Officials at Marquette University, a Jesuit university in Milwaukee, Wisconsin are distancing themselves from earlier support of last week’s Israel Apartheid Week activities on the campus. Marquette is one of several American institutions where the anti-Israel event is held. Usually it is a student sponsored event, but this year Marquette’s administration initially played a role in sponsoring the event.

In late February, The Marquette Warrior, an blog independent of the university, republished an e-mail written by John Janulis, an employee of the university’s Office of Student Development. The e-mail was sent to the university’s political science department, announcing a “series of programs focusing on Israeli apartheid and Palestinian awareness.”

Students for Justice in Palestine (a registered MU student organization), Intercultural Engagement in the Office of Student Development, Marquette University Student Government, and the Office of International Education will be having the following speakers on campus for a series of programs to raise awareness about Israeli apartheid and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Last week, as the program was getting underway, The Marquette Warrior published a followup:

We queried Vice President for Student Affairs Chris Miller about this, and he responded “Student Development is not sponsoring the event. It is purely student sponsored.”

Terence Miller, of the Office of International Education, was not immediately available for comment. But it appears that they t00 have withdrawn their sponsorship.

A different blog, Watchdog.org, got a response from Terence Miller stating that his office was not sponsoring the event. Rather, its “‘only involvement was sponsoring the travel of Archbishop Theodosius Hanna of Sebastia,’ a featured speaker of the program.”

Archbishop Hanna is a virulently anti-Israel cleric. He is also a vocal supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and claimed last year that those “who bear weapons against the Syrian Army and the Syrian people, they all are just mere pawns that serve Israel and its plan to divide and conquer the control above the Arab region.”

As the death toll from Syria’s civil war has reportedly passed 150,000, it’s surprising that an academic institution would sponsor a supporter of the regime.

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