<p>stressedoutt, I’m enjoying your posts. My son is at Vassar. He is a cultural Jew, non-religious, as was I when I attended Vassar. We are not Zionists. It’s important to recognize the difference. A liberal arts college like Vassar (and like Swarthmore, the first school who changed their Hillel chapter to allow free speech, including anti-Zionist speech) is going to tend toward opinions such as anti-genocide – genocide, for example, of the Palestinian people by Israel. Some people really feel that this is going on. You would not expect to receive no questioning remarks about your lovely trip to Johannesburg during apartheid, and you should not expect to talk about the great time you had in Israel when conditions there in Gaza and the occupied territories are what they are. </p>
<p>I was appalled by that Wall Street Journal article. Her calling discussion of concepts such as “colonialism” as using “buzz words”. What’s a buzzword, a word that doesn’t correlate with your own beliefs? Zionism isn’t a buzz word? I thought the article was highly insulting to people who actually care about these very difficult world problems. I understand that undergraduates can get strident about these discussions, but then people who see themselves as the underdog or siding with the underdog tend to be loud – they understand that their voices are their strongest resource. However I have not heard that <em>anyone</em> is in danger on the Vassar campus and there are plenty of Jews there, students and faculty, who seem to be having a fine experience.</p>