As a Christian and a former University of Virginia (UVA) undergrad, it pains me to say this: UVA doesn’t apply its non-discrimination rules evenly. It shields favored identity groups while leaving Jewish students and an Israeli dean exposed to open ethnic targeting. University President Scott Beardsley must end this selective application of the rules or confirm that Jewish and Israeli identity remain categories the University will not defend.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne (pictured above) became dean of the Darden School of Business on August 1. She is the first woman to hold the permanent post and replaced Beardsley who held that post before becoming President.
On August 13, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UVA posted a statement accusing her of endorsing and taking part in “genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.” The group circulated a petition to remove her. Her listed offense was service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
Joshua Hawkins, writing in The Cavalier Daily, put the petition in its true light: Grushka-Cockayne did not choose the IDF, and treating that service as a firing offense would close the faculty to nearly every person raised in Israel. Israeli law makes military service compulsory for most citizens. Refusal can bring a prison term of up to five years.
Grushka-Cockayne served as a junior officer from 1993 to 1996. Women were not legally permitted in most combat roles until 2000. A conscripted lieutenant in a non-combat unit did not set operational policy. Treating that service as a disqualification would bar nearly every Israeli-raised candidate from the faculty. That is an ethnicity test, not a professional standard.
Furthermore, in July, on its Instagram page SJP condemned a Darden faculty-and-alumni panel in Tel Aviv and demanded that the University “cancel this disgraceful event, and divest fully – economically, academically, and institutionally – from Israel.”
Antisemitism is not a new problem at UVA. An anonymous complainant in a filing with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on November 20, 2023 wrote:
As a recognized student group at the University of Virginia, Students for Justice in Palestine is eligible to receive funding from the public university. I am writing to you not just on my own behalf, but on behalf of the 1,600 other Jewish students on campus who are also feeling afraid, as the University takes no action to protect us.
On December 29, OCR wrote to then President James Ryan and opened Case No. 11-24-2096. The complaint alleged that the University failed to respond appropriately to harassment of students on the basis of national origin, including shared Jewish ancestry, during incidents that fall.
National data show the same upward trajectory of campus antisemitic incidents in recent years. Surveys found that large shares of Jewish students who reported incidents believed their schools failed to investigate properly. ADL recorded 1,694 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in 2024, an 84 percent increase from 2023.
Thomas Jefferson, who founded the University of Virginia in 1819, embraced Unitarian and Deist principles but still considered himself a Christian. In the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, drafted by Jefferson in 1777 and passed in 1786, he declared that civil government has no power “to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency.” No one, he wrote, shall “suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief.” The state had no business ranking consciences. It’s worth asking what he’d make of the university he founded now shielding some identities while leaving others unprotected.
SJP is not asking the University to weigh Grushka-Cockayne’s teaching, scholarship, or administration of Darden. It is asking the University to remove her for a conscripted service shared by most of her countrymen, and dressing that demand up as a charge of genocide. Exodus 20:16 puts it plainly: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (NASB).
Leviticus 19:15 instructs judges not to favor the poor or defer to the great, but to judge one’s neighbor fairly (NASB). The officials of Babylon could find no fault in Daniel except in connection with the law of his God (Daniel 6:5). They wrote a rule built to trap him in his own identity, then demanded the penalty. This petition works the same way. It proves no professional offense. It just treats Israeli birth and mandatory service as the offense itself.
Grushka-Cockayne is a lawfully appointed officer of the University. She holds her post under the same employment rules that govern every other dean. A university that applies those rules by political fashion fails that command. A church that looks away because the target is Jewish fails it too.
Additional Resources:
SJP at UVA Instagram post demanding the dean’s resignation
Hawkins column, The Cavalier Daily
OCR Title VI letter opening Case No. 11-24-2096
ADL recorded 1,694 antisemitic incidents on college campuses in 2024, an 84 percent increase from 2023.
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