A day before his scheduled speech Thursday, April 15, at San Francisco State University, Natan Sharansky canceled his talk after the college denied him permission to bring his armed guards onto campus. And as angry calls flooded into S.F. Hillel, the parties responsible for bringing the Israeli minister to SFSU scrambled to deflect the blame.
Sharansky and other decision-makers in the Israeli government nixed the speech after it became apparent by midweek that SFSU, citing a California State University-wide policy, would not allow armed foreign nationals onto the campus to guard the cabinet minister and prominent former Soviet dissident.
Paul Cohen, the director of campus strategic services for Hillel in Northern California, said he and S.F. Hillel Director Seth Brysk personally informed both the Israeli government and Caravan for Democracy, the co-sponsor of Sharanksy’s Bay Area tour, of the CSU system’s firearms policy a full six weeks ago.
Cohen said he and Brysk “repeatedly” informed the tour organizers that, in order for the policy to be waived, the matter would have to be taken up with the State Department.
It is unclear, however, if the State Department was ever contacted.
Mara Suskauer, director of the Jewish National Fund’s college activist department (Caravan for Democracy is a JNF project), said the Israeli Consulate was the only one responsible for negotiating with SFSU regarding Sharansky’s on-campus safety.
Vice Consul Omer Caspi declined to discuss whether the State Department was notified. He would only say: “Security services in Israel and the [SFSU] administration tried to find an agreement on the level of security for the visit of Mr. Sharansky on campus. We failed to do so. So, in good spirit, we decided to cancel the event.”
Stanford and U.C. Berkeley do not have a policy as restrictive as the CSU system’s regarding armed foreign nationals.
At Stanford, Caspi noted, “We reached an agreement about the level of security.” At U.C. Berkeley, however, “There was not enough time to do it.” Sharansky still managed to deliver a speech to more than 130 students in Berkeley’s political science department, so “you could call it public,” Caspi said.
In addition to Stanford and Berkeley, Sharansky appeared in smaller settings throughout SFSU — without his own guards — and met with faculty and administration, including school president Robert Corrigan.
Cohen said that when he and Brysk learned Wednesday, April 14, that Sharansky had canceled his appearance at SFSU’s 300-seat Knuth Hall the day before he was slated to deliver it, “we were shocked.
“We don’t want to start pointing fingers and placing the blame. But we don’t feel we should bear the burden. The university was real clear about its policy and they have a right to set those policies.”
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