A second Michigan instructor with a recommendation letter from student headed to Israel

The incidents expose vexed questions about free speech and the role of academics as colleges and universities become battlegrounds in the movement known as BDS – for boycott, divestment and sanctions.

Jake Secker is a 20-year-old junior from Great Neck, N.Y., majoring in economics and minoring in entrepreneurship. His father is Israeli, and Secker has made his travels to the nation he considers his "home away from home." This winter, a semester abroad at Tel Aviv University could fulfill that aspiration, he hopes.

As part of the application process, Secker sought a teaching assistant, known at Michigan as a graduate student instructor, or GSI.

"Hi Lucy!" He wrote Monday, Oct. 1, to his GSI from an introduction to political theory race from last year. "Hope you had a great summer!"

"I am in need of an academic letter that I would like to be greatly appreciated," he explained.

She replied the same day. "Totally! I'd be delighted, "wrote a teaching assistant to identified Lucy Peterson who, according to her Facebook profile, is a political theory student at the university.

According to an email provided by Secker, Peterson inquired: "What program are you applying to? Send along whatever information I need, and I'll let you know when I submit it. "

Secker thanked him for his study at Tel Aviv University. She then said that she could not write the reference, Secker said.

"I'm so sorry that I'm sorry to write your recommendation, but I'm sorry to be able to write it on your behalf," she explained. "Along with many other academics in the US and elsewhere, I have pledged myself to a boycott of Israeli institutions as a way of showing solidarity with Palestine."

She added: "Please know that this decision is not about a student or a person, and I would be happy to write a recommendation for you.

Peterson did not return early Tuesday inviting her to elaborate on her reasoning.

A teaching assistant at the University of Michigan is looking for a student after learning to study in Israel. (Provided by Jake Secker)

"I am very sorry, but I just scanned your first email a couple of weeks ago and missed out on a key detail," John Cheney-Lippold, a cultural studies professor, wrote to Ingber in early September, Tel Aviv University. "As you may know, many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel in support of Palestinians living in Palestine. This boycott includes writing letters of recommendation for students planning to study there. "

He would later clarify, in an interview with The Washington Post, that his position on the BDS, his commitment to boycott the movement.

BDS seeks the end of Israeli occupation of "all Arab lands," the full equality of Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel and "the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as stipulated in UN Resolution 194."

After Secker told a few friends about what had happened, the word got to Ingber, who reached out to commiserate.

"I'm friends with Abby, and I'd known what happened to her," Secker said. "I was completely in shock. I did not think it would happen again. "

The message from his teaching assistant did not sit well with Secker, who contacted a board member of Michigan Hillel, the Jewish religious and cultural society on campus. His complaint was then "kicked up to the executive director of Hillel, then to the Board of Regents," he said, referring to the university's governing body. "The president of the university is aware of it."

On Thursday, Secker received an email from Rosario Ceballo, Associate Dean for Social Science in Michigan's College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. "As an associate dean, part of my role is to help insure that our students receive the best possible academic support," wrote the dean, who is also a psychologist and women's studies professor.

Ceballo wrote: "Ceballo wrote about Ceballo wrote. "I take these concerns very seriously and have a first step, I hope that we can meet you so we can talk in person about what happened."

They put the next day, Secker said, to which point the dean offered to write the letter of recommendation herself. She also suggested that there were "ongoing talks" on the broader issue, he recalled, "and promised some sort of change."

But the student and his father, Ed Secker, said in interviews that they feared the university was trying to sweep the controversy under the rug.

The student's father said he was at first so angry that he weighed his soning out of the school. He reconsidered, as his wife reached out to the president's office, which put them in touch with the associate dean, who "offered to write any letter Jake wanted," he said.

Still, he thinks there should be "disciplinary action against the teachers."

"I do not think it's a First Amendment issue. The university has a fiduciary responsibility to students, "he said, equating the school to a corporation whose shareholders, students, are owed some returns.

The University of Cheney-Lippold, Michigan said it was "opposed to any boycott of Israeli institutions of higher education."

"Injecting personal politics into a decision regarding support for our students is an institution," said Kim Broekhuizen, a university spokeswoman.

Cheney-Lippold told The Post on Sept. 19 that he had been supportive, and that he had not been reprimanded, or even contacted, by the "upper echelons" of the university.

In explaining his decision, the cultural studies professor took a starkly different view of that of Secker and his father. These students are not entitled to pay tuition and to pay tuition, and that academics have the right to withhold references for any number of reasons – such as time or familiarity with the student. Controversy arises, he said, when instructors are honest about the way their political commitments shape their academic responsibilities.

"If a union asks me not to buy a certain producer, I would not support that," he said. "It's the same thing here. Following requests from the Palestinian and Jewish activists, I find the boycott against Israeli institutions.

Secker disagreed, arguing that a letter of recommendation should not be used as a political tool.

"It should only be about my merit as a student," he said. While he disagrees with the aims of BDS, the student says the moral stance of his instructor is beside the point. "It should not be a reason she changed her mind about the letter," he maintained.

Secker said he is interested in the support of the university, but is not satisfied with "just words." He is interested in "the issue of a professor of political science". be challenged on academic freedom grounds.

While he did not condemn his teacher's motives, Secker said, "I often think the BDS movement is anti-Semitic."

"It's not just hatred for Israel or about the mistreatment of Palestinians," he said. "A lot of times it stems from anti-Semitism."

BDS supporters have often sought to distinguish their opposition to the actions of the Israeli government from antagonism toward Jews. But in a moment of anxiety about rising anti-Semitism, that can prove difficult.

Feelings are especially raw in Ann Arbor, where controversy erupted last week after Emory Douglas, the minister of culture for the Black Panther Party in the 1960s and 70s, displayed at a reading read for University of Michigan art students that likened Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.

"Guilty of genocide," read black text on the face of the two men.

In a statement on Friday, the university defended the speaker series, which it said was "intentionally provocative," adding, "the school is clear with students about this."

"The school does not control or censor what speakers present," read the statement, which also included a reiteration of the university's policy on freedom of speech, "a bedrock principle of our academic community."

Academics, for their part, disagree sharply about the efficacy of BDS. One such disagreement unfolded in Dissent, the left-wing intellectual magazine, shortly after the 2013 vote by the American Studies Association.

Michael Zakim, a cultural historian at Tel Aviv University, arguing that the boycott would be undermined by "the Palestinian struggle" by "unwittingly supporting forces" and determined to delegitimize the humanism and internationalism of the Israeli university campuses. "He labeled as" inanity " Some of the means taken to "discredit the Israeli academic culture," such as the refusal to serve as an external reader to a dissertation.

Feisal G. Mohamed, then of the University of Illinois and the Graduate Center of the University of New York, responded, saying the boycott did not include each of the actions of Zakim. Still, he reasoned, "any and all must be used to end an occupation."

At Michigan, the board of directors of the university of Israel, after the student government passed a resolution to such a move.

BDS is not enough, Secker warned. If the university does not take further action to insulate its students from the political actions of their professors, he said, it could have a crisis on its hands.

"This is an epidemic that's starting to begin," he said. "Especially being someone who has an Israeli background, I took it personally. It really disturbed me. "

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