Marquette to Sponsor Anti-Israel Program

In the mailbox of Political Science faculty:

Dear Political Science faculty and staff:

My name is John Janulis and I work in the Office of Student Development-Intercultural Engagement. I wanted to apprise you of a series of programs focusing on Israeli apartheid and Palestinian awareness that will be happening on Marquette’s campus between March 24 and March 28.

Students for Justice in Palestine (a registered MU student organization), Intercultural Engagement in the Office of Student Development, Marquette University Student Government, and the Office of International Education will be having the following speakers on campus for a series of programs to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Details are still emerging regarding times/locations for the events, but a tentative outline is below. We recently finalized funding for these events early this week, so I will have more information regarding times, locations, and topics by this afternoon. We will have publicity/promotion materials emailed to you by the end of the week if you would like, as well.

Tuesday, March 25:
Film screening of either The Stones Cry Out (http://www.thestonescryoutmovie.com/) or Jerusalem: the East Side Story (http://electronicintifada.net/content/film-review-jerusalem-east-side-story/3528).

Wednesday, March 26:

Soup with Substance featuring His Eminence Archbishop Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia .
12:00pm, AMU 157

Keynote address featuring His Eminence Archbishop Theodosios (Hanna) of Sebastia.

6:00pm (tentative), Cudahy 001 (tentative)

Thursday, March 27:

Moderated panel discussion featuring:

Rabbi Brant Rosen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brant_Rosen)
Max Blumenthal (http://maxblumenthal.com/about/)
Dr. Osama Abu Irshaid (http://conference.ampalestine.org/index.php/speakers/26-osama-abu-irshaid)
Kathy Kelly (http://vcnv.org/speaker-bio/kathy-kelly)
Time/location TBD.

Thanks and please feel free to contact me with any questions.

John Janulis, M.Ed.
Coordinator for Intercultural Engagement
Office of Student Development, AMU 121
Marquette University
P: 414.288.3214

Perhaps, if Palestinian or Muslim students want to hold a program taking a particular position on the Arab/Israeli conflict, they should be allowed to. Free speech on campus, and so on.

But this event is sponsored by Marquette University Student Government, and the Office of International Education.

Further, John Janulis, a Marquette official, is personally promoting this event.

Marquette officially sponsoring such an absurdly one-sided, propagandistic event is hard to justify.

It seems that people in certain Marquette offices don’t even understand that the phrase “Israeli apartheid” is anything but a simple, uncontroversial statement of fact.

It seems that what we have here is the narrow, parochial political correctness that has raised its head before, coming from the centers of political correctness on campus.

John Janulis, reached by the Marquette Warrior, was not able to comment immediately for the record.

[Update]

In response to our inquiry, we got this e-mail from a Student Government officer:

Regarding the Israeli Apartheid Week Program, the Students for Justice in Palestine went through the Student Organization Funding Process. The process allows for student organizations looking to plan events on and off campus a way to fund things they might not typically have the budget for. This process is open to all student organizations, and their application was approved by the Student Organization Funding committee as well as Senate as a whole.

Hope this answers your question, feel free to reach out with other questions,

Tyler Tucky

Note that if it is the policy of MUSG to fund controversial events proposed by student organizations, and if this policy is applied in a viewpoint neutral way, we have no beef with student government.

That still doesn’t get the Marquette offices and Marquette officials who endorsed this program off the hook, however.