Statements put out by the executive boards of the faculty unions at Rutgers University, particularly one by its adjunct faculty union condemning the “genocidal war” being waged against Palestinians by Israel, have come under fire from union members who have demanded they be withdrawn.
The adjunct union endorsed a statement put out by the controversial Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) rather than one put out by the leadership of its parent union, the American Federation of Teachers, entitled “U.S. Education Leaders Condemn Hamas Attack, Stand with Israeli People.”
However, the Rutgers division said it found the national statement “to be problematic in a number of ways.”
Adjunct faculty are known as lecturers at Rutgers and represent about 3,000 faculty at the three campuses of Rutgers in Camden, New Brunswick and Newark.
However, Cynthia Saltzman, a lecturer in the department of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice and an associate member of the graduate faculty at the Camden campus, said she found the JVP statement to be “one-sided” and “offensive.” By the time this issue blew up, she had already resigned from the executive board of the union over its stances.
Saltzman was one of three faculty who authored a statement on behalf of themselves and their colleagues of the Jewish Faculty Administration and Staff (JFAS) sharply condemning the actions of the unions.
Although the full-time faculty’s statement did not endorse JVP’s position, the Jewish professors’ statement said it also contained erroneous information that drew criticism. At a Zoom meeting during office hours union leadership introduced a “badly one-sided” draft that misstated the nature of the conflict, putting forth political and military policies aligned with Hamas’s goals.
Its proposed draft statement criticized Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway for his “heartfelt concern” for the massacred Israeli victims of terror and his speaking of “the crisis in Gaza” but not in Israel. The “self-selected” group of professors never mentioned Hamas or terrorism and called on President Joe Biden to broker a ceasefire unconditioned on the release of hostages or Hamas’s surrender.
Although it went through six revisions the finalized version contained the anti-Holloway criticism and calls for a ceasefire without the release of hostages or bringing Hamas leaders to justice.
“After Hamas’ October 7 massacre of 1,200 innocent people, mostly civilians, both unions released statements that we consider to be flawed on factual, political and moral grounds,” said the opposing faculty statement. “These statements have angered and alienated a large portion of the members of both unions, as well as members of the larger Rutgers community. To maintain their claims to represent their memberships, we ask both unions to withdraw these statements.”
Calls to withdraw the statements have been ignored. The Jewish Link’s requests for comment from Todd Wolfson, full-time union president, and Bryan Sacks, adjunct union president, were not answered.
A copy of the responding statement appeared in the campus newspaper, the Daily Targum. In addition to Saltzman it was signed by David Greenberg, a professor in the departments of history and journalism and media studies on the New Brunswick campus and Martha Greenblatt, distinguished professor in the department of chemistry and chemical biology at New Brunswick.
Referring to JVP as “a radical anti-Israel group,” their statement said it took “the extreme position that Israel should no longer exist as a Jewish state” and “promotes one-sided propaganda to delegitimize Israel.”
JVP has long been an outlier within the Jewish community. It is described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a radical anti-Israel and anti-Zionist activist group that advocates for the boycott of Israel and eradication of Zionism” and whose “inflammatory ideas” often promote antisemitism.
The trio’s responding statement noted that the JVP’s observations about October 7 barely mentioned the atrocities committed by Hamas on innocent Israeli civilians, yet “falsely and outrageously” accused Israel by using “an age-old antisemitic trope” of blaming Israel for bringing the terrorist attacks on itself. It also failed to differentiate between targeting civilians and accidentally killing them in wartime.
Just as problematic was the “undemocratic” way it was adopted. Saltzman said the executive board unanimously approved the “abhorrent” JVP statement over the objections of a significant percentage of its membership to put forward its own anti-Zionist, antisemitic political agenda.
She said the union has its own Facebook discussion forum where she brought up the subject and was told “this is not a coffee klatch or conversation around a water cooler” and wasn’t the appropriate place to bring up the topic, which was receiving “significant pushback” from members.
“The next thing I knew the executive board sent us a formal statement that they were not going to take the national union’s statement, that we need something much stronger, so they adopted the Jewish Voice for Peace statement,” said Saltzman. “I wrote on Facebook it was undemocratic, that our membership was never consulted and that the statement did not represent anyone who is Jewish or many who were not Jewish. It was a statement that said unlike every other state in the world Israel didn’t have the right to exist. At that point I wrote I was ashamed and uncomfortable to be represented by this union so I quit.”
Likewise, the Jewish professors’ statement noted that “almost every single union member” who spoke at the Zoom meeting criticized the full-time union statement and urged the executive council either to discard it or to modify it significantly.
“They proposed specific revisions to address the shortcomings,” it read. “Executive committee leaders promised attendees that their criticisms would be taken into account. But, several days later, the executive committee issued a statement that was virtually unchanged from the controversial draft.”
It urged “for the sake of comity and to retain its claim to faithfully represent its members” union leadership should withdraw their statements.
Debra Rubin has had a long career in journalism writing for secular weekly and daily newspapers and Jewish publications. She most recently served as Middlesex/Monmouth bureau chief for the New Jersey Jewish News. She also worked with the media at several nonprofits, including serving as assistant public relations director of HIAS and assistant director of media relations at Yeshiva University.
