The elite Fieldston prep school in New York sponsored an"Israel-Palestine Day of Study." Although a few pro-Israel speakers were scattered throughout the day's panels, the featured speakers were Rashid Khalidi and Tony Judt, both of whom think Israel as the Jewish nation shouldn't exist.

. . . . the school administrators had given Judt and Khalidi veto power over who could share the stage with them. . . . the professors were concerned, he said, that a third speaker “might hinder their ability to have a productive discussion.”

Rabbi Avi Weiss, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, himself was nominated to be on the panel by Swartwout and others but was rejected by the planning committee for being “too much of a lightning rod,” wrote the Fieldston News. The rabbi was then part of a side panel on religion but he withdrew last Friday, telling The Jewish Week he felt “violated” and “duped” by the school.

That's rich. Yes, Weiss is a "lightning rod," but Khalidi and Judt aren't?

Meanwhile, in Andover, Massachusetts, Andover High School physics teacher Ron Harris has recuited students to canvas for the Somerville Divestment Project. SDP is dominated by extremists who defend Amadinejad's intention to destroy Israel, and its website defends Hamas and links to all the usual suspects. Harris has publically advocated these views.

School officials claim that Harris doesn't expound his political views in class, but the fact that he has organized a few high school students to go 20 miles from Andover to Somerville to ring doorbells, in support of such an agenda, is disturbing. If Harris were - for example - an advocate of white supremacy or murdering abortionists, there would be a hue and cry, and even those who defended his right to free speech and his right to share his views with students would be concerned that students were buying into his world view because they were vulnerable to suggestion.