September 3, 2019
VIA EMAIL (carole.goldsmith@fresnocitycollege.edu)
Dr. Carole Goldsmith
President
Fresno City College
1101 E. University Ave.
Fresno, California 93741
Dear President Goldsmith,
I write to you on behalf of StandWithUs, an international, non-profit education organization supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism around the world. We are inspired by our love of Israel, our belief that education is the road to peace, and our commitment to stand up for Israel and the Jewish people when they are publicly attacked or misrepresented.
I am deeply concerned about your college’s apparent sponsorship of a blatantly antisemitic event, “Uncovered: Israel’s Occupation of Palestine,” featuring Alison Weir (“Weir”) taking place at Clovis Community College (“CCC”) on Wednesday, September 18, 2019. Weir notoriously spreads vicious bigotry and wild conspiracy theories about Jews and Israel, often resorting to dangerous antisemitic tropes in her rhetoric. Weir and her antisemitic organization, If Americans Knew, push the classic Blood Libel claim that some Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood in religious rituals, while also claiming that Israel steals and harvests human organs for profit. Weir promotes the conspiracy theory that the United States entered World War II to serve Zionists interests and that Israel tried to assassinate two former United State Presidents. She considers Israel’s 1948 founding as a modern day ethnic cleansing.
While I recognize Weir’s First Amendment right to speak at this event, I urge you to take all necessary steps to ensure that Fresno City College students, including Israeli and Jewish students, are treated as valuable members of the campus community, free from bigotry and discrimination, and with the full support of the administration. This includes, at a minimum, publicly and unambiguously distancing yourself from Weir’s presentation and removing yourself as a sponsor. Such hateful bigotry and antisemitism deserve to be condemned in the strongest possible terms, not promoted. Indeed, it is often silence that allows this type of hatred to grow deeper and stronger. Should you not withdraw support, you appear complicit in promoting antisemitism, an increasingly deadly form of racism.
We appreciate that CCC President Dr. Lori Bennett recently stated that “Clovis Community College does not endorse hate speech or anti-Semitic remarks.” Likewise, we commend Fresno State and Fresno Pacific for removing themselves from a list of apparent sponsors on the event’s Facebook page. I encourage you to take this crucial opportunity and follow through with an equally strong pledge to protect all students at Fresno City College from discrimination and hatred.
Sincerely,
Roz Rothstein
CEO and Co-Founder
StandWithUs
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