Hillel Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Jewish Federation issue the following statement in response to University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone’s apology:
Milwaukee Jewish Federation and Hillel Milwaukee are glad that the chancellor and university acknowledge that antisemitism is an institutional problem at UWM that needs to be addressed. We look forward to working with the chancellor to change the experience for Jewish students now and in the future.
We remain disappointed that the pro-Hamas propaganda included in the university’s original statement was not retracted. A university is a place of inquiry, learning, facts, and data where students should be at the center. It should not be a place where an administration works to appease lawlessness by spreading misinformation rather than enforcing conduct codes and failing to correct errors of fact.
To speak about the impact of the war without acknowledging how it started – with Hamas murdering over 1200 people and kidnapping over 200 in the worst terrorist attack against Jews since the Holocaust – is unacceptable. To not acknowledge that the Hamas charter includes the desire to kill all Jews and end the right of Israel to exist as the Jewish homeland is unacceptable. To demand statements supporting a ceasefire without including in the same breath a demand for the release of the hostages is unacceptable.
When the response from the protestors to the chancellor’s second statement was to boldly claim “antisemitism is the new McCarthyism,” they have ignored the substantiated facts that Jewish students and faculty have been in verbal and physically threatening situations on campus simply because of their identity as Jews. In essence, they are trying to erase what has happened to the Jewish students as if it never happened. This is the magnitude of the problem at UWM, and a statement is an intent to change things, but it’s not yet a plan.