§                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Strengthen the cause of higher education for the public good;

§                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Promote and maintain the standards and ideals of the profession;

§                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Provide a democratic voice for academic employees;

§                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Provide legislative advocacy;

Maintain collective bargaining agreements covering salaries, working conditions, and other items and conditions of employment.

But the CFA has now reached far beyond this mandate. Its ad hoc Peace and Justice Committee introduced a resolution, “CFA Call for a Halt to Violence Against All Civilians in Palestine and Israel,” and the 14 member CFA Board of Directors adopted the Resolution on Feb. 7^th.  The general membership cannot vote on the Resolution.

The Peace and Justice Committee has passed only one other resolution on international affairs, a 2003 scathing indictment against the U.S. War on Terror and war in Iraq.

The Resolution

·        It implicitly lays all blame on Israel, focuses only on the suffering of Gaza’s civilians and  school children but never mentions the suffering of Israeli school children.

·        It is silent about how Hamas abuses schools to store weapons, fire rockets, teach hate, and suppress freedom of thought.

·        It does not acknowledge Hamas’s existence, thousands of rocket attacks or its genocidal goals.

·        It falsely charges that Israel has prevented delivery of medical care and humanitarian supplies

·         Its narrow-minded focus ignores the role of Iran, Syria, and other dangerous forces in the region.

·         It draws a moral equivalence between Israel’s acts of self-defense and Hamas’s aggressive, incessant terrorism against Israeli civilians.

·        It calls for an end to violence, but only makes demands on Israel.  It declares that Israel should open its borders, presumably even to potential terrorists, but it never calls on Egypt to open its borders or on Hamas to end its rocket attacks and incitement, and to return the kidnapped Israeli soldier who is held incommunicado without even the Red Cross allowed to see him. 

·        It claims that the U.S. has not been an honest peace broker because it has hasn’t supported Palestinians enough, ignoring all that Israel and the U.S. have done to establish a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel.

·        The CFA’s concern about education is a transparent effort to justify making political pronouncements that do not fall in its mandate. If the CFA were truly concerned about education in the Middle East, it would be focusing on Darfur, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other countries where war, dictatorial rule, imprisonment of student protestors, gender apartheid, censorship, and suppression of free thought are the norm.

·        Where was the CFA’s “Peace and Justice Committee” when Hamas and other terrorist groups intentionally fired rocket barrages when Israeli students were on their way to school? In Sept. 2007, Gaza’s terrorists said that the barrage was a “present” for the children’s first day of school, Where was this Committee when Israeli children in Sderot had to spend hours of their school day in bomb shelters? Where was the Committee when Israel had to close schools in its southern communities because they were targeted by Hamas rockets? 

More disturbing, the Resolution calls for ongoing “educational programs and speakers” to spread this false and hostile narrative to all CFA members.

This is a dangerous development because the CFA has authority and reaches all the librarians and faculty in the California State University system.

Most disturbing, the resolution is anti-education.  CFA’s official endorsement and dissemination of biased views is the antithesis of educational values of accuracy and the free flow of ideas.  The resolution compromises the right of Cal State faculty and students to learn the facts, place them in a broader regional context, and form their own opinions about a controversial issue.

Key Points for Your Letter

·        The resolution ignores context, distorts facts, and repeats Hamas’s unverified accusations. If this is an example of Cal State faculty’s standards, then the public cannot feel confidence in the quality of Cal State University’s education.

·        The Resolution’s moral equivalence between Israel’s defensive actions and Hamas’ aggression, and its silence about the impact of Gaza’s incessant rocket attacks on Israeli children, suggests that the Cal State faculty has lost its moral compass and is unqualified to teach students.

·        The resolution is anti-education.  CFA’s official endorsement and dissemination of biased views is the antithesis of educational values of accuracy and the free flow of ideas.