The statement, which has been shared on Vassar's Google Apps for Education platform, called Israel an "apartheid" state that is guilty of "ethnic cleansing" and "settler colonialism."
Despite vilifying Israel for the defense system used during Operation Guardian of the Walls, when over 4000 rockets were fired into the country from the Gaza Strip, the statement made no mention of Hamas.
The petition released by ACF has called on the Vassar administration to issue a statement making clear that the “Vassar Community Stands with the Palestinians” statement is not endorsed by the college itself, and has requested that faculty engaging in such partisan activism do so on their own platform, not Vassar’s Google app.
In addition to the above demands, they have called on the college to release a statement similar to the one that it released in response to the recent surge in Asian hate crimes, one that acknowledges the alarming spike in antisemitic incidents across the country and reassures its Jewish students in the strongest possible terms that Vassar condemns all forms of antisemitism.
In response to the inflammatory statement issued by Vassar, AFC have said that the faculty members who endorsed it are "oblivious to the impact that such inflammatory rhetoric is having in the US and around the world.”