Rutgers University administrators failed to address concerns of on-campus antisemitism months before anti-Israel protests began at the school, according to two New Jersey lawmakers.
U.S. Reps. Donald Norcross, D-N.J., and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., sent a letter to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway saying the university had "largely ignored" a December request from a group of Jewish faculty members who asked Rutgers administrators for several protections and other requests on campus.
Meanwhile, pro-Palestinian student protesters got concessions from Rutgers last week after a three-day encampment, with university administrators agreeing to meet many of their demands, NJ.com reported.
The concessions included agreeing to conduct cultural training and setting up an Arab cultural center, Holloway said, NorthJersey.com reported.
The faculty members' request came about two months after Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and massacred more than 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 others hostages.
"As a Jewish faculty member said, 'We played nice and got little; SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] broke every rule in the book and got rewarded with amnesty,'" Norcross and Gottheimer wrote in their letter.
The lawmakers said they "fear that the administration's accession to troublesome demands made by protesters failed to adequately take into account the perspectives and voices of members of the Jewish community at Rutgers."
"Furthermore, we are concerned that Rutgers appears to have incentivized people to act in a lawless and threatening manner by appeasing the demands of violent and hateful agitators while ignoring an analogous set of requests made peacefully to the University," they added.
In the letter, Norcross and Gottheimer said members of Rutgers' Jewish faculty, administrators and staff requested, among other things, the creation of a university-wide Committee on Antisemitism and the Jewish Experience, more work to combat antisemitism on campus, and a full accounting of antisemitic incidents at Rutgers.
Democrat Gov. Phil Murphy on Tuesday also questioned whether Rutgers had adequately considered the requests of Jewish students.
"If you’re going to sit down with one group of students," Murphy said, NJ.com reported, "what about the Jewish students who gave a set of demands back in December? You owe everybody their seat at the table."