Anti-israel Editorial in Student Paper Denounced by Its Editor

A vitriolic anti-Israel editorial in the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, denouncing plans for an exchange relationship between the university and the University of Haifa, has been assailed by the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, Dan Ulrich, as “just stupid” and one that “does not make any sense.”

The editorial, written by Tom Mauer, the newspaper’s opinion editor, who is described as a New Left partisan and who has written similar editorials in the past, asserted that the Haifa University was part of “a broad system, Zionist, that, with the aid of powerful Western imperialism such as the United States, established an exclusivist state in Palestine over the bodies of and through the removal of the indigenous population.”

Ulrich, in an interview with the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, also said that the editorial had drawn a quick and angry response on campus and had resulted in a change of policy on the newspaper. He said the editorial was meant more as personal opinion and that such views, when printed in the future, will be clearly labeled as such.

In a letter to his newspaper, Ulrich added that “whatever one’s feelings are toward the Zionist movement, or toward the justice or injustice of the creation of the Jewish State, the implied assumption that a university within the Jewish State is a supporter of any particular ideology is ridiculous.” Chancellor Werner Baum, reacting to the editorial when it was published, said it would have no effect on the plans for the exchange relationship with the Haifa school.