld ordinances protecting homeowners against unapproved intrusions, and quotes a 1970 case, Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., 397 U.S. 728, 738 (1970) which sounds directly on point:

We therefore categorically reject the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another…. That we are often ‘captives’ outside the sanctuary of the home and subject to objectionable speech and other sound does not mean we must be captives everywhere.

So, let’s see. A primarily Jewish dorm was targeted (the notices themselves are offensive, as is the conduct, but targeting a religious minority is an additional and significant factor). The Students for Justice in Palestine admitted they distributed their propaganda by shoving the leaflets under the doors of students in the dark of night. That action has been recognized by no less than the U.S. Supreme Court as unprotected activity, and even NYU admits, in its official statement, that the leafleting is “inconsistent with standards we expect to prevail in a scholarly community.”

John Sexton is the president of New York University. Maybe it’s time to have a word with Mr. Sexton.