Wellesley News Editorial Board
On September 28, 2022, The Wellesley News editorial board endorsed the “Mapping Project,” an interactive map launched by BDS Boston that targets Jewish institutions in Massachusetts.
“We believe that the Mapping Project is providing a vital service,” The Wellesley News editorial board wrote. “Collecting data about these institutions, tracing their financial and political activity and publicizing this information is incredibly important.”
The Mapping Project essentially puts a target on the back of all Jews and their institutions in the Greater Boston area. It names 483 organizations and charities and ties them to 1,366 "objectionable" entities.
Organizations from synagogues to after-school programs are condemned for perpetrating a long list of “societal harms” and labeled “oppressors” for supporting “the colonization of Palestine.”
The Mapping Project is not shy about its goal: “To reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.”
In the same editorial, the editorial board of The Wellesley News threw its support behind the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and the Wellesley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. Both organizations have been denounced as virulently anti-Semitic. Both call for the destruction of the state of Israel.
The board also demanded that Wellesley’s administration “immediately withdraw any investments in entities based in Israel or those that support the apartheid regime.”
Wellesley President Paula A. Johnson condemned the editorial, specifically singling out the board’s endorsement of the Mapping Project.
“Claiming that Jewish people and organizations are responsible for a host of societal harms and calling for action against them is, by definition, anti-Semitism,” Johnson stated in a letter to the Wellesley community.
Johnson further said the project “poses a significant threat to the physical security of the Jewish community of Greater Boston, including neighbors and partners of the College.”
After significant backlash in the press, The Wellesley News editorial board issued a partial retraction of their support for the Mapping Project, saying,
“We intended to use the Mapping Project only as a source of information about Wellesley College and its affiliated institutions. We apologize for not clarifying the nuanced nature of the Project’s inclusion, and we recognize that the impact of our citation may have differed from its purpose. We did not and do not endorse The Mapping Project.”
In the same statement, the editorial board ironically doubled down on its endorsement of the BDS movement and Wellesley Students for Justice in Palestine while condemning anti-Semitism, “including the use of The Mapping Project for antisemitic rhetoric and actions.”
The Following Are Members of The Wellesley News Editorial Board:
