Outraged Y.U. Alumni Hope To Block Jimmy Carter From Cardozo Peace Honor
Former President Jimmy Carter visits East Jerusalem in 2010. Image by Getty Images
By Paul Berger April 8, 2013
Enraged alumni have threatened to physically block Jimmy Carter from entering Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law, where he is due to receive a peace award on April 10.
Daniel Rubin, 62, said about a dozen former alumni are planning an act of civil disobedience to prevent Carter, a harsh critic of Israeli policies on the occupied West Bank, from picking up the International Advocate for Peace Award, given annually by Cardozo’s Journal of Conflict Resolution.
Rubin said former alumni would use their knowledge of the building layout to outmaneuver any attempts to stop them.
“Mr. Carter ain’t going to get anywhere,” Rubin said.
“There’s no reason for a school that has any sense of Jewish integrity to have a guy like that around,” he added.
Separately, a group calling itself The Coalition of Concerned Cardozo Alumni has called on former students to express their outrage to Y.U. President Richard Joel and Cardozo dean Matthew Diller. Citing Carter’s 2006 book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,” and Carter’s voluminous “record of slandering Israel,” a statement on the coalition’s website, said: “Jimmy Carter has an ignominious history of anti-Israel bigotry.”
In a statement posted on Y.U.’s website, Joel emphasized that the award was “solely the initiative” of a student-run journal and “not of Yeshiva University or the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School.”
Emphasizing Y.U.’s commitment to Israel, Joel said he strongly disagreed with many of Carter’s statements and actions regarding Israel in recent years.
Nevertheless, Joel said: “Yeshiva University both celebrates and takes seriously its obligation as a university to thrive as a free marketplace of ideas, while remaining committed to its unique mission as a proud Jewish university.”
Contact Paul Berger at [email protected] or on Twitter @pdberger
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
