A Yale pro-Israel student group set up a vigil of photographs and biographies for victims of a northern Israel car bombing on Oct. 22 -- the following morning the members found their memorial destroyed, their pictures removed and other objects broken.
Muslim students at the University of California, Berkeley, are fearful because they have received threats of violence and death. As a result, they have created an escort system for themselves in which Muslim students walk in groups.
While tensions flare and violence escalates in the Middle East, college students nationwide are assuming a large role in the debate -- and as a result, tension on campuses is increasing. But with numerous acts of violence hitting campuses nationwide, Penn has remained peaceful.
"We are very grateful here at Penn that discussion hasn't turned into an outright anti-Semitic debate," says Penn Pro-Israel Activism Committee President Jill Berkin.
"Debates at Penn have tried to maintain themselves in a political background, as it should be," she adds. "The debate could encourage some anti-Semitic segments of the community to become more vocal, but nothing has happened, which is really great."
Annenberg graduate student Sasha Costanza-Chock is an active promoter of Palestinian rights. He agrees that, at Penn, students have engaged in civil debate.
"We have had really good intellectual talks and a legitimate discussion," he says.
But this is not the case at some other schools. At Santa Barbara City College last September, two students assaulted a Middle Eastern student after he failed to give them directions. And death threats to Middle Eastern students were found inscribed in male bathrooms on campus.
A scheduled visit from former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Concordia College in Montreal, Canada, was cancelled when students gathered on Sept. 9 to protest his visit. The rally turned violent as protesters broke windows and blocked the building where Netanyahu planned to speak.
In May, a pro-Israel rally organized by the San Francisco State University Hillel ended in police intervention when a pro-Palestinian group came to mount a counter-protest. The two student groups exchanged violent threats and ethnic slurs, and police were called to quell the situation.
While most schools have not reported these kinds of incidents, one issue is becoming sharply divisive at Penn and other instutions -- divestment.
The idea of divestment stems from a policy used to protest apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s. During that time, many universities halted financial involvement with corporations that conducted business with South Africa.
Many believe that universities should use their financial leverage to protest Israeli policy, while others say such action is an undue attack on Israel.
Students for Justice in Palestine is a new student group formed to encourage change in Israeli policy by urging universities to divest from the nation. SJP originated at Berkeley and is expanding its campaign at colleges around the United States.
In April, students at more than 30 schools, including Columbia and Georgetown universities, the University of Massachussetts and Berkeley, participated in a national campaign promoting divestment. The "day of action" was one of the first national movements to bring attention to the divestment debate.
Police came to patrol the rally and arrested 78 protesters for trespassing. Of the 78, six were additionally charged with resisting arrest.
At Penn, the divestment debate has been heated but civil, according to student leaders.
"Both sides of the divestment campaign here at Penn are being very professional in their interests," Hillel spokeswoman Jen Bolson says.
But not all divestment discussions at Penn have been without disruption.
A founding member of the divestment campaign, Costanza-Chock says that at a recent discussion advocating divestment, a protester interrupted the talk by running through the room, yelling incoherently.
These disruptions, however, were not from campus student groups, but from the Philadelphia chapter of the Zionist Organization of America, Costanza-Chock claims.
Penn students, faculty, alumni and staff have formed a petition urging the divestment of funds from arms corporations that are involved with Israel. When renowned Massachussetts Institute of Technology linguist Noam Chomsky gave a speech at Penn on Oct. 3, he became the first Penn alumnus to sign the petition. Now it has been signed by over 200 faculty, staff, students, alumni and community members.
However, there is also an active group at Penn that opposes divestment -- the Penn Pro-Israel Activism Committee has been circulating a petition against divestment. Currently, the petition has more than 8,000 signatures from students, faculty, staff, alumni and community residents.
University President Judith Rodin says Penn students are engaging in a civil debate, in which each side expresses opinions openly and without fear of violence. For instance, a Nov. 5 divestment debate sponsored by PennForum and Amnesty International permitted peaceful, engaged debate.
And Rodin hopes the University will continue to foster debate.
"It is my job as president to make sure that here at Penn we have the kind of peaceful and civil discourse in which students acquire the critical skills to resist prejudice," she said, adding, "I don't believe constructive debate ought to be shut down."
Other Penn administrators, such as Middle East Center Associate Director for Development Nubar Hovesepian, say that debate at Penn has been stifled because many fear being perceived as anti-Semitic.
"Part of the problem with the issue is that it immediately raises a sort of barrier where no discourse can take place," he says. "If you are critical of Israel in any way, shape or form, you risk being labeled as anti-Semitic and therefore dismissed."
But he still thinks students should engage in discussions, and admits that violence may follow such attempts.
"It is not beyond our students to engage in violence, so I will reserve judgement on whether it will occur," he says. "But I trust that students will engage in debate and understand that debate means the exchange of words, and it stops there."
Administrators across higher education have diverging yet passionate views on the issue of divestment.
One vocal administrator is Harvard University President Lawrence Summers. In a speech to students and faculty on Sept. 17, he made his views clear.
Summers characterized the divestment campaign as "anti-Semitic in effect, if not in intent."
"Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have traditionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists," Summers said, "profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities."
Like Harvard, Penn has not divested funds from Israel.
While Rodin would not comment on Summers' speech, she says she opposes divestment.
She calls divestment "much too blunt an instrument for influencing behavior except under extreme cases."
Summers' speech drew heightened attention to the way in which college administrators deal with divestment on their campuses.
On Oct. 7, The American Jewish Committee published an advertisement condemning anti-Jewish activity on college campuses. It was published in The New York Times and signed by more than 300 college leaders, including Brown President Ruth Simmons and Emory University President William Chace, who pledged to keep their campuses "intimidation free."
Rodin opted not to sign the AJ Committee petition -- she said in the Penn Almanac that the petition was unbalanced.
The statement from the AJ Committee indicated that Jewish college students have recently been targets of anti-Semitic threats.
"We are concerned that recent examples of classroom and on-campus debate have crossed the line into intimidation and hatred," the AJ Committee wrote in the Times.
But not all college campuses are faced with intimidation.
Princeton University students have maintained the divestment debate in a political frame, and the campus has not been ridden with violence.
Princeton Divestment is a campus group that avidly campaigns to end university investments in companies linked to Israel. The group has sponsored 11 advertisements in the campus newspaper, The Daily Princetonian.
Rabbi James Diamond, the director of Princeton's Center for Jewish Life attributes the lack of violence on campus to numbers.
"We are a smaller school and so the numbers of international students here are smaller," Diamond says. "Princeton is an ethos of civility -- that doesn't mean that everybody agrees, though."
Rodin agrees that Penn has followed a path similar to Princeton, but for different reasons.
She gives "credit to student leaders in these various organizations who understand their role as Penn students and their commitment to our broader community.
"They have agreed as members of the Penn community to respond to one another's rights to have [opinions] and to express them without fear."
