JTS Tenants Protest Graduation
After Seminary Rejects Alternate Columbia Housing
by Vajra Kilgour

Calling the Jewish Theological Seminary’s attempt to forcibly displace 23 households a “racist attack on the community,” tenants of 515 and 521 West 122nd St. protested outside the seminary during graduation ceremonies May 21. Together with placards reading “Thou shalt not covet Thy neighbor’s house” and “Pharaoh Schorsch, Let Our People Stay,” the protesters displayed a large “Advanced Degree of Hypocrisy.” Ismar Schorsch is the chancellor of the seminary.

Last month, in response to a request from Community Board 9, Columbia University Executive Vice President Emily Lloyd offered alternative student housing to the seminary. The seminary refused the offer. This was the second offer of alternative housing the seminary has rejected; housing offered by the city was turned down nearly two years ago.

“The evictions can’t be about housing,” declared Mike Fleshman, a human-rights activist who lives in one of the buildings. “They’ve been offered alternate housing twice and turned it down. The seminary doesn’t want so many people of color near their campus, and they’re doing everything they can to drive them out.”

Last year, the tenants exposed a seminary policy of warning students to stay out of West Harlem, which it described as a “high-crime area”—more proof, according to Fleshman, of institutionalized racism at JTS. “It’s their Willie Horton ad,” he said. “They’ve been redlining the Harlem community for years, promoting an atmosphere of fear among their students and faculty.”

On May 25, the State Supreme Court’s appellate term ruled that many of the threatened tenants can appeal a court decision which stated that eviction notices sent by JTS attorneys were legally valid.