Very few US university presidents have called for a ceasefire. Georgetown and Notre Dame are two others. But the list is very short.
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I would be surprised if President Mandel calls for a ceasefire. She stated last fall, “My policy not to send out campus-wide messages about domestic or international events or even natural disasters, no matter how tragic or painful, is based on several considerations…”
Here’s a link to her full statement:
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Agreed, hopefully dialogue will prevail and the students will have their voices heard while at the same time the College manages to maintain an open campus.
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I hadn’t heard that. Maybe you’re referring to this from M. Roth’s blog:
Many at Wesleyan are beginning their observance of Ramadan, and I want to extend my warm wishes to our Muslim students, faculty, staff, and alumni for a month filled with blessings. The holiday begins at a painful time, as the war in Gaza continues and the humanitarian situation, already dire, becomes catastrophic. May there immediately be a cease fire, and, with a return of hostages, serious negotiations for a just peace and an end to the occupation.
What a joyful blessing that would be!
https://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/tag/cease-fire/
Leader blogs are interesting. Are they representing themselves or the institution? On his blog, he seems to tend to write on his mostly his own view of things, and in this case it’s really ambiguous whether he’s speaking for Wesleyan. I think he’s not, and this is more what he would like to see happen.
I haven’t read an official position by Wes on a cease fire. Did I miss it?
I’m confident that the blog constitutes official presidential correspondence (and thus official university correspondence/position, unless explicitly noted otherwise). His style (and the format) is pretty casual, so it might not read as “official,” but there’s no way he posted that without running all of the relevant traps, knowing that it would be (and indeed has been) reported in the media as “Wesleyan’s president has called for a ceasefire.”
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All fair. Though the “may there be” to me reads a little different than articulating a prescriptive view about what the parties should do, which is what I think you need for a “call for” statement.
“May there be” is hopeful that everyone suddenly gets reasonable and agrees to be peaceful (something that is not even a pipe dream there). Maybe he didn’t want to commit.
If I were on team cease fire, I would have liked a more definitive declaration that there needs to be a ceasefire.
Anyway, I’m probably splitting hairs.
Edit: looking back at it again, the word “immediately” then pushes the characterization of the statement a little more closely to the way you’re viewing it.
One thing that’s hard about divestment is the amount of private equity investments that may or may not be in the invested endowment. Wesleyan, for example, maintains a healthy % of their invested portfolio in PE investments.
They tend to not be as liquid (as other equity investments) and there are often penalties for unwinding the investment, if it’s even contractually possible. I’ve dealt with this before and it’s really not as straight forward as people assume.
I haven’t read Amherst’s annual reports so I don’t know, but I would be surprised if they also didn’t have quite a private equity portfolio, some of which could involve Israel-based investments.
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IIRC, I once asked our resident expert on The Chicago Statement a similar question regarding whether President Alivisatos could be expected to ever issue a statement - for example - condemning the use of rape as a weapon of war and his answer was “No.” Even as a personal statement. Because too many people would interpret it as an official position of the college. So, President Roth is pushing it quite to the edge.
However, it should be noted that official neutrality on the issue of the war in Gaza hasn’t spared Chicago from the necessity of using force against protesters in order to enforce “time and place” restrictions on the exercise of Free Speech.
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Bill McKibben writes favorably about Middlebury’s protests in this Mother Jones article from today:
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I have a freestanding post on this topic, but it was recommended I also post here, so hopefully that is allowed. My question:
I would like to hear from any families with current Jewish students at Swarthmore, Bowdoin, Williams, or Amherst–and since this is a more general NESCAC thread, anyone with Jewish students at any of the NESCAC schools. Are there any palpable divides around the situation in the Middle East at these schools, and how is it manifesting itself on your child’s campus? Is there respect for different points of view on this topic? How is the general (before Oct. 7) classroom environment around differing opinions on any topic; is there a feeling that there is groupthink and a predominant way of thinking about literature or history for instance? If possible I would like to hear from current parents and if you’re willing maybe I could send a PM. Thank you.
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Meanwhile, the granddaddy of small colleges appears to be taking its cues from its larger Ivy team mates:
the president of Dartmouth College, Sian Leah Beilock, took unusually swift action and authorized the police action on May 1 to clear an encampment that students had, just two hours earlier, pitched on the college green.
Dr. Beilock, a cognitive scientist who studies why people choke under pressure, has been facing a campus uproar ever since.
You can’t make this stuff up.
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Yeah, I thought that line about her research was unnecessarily snarky and petty.
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I just left a zoom meeting between the president of Wesleyan University, Michael S. Roth and a 50th Reunion follow-up “conversation”. It was only supposed to be an hour long but the topic of Gaza and the encampments which are now entering their third week, basically chewed up most of the meeting.
My sense is that the political divide around that issue is not terribly different at Wesleyan than it is at any other elite campus; there are essentially two fairly irreconcilable sides. The difference is mainly a matter of presentation; the pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Wesleyan have not blocked access to any other portion of campus; the encampment is “porous”. People are free to walk through it on the way to meals (including an enterprising food truck) – or not.
There is no question that the signs and posters are critical of Israel to the extreme. And it’s equally true that those sentiments make some Jewish students uncomfortable. The president recounted instances where he attempted to let Jewish students know, individually and as a group, that he has “their back”. But he has not heard of any accounts of harassment.
None of which is to suggest that the protesters are interested in reaching a Quaker consensus. By and large, they are not. As Roth put it, “they are stretching their political muscles.” And as long as they do not engage in violence or the destruction of property, he seems content to allow them to continue doing so.
Roth, who happens to be Jewish, perhaps let his guard down with the alum, many of whom date back to his own time at Wesleyan, by revealing a few of his own feelings about the Gaza War. Unfortunately, this only incited some of the Jewish alum and the last ten minutes of the meeting threatened to become an extended colloquy between the Jewish attendees. It effectively ended early on that note.
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Here is the latest on Williams from the Berkshire Eagle, the students took down the encampment and will meet with the Board of Trustees, well done Maud Mandel. Their voices were heard and the discussion will continue, dialogue is possible even during the contentious times.
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Before being prez at Dartmouth, she was at Barnard. I strongly suspect that she has close mentorship ties with Columbia.
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Did he express any concern about the tents leaving brown spots on the grass? I would hate for our friends from Texas to have to see those!
Sorry fellow NESCACers … indulge me this one semi-inside joke.
Very funny. Hopefully the yellow patches in the lawn on the quad at Williams will grow back by graduation in June!
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Well, in all seriousness, it’s not clear how the students climb down from this. Roth pointed out that six months would be the earliest the Trustees could actually take up the issue of divestment and that the whole thing has a chimera-like quality to it since it’s doubtful Wesleyan has anything resembling a traditional investment in the defense industry. My hunch is that the protesters would have to settle for the university making a good-faith effort at doing an audit of some sort. But, that’s just my opinion. Nothing official from Roth.
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What Wesleyan does have is some of its money tied up in PE investments, and those are hard to unwind quickly if they can be unwound at all. If those involve tech, and I’m sure some do, then there could be indirect involvement in defense. But I’m sure the connection is quite indirect, if it’s there at all.
But who knows? Maybe Wes owns some Raytheon and Boeing.
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