Tufts university’s Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ) member Max Price last week was issued a complaint seeking to have him removed from office for expressing Jewish identity. Attorneys from The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law (LDB) representing Price demanded Tufts university promptly intervene and halt the proceedings.
“Mr. Price has been subjected to anti-Semitic harassment targeting him based on his ethnic and ancestral Jewish identity,” Price’s lawyers wrote Tufts President Anthony Monaco, General Counsel Mary Jeka, and Provost Nadine Aubry. “This harassment reached a peak a week ago when Mr. Price was provided with a complaint filed by Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) seeking to have him removed from the TCUJ. SJP’s position would mean that Black students may not participate in student government discussions related to race, Catholic students may not evaluate student government resolutions related to religion, and Jewish students must be precluded from discussing anti-Semitism.”
The complaint follows a months-long campaign of intimidation, harassment, and discrimination against Price for speaking against SJP’s attempt to include a Deadly Exchange Campaign referendum on the student election ballot.
In the course of SJP’s referendum campaign, the group’s members repeatedly accused Price of bias, bullied and harassed him, and pressured him to recuse himself. Now they are threatening him with a disciplinary hearing and removal from office for no reason other than he has publicly expressed his Jewish identity.
As a result of SJP’s demands, Price was forced to sit through multiple hour-long interrogations by Tufts student government leadership about his personal beliefs and identity as a pro-Israel Jew. Even after the TCUJ determined that there was no evidence of bias and no need for Price to recuse himself, he was unlawfully silenced and placed on “mute” for the entire final Zoom meeting where TCUJ members considered the referendum. A Tufts Community Union Senate hearing to review SJP’s complaint against Price has been scheduled for February 28.
Members of the TCU Senate, which is set to preside over Price’s hearing, have made statements that included anti-Semitic tropes about money and power, indicated their explicit support for SJP and its anti-Semitic agenda, and demonstrated their personal bias against Price.
“As someone who has spoken out for racial justice and against police brutality, I was appalled SJP was attempting to spread blatantly baseless claims to the entire student body, that Israel and Jews are responsible for institutional racism and police brutality in the US,” Price stated. “As soon as I spoke up to correct the misinformation and the lies, I was targeted and marginalized, called a racist, a fascist, a Nazi, an enemy of progress, slandered in the student newspaper, told I had to recuse myself from my elected position, and, most recently, threatened with impeachment and removal from the student government.”
Deadly Exchange, launched by SJP Tufts in Spring 2018, blames Israel and its Jewish American supporters for fueling racist conduct in US law enforcement. The campaign seeks to link Israel to white supremacy and police brutality. By mischaracterizing the purpose and content of American-Israeli law enforcement exchange programs, the Deadly Exchange Campaign spreads the false notion that Jews are responsible for systemic racism in the US. The campaign utilizes anti-Semitic tropes associated with Jewish power and Jewish conspiracies and promotes a modern blood libel: the baseless claim that Jews and Israel are responsible for the tragic deaths by American officers of unarmed people of color.
“Harassing, marginalizing, demonizing, and excluding these Jewish students based on the Zionist components of their Jewish identity is just as unlawful and discriminatory as attacking a Jewish student for observing the Sabbath and keeping kosher,” the LDB attorneys wrote the Tufts officials. “It is imperative that the university take prompt and effective steps to protect Mr. Price by halting the upcoming disciplinary hearing and ending the harassment and discrimination that has infringed on Mr. Price’s freedom of speech, denied him due process, and deprived him of equal opportunity and equal access to university programs in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Tufts University’s stated institutional policies regarding freedom of speech, including academic freedom, as recently incorporated into regulations of the U.S. Department of Education.”
Regrettably, the Tufts administration dismissed the LDB letter.