Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia’s signature does not appear among those of nearly 300 other college presidents attached to a statement that denounced acts of intolerance against Jewish students on American college campuses. DeGioia did not sign the statement, which appeared as a paid advertisement in The New York Times Monday, because it did not go far enough to criticize discrimination.
“President DeGioia was asked to sign a statement against intimidation on college campuses but declined to do so because, while agreeing that there is no place for anti-Semitism and that threats against Jewish students are wrong, the statement itself did not broadly reference discrimination of other kinds that is equally inappropriate,” Assistant Vice President for Communications Julie Green Bataille said. “At Georgetown we are committed to an intimidation-free campus and make that clear in university policy and practice.”
Current and former presidents of six universities, including Stephen Joel Trachtenberg of nearby George Washington University and H. Patrick Swygert of Howard University, developed the statement. The American Jewish Committee, a nonprofit organization, helped to distribute the statement to universities and published it in The Times on Oct. 8.
The statement cited a rise in anti-Semitic activity on college campuses as a reason for the publicity of the statement. Those who signed the statement committed themselves to “academic standards in the classroom and we will sustain an intimidation-free campus.”
“In the past few months, students who are Jewish or supporters of Israel’s right to exist – Zionists – have received death threats and threats of violence. Property connected to Jewish organizations has been defaced or destroyed. Posters and Web sites displaying libelous information or images have been widely circulated, creating an atmosphere of intimidation,” the statement read.
Vice President of the Jewish Student Association’s SAC branch Deidre Moskowitz (COL ’05) said the organization has noted a rise in anti-Semitism on college campuses across the country and were looking into precautions to ensure the safety of the community, such as the installation of cameras at the JSA House. “In light of various events across the country, we had [the Department of Public Safety] come by and check out where we could put them,” Moskowitz said. “There’s no specific [anti-Semitic] incident at Georgetown that I can pinpoint . but it’s nerve-wracking.”
DeGioia was not the only university president who declined to sign the document. Harvard University President Lawrence Summers and Princeton University President Shirley Tilghman were among many others who chose not to sign the statement.
Princeton University Director of Communications Lauren Robinson-Brown told The Daily Princetonian that Tilghman declined to sign the document because it “just mentions intimidation against Jewish students, and they are not the only students who might face intimidation.”
