*********************************************************************************** This email contains links to a hosting company that is frequented by scammers. Please think before you click any links.
The Ohio State University will NEVER ask you for your account information by email. If you receive such a message, please report it to report-ph...@osu.edu NEVER reply to any email asking you for your account information or other personal details. For more information or to get help, contact the IT Service Desk by calling 614-688-HELP (4357). *********************************************************************************** Dear Fellow Hasafran Readers: On Friday, I submitted a statement to this discussion list on the candidacy of Emily Drabinski who is running for President of the American Library Association. When the post appeared, it was prefaced with a caution that I assume was automatically generated by OSU IT that warned that the e-mail I sent “contains links to a hosting company that is frequented by scammers.” Those were links, not e-mails that didn't ask for anyone's account information. There is absolutely no risk in replying to or commenting on the e-mail I sent. After all, the post was published in Hasafran. I also checked and read everything in the links, and the only thing “scammy” therein are the toxic messages in the content of some of the websites and documents. All the same, for those who deleted my post without reading it—and I certainly understand the caution one would take after seeing a warning like that enclosed in red asterisks that preceded my message—I am resending the updated communication below without the links. Unfortunately, this will make my revised post much longer, which is why I had included links in the original version: to keep the message as short as possible. If you contact me off list and want them, I can send you the links. On Thursday (January 27ᵗʰ), I issued an endorsement for Kelvin Watson for President of ALA. There are dozens of reasons to vote for Kelvin, a few of which I listed in my previous post, including support from others who know about his amazing accomplishments. I would be remiss, however, if I didn't also mention the “flip side” and mention some of the unsettling aspects of his opponent for the top leadership spot in ALA. All those who participated in the Zoom interview with Emily Drabinski on January 19, 2022 should have noticed that her candidacy is troubling. Below are some quotes from Ms. Drabinski herself in her writings as well as petitions, which she signed attacking Israel as an “apartheid” and “colonial” state; she also endorses not only BDS, but academic boycotts of Israel, Israeli scholars, and Israeli scholarship along with cultural exchanges. In “City University of New York Community Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” which Ms. Drabinski signed, she joins on to attacks Israel as “apartheid” and pledges to: Initiate, support, and amplify campaigns in solidarity with Palestinian calls for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid, at CUNY and in our wider communities. In particular, we echo the demands of the John Jay Student Letter to Demand BDS and Solidarity with Palestinian Resistance and stand with any and all student-led resolutions demanding CUNY’s immediate divestment from companies that aid in Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes... ...Demand that our individual campuses, and CUNY as a whole, endorse and support the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. CUNY SIGNATORIES: 201. Emily Drabinski, Staff, Graduate Center If you want to see more, please do a search for the following two websites (links removed here): “Jadaliyya - CUNY Community Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” echoing the above document's calls with Emily Drabinski's name on it as well. A similar statement, linked off of the sites above, can be found at “Palestine and Praxis: Open Letter and Call to Action - Palestine & Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom (weebly.com<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://weebly.com__;!!KGKeukY!hnLCQgtwbMNJ56bm8nEyYMaBS5-U5lxJIHy6Os5X8QW4mHjAvzDCp-yAKAphQVzcxFOVeNGi0wc6QY8$>),” Drabinski is also a signatory of “A call for editorial standards on Palestine/Israel” in #SayEthnicCleansing, which places the entire blame for the conflict in Israel and Palestinian Arab territories on the Jewish state with such messaging as “Don’t ‘both-sides’ a colonial power and the people resisting it.” Some pushback can be found in this Jewish Journal article on the periodical's website under the title, “At Least 50 CUNY Profs Resign from Union Following Anti-Israel Resolution” In addition, Emily Drabinski is the author of the following articles: “Teaching the Radical Catalog,” (see esp. pp. 2-3) and “Teaching Other Tongues” in Journal of Information Ethics 20(2):42-55 (see p.49, last 16 lines) While I certainly do not advocate censorship, this is not merely an issue of free speech, which I firmly believe in, but that ALA and librarianship as a profession are all about finding and presenting well-supported facts, not disseminating propaganda to bolster a specific political point-of-view or agenda. What is perhaps most disturbing about Emily Drabinski's candidacy is that she makes a point of claiming that she wants to steer clear of what pulls us apart and concentrate on what we have in common, what brings us together. Yet she proudly embraces and advances contentious resolutions such as those advocated by SRRT, the Social Responsibility Round Table in ALA, of which she is a member; these declarations concentrate only on what Israel does to the exclusion of all of the repressive regimes surrounding Israel and the very serious human rights violations of all other countries and terrorist groups. This kind of politicking not only doesn't bring people together, but is, in fact, the source of the very divisiveness Emily Drabinski claims that she wants to avoid. This strikes me as talking out of both sides of one's mouth. If you are an ALA member and/or know people who are, I urge you to vote for Kelvin Watson for ALA president and/or ask your friends, colleagues, and acquaintances in ALA to do the same. He is a person of great integrity who works with people to truly advance the mission of ALA and is a proven leader who brings people together, not drives them apart. Ballots will be sent out in March. If you're not yet an ALA member and have been thinking of joining, you have only until tomorrow, Monday, January 31ˢᵗ to join if you want to be eligible to vote in the upcoming ALA election. This is too important an election to miss. I apologize again for the length of this post, but I felt compelled to remove all the links because of the warning from the list's host, OSU. If you want to discuss this with me at greater length, please contact me off list. Thank you for reading all the way to this point! Elliot Elliot H. Gertel עלע־הערש גערטל / אליהו־צבי גרטל Irving M. Hermelin Curator Emeritus of Judaica The University of Michigan Ann Arbor, Michigan eger...@umich.edu<mailto:eger...@umich.edu>
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