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Volume XXI • Number 6 • February 6-12, 2014 •
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Klein, Dinowitz decry anti-Semitism in Albany vote By ANDREW WOLF State Senate Co-Leader Jeff Klein passed legislation to prohibit colleges and universities from using taxpayer money to support groups that boycott countries like Israel last week, but a lighter version of the bill was pulled from the Assembly as opposition began to mount on Monday. The hot-button legislative issue arose when the American Studies Association (ASA), barred all Israeli universities and scholars from participating in their nationwide events, seminars and conferences. ASA orchestrated the boycott because of Israel’s “treatment of the Palestinians.” The presidents of Harvard, Yale and others across the country condemned the boycott of a democratic nation and ally, by an American organization that purports to represent scholars at around 2,000 colleges and universities. Klein also denounced ASA’s anti-Israel action and swiftly moved craft a measure that would prevent taxpayer money from funding this boycott. His legislation passed by an overwhelming, bipartisan majority, 51-4, on Jan. 29. “This legislation sends a very simple message, which is that we should never ask taxpayers to support religious, ethnic, or racial discrimination,” Klein said. “We need to marginalize the politics of intolerance whenever it rears its ugly head,” Klein added. “I will not allow the enemies of Israel or the Jewish people to gain an inch in New York The First Amendment protects
every organization’s right to speak, but it never requires taxpayers to foot the bill.” But a handful, like State Senator Gustavo Rivera who represents another adjacent Bronx district, believes that the state of New York shouldn’t stanch the flow of taxpayer cash to ASA, despite its extreme anti-Israel stance. “The issue that I have with this is that regardless of what that institution, in this case, ASA, has done, what we are saying is that we are as a state, we are taking a position on what is right or not right to say,” Senator Rivera said on the floor, turning it into a free speech and academic freedom issue. “Whether they have made the right decision or not to limit the ability of their own members to participate with academic institutions of Israel, it should not be in the business if the state to say that we are going to limit the amount of funding we provide to institutions because we disagree with their actions, in this cases... ASA,” Rivera later added. On Monday, a version of the bill sponsored by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver that would bar the use of taxpayer cash on academic groups, like ASA, to boycott Israel was yanked from the Assembly’s Higher Education committee after opponents expressed concerns over free speech. All this has outraged Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz. “It’s shocking that with all of the atrocities taking place in the Middle East in countries bordering Israel, that
there are some people here in the United States that support boycotting Israel, the one true democracy in the region. Over 130,000 humans have been killed in the Syrian Civil War, over a thousand Egyptians have been killed in political unrest there, yet the American Studies Association has decided that boycotting Israeli academic and cultural institutions is more important than decrying this epidemic of Arab-on-Arab killing. I wonder why that is? “Until recently Israel was one of the few countries in the Middle East that allowed Arab women to vote. Even today in some Arab countries women aren’t allowed to drive cars. Yet there are those who believe that boycotting Soda Stream products is the most earthshaking issue confronting us. Why is that? “I think we all know that, at least for some of the boycotters, anti-Semitism is the underlying motivation. Academics do have the right to speak out on the issues they choose but so do I. Whether it is anti-Semitism, racism homophobia or any other form of hatred I will speak out against it and yet, I do believe that the ASA resolution was motivated by anti-Semitism of many of the people who voted for it. Our certainly believe that our tax dollars should not be subsidizing anti-Semitism or any form of hatred.” The Soda Stream issue that Dinowitz was referring to was pressure placed on actress Scarlett Johanssen not to endorse the Israeli-made product in a widely seen Super Bowl commercial.
Jean Donahue is the new principal at Bronx Science
On Wednesday, January 29, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. held the inaugural meeting of the Bronx Jewish History Initiative. The purpose of the Bronx Jewish Historical Initiative is to preserve and record the extraordinary history of the Jewish Community in The Bronx, through development of a website, forums and special events and receiving collections of materials. Until now, there has been no local Jewish historical society in The Bronx, nor has its local Borough history been systematically put in place, notwithstanding that historians have written excellent works on New York City’s Jewish history, as well as on The Bronx. The Bronx is integral and important to portraying the story of New York’s Jewish community, then and now. At one point, more Jews lived in The Bronx than in Israel. It was home or birth place to many of the known leaders and celebrities in Jewish history, including Red Buttons, Calvin Klein, Robert Klein, Hank Greenberg, Billy Joel, and Tony Curtis. In 1948, there were approximately 650,000 Jewish People living in the Bronx. There is a need to record this history for posterity, as well as the living history of today’s Bronx Jewish community. Howard Teich is assisting The Borough President’s office with this endeavor. Howard is the founder of both the Manhattan and Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative.
By STUART EBER New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina officially appointed Dr. Jean Donahue as the Principal of The Bronx High School of Science as one of her first personnel actions since she was named to run the City’s schools system by Mayor Bill DeBlasio. Dr. Donahue graduated from Bronx Science in 1977, was a teacher until her interim promotion to Principal last fall and has been the parent of a Science student. The Bronx High School of Science has been of the nation’s top public high schools for 75 years. It was mired in controversy for the past several years under former Principal Valerie J. Reidy. Ms. Reidy was appointed in September 2001 after a tumultuous succession process created by then Chancellor Harold O. Levy’s unsuccessful attempt to find a Nobel laureate to lead the school. Mr. Levy graduated Bronx Science in 1970. Bronx Science enjoyed steady hands on the helm for the first four decades, Morris Meister (1938-1958) and Dr. Alexander Taffel (1958-1978). The school was founded at Creston Avenue and 184th Street and moved to its current home on Paul Avenue and
Dr. Jean Donahue 205 Street in 1959. The building is famous for its mural, Humanities Protecting Biology, Physics, Chemistry. The student body has called the 63 foot artwork “the Science swimming pool”, a reference to the non-existent pool. Despite the absence of a pool, the school’s swimming teams have been successful for over 50 years. Science was the first of the City’s specialized high schools to go coed in 1946. Stuyvesant (1969) and Brooklyn Tech (1970) remained all boys for over 20 more years. The Bronx High School of Science counts eight Nobel Prize winners, including two in the Class of 1966. No other Continued on Page 14 th