Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Monday sent a letter to the University of Michigan president over campus incidents that he described as displaying a "vitriolic hatred against the Jewish state."
Bennett admonished university President Mark Schlissel over a lecture last week at the Ann Arbor school. In it, artist Emory Douglas shared his work, including a collage of side-by-side images of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Adolf Hitler and the phrase "guilty of genocide" across their faces.
"The time has come for you, as head of the university, to take a strong stand against what has clearly become a trend of vitriolic hatred against the Jewish state on your campus," Bennett wrote to Schlissel.
School officials declined to comment on the letter but said in a statement that, regarding the Penny Stamps Speaker Series, in which Douglas was featured, the "school does not control or censor what speakers present."
They said the program is "intentionally provocative," and that the school makes this clear to students.
Douglas was a long-time artist for the Black Panthers and much of the artwork highlighted during his lecture drew on themes of domestic racial and social injustice and oppression. Some of the works featured images and messages supportive of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel.
The BDS movement's supporters say that in urging businesses, artists and universities to sever ties with Israel, they are using nonviolent means to resist what they feel are Israel's unjust policies toward Palestinians. Israeli officials say the movement's real aim is to delegitimize or destroy the Jewish state.
Bennett's letter also criticized a Michigan professor's recent decision not to recommend a student for a study program in Israel, though the school has said it opposes boycotts of Israeli higher education institutions.
The Washington Post reported Tuesday that another instructor declined to recommend a second student who was applying for a study-abroad program in Israel. The teaching assistant said her decision wasn't personal, but was born of a pledge to "boycott Israeli institutions as a way of showing solidarity with Palestine."
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said he could not comment on the situation "because of federal student privacy laws."
