Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Community

Illinois and UChicago Administration Consistently Stand With Israel

For much of its history, The University of Chicago has been a leader in supporting free expression, and its current administration continues to uphold this legacy proudly. While there are certainly problems for Jews on campus —I received anonymous death threats in my first year for defending Israel — the administration has taken major steps to shut down the most virulent anti-Israel and anti-Semitic actors. Anonymous online posts remain a problem, and we never found out who issued the threats or who wrote about how humanity can’t survive with the “parasitic Jews” and that “Hitler was right.”

Whenever student governments on college campuses pass resolutions to divest from Israel, they are ignored by their administrators; no college has ever listened to these students and actually divested from Israel. However, our administration went far beyond what most have done after our student government passed a resolution to divest from Israel, releasing a statement that read, in part “the University of Chicago will not divest from companies for doing business in Israel and opposes academic boycotts aimed at specific nations, including Israel.”

This immediate rebuke of the BDS movement stopped any momentum it could claim on campus in its tracks, because there was no doubt that our administration was planning on ignoring this meaningless resolution. The cause was even further discredited when a resolution to divest from China due to their human rights abuses was tabled due the the perceived racism in even broaching the subject.

The state of Illinois itself has been a leader in boycotting Israel’s boycotters by becoming the first state in the nation to list companies barred from doing business with the state because they have divested from Israel within the 1967 lines or the West Bank.

The actions of a few students who speak for no one other than themselves notwithstanding, UChicago has a tremendous Jewish community with an extremely active Chabad and Hillel.

There is undoubtedly work that needs to be done, but I have never doubted my decision to attend the University of Chicago and look forward to welcoming the Class of 2021, Jews and non-Jews alike.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.