[News] Women's studies professor harassed by Israel-backed group

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/womens-studies-professor-harassed-israel-backed-group 



  Women's studies professor harassed by Israel-backed group

Charlotte Silver 
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/charlotte-silver>15 September 2016

A professor of women’s and gender studies at the State University of New 
York at Plattsburgh is the target of a new campaign that she says 
threatens 
<http://mesana.org/committees/academic-freedom/intervention/letters-north-america.html> 
academic freedom.

Simona Sharoni, who has written extensively on gender and the situation 
in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, says the harassment 
campaign was triggered after she gave an interview in the spring to the 
/The Establishment/ 
<http://www.theestablishment.co/2016/04/13/why-feminists-should-care-about-the-palestine-israeli-conflict/>, 
a publication funded and run by women with the aim of creating more 
diverse media.

In the interview, Sharoni expands on the subject of her current 
research: the relevance of the international boycott, divestment and 
sanctions movement (BDS) <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/bds> to 
transnational feminism <https://electronicintifada.net/tags/feminism>, 
both concentrations of her own activism.

She highlights parallels between Palestinian victims of Israeli violence 
and victims of sexual assault.

“Power is made invisible,” she says. “Focus is placed on the 
relationship, not on the system.”

Following the publication of the article in April, an outpouring of 
tweets and emails were sent to her, some threatening violence according 
to Sharoni.

Several months later, on 6 September, Sharoni says she was informed by a 
school administrator that an individual had made five requests under New 
York’s Freedom of Information Law asking for records on her hiring, 
employment history and participation in academic conferences.

According to Sharoni, Sean Brian Dermody, assistant to the vice 
president for administration and director of management services at SUNY 
Plattsburgh, asked Sharoni to help with the request by locating the 
records and turning them over.

The next day, Sharoni says, Dermody sent a follow-up email asking her to 
give him all correspondence in her possession related to her hiring. 
Sharoni began working at SUNY Plattsburgh in 2007. She became a 
professor in 2010.

In a subsequent communication, Sharoni says Dermody told her that the 
first individual to have made requests is Debra Glazer, who identified 
herself as a part of Stand With Us 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/standwithus>, an Israel advocacy 
group that has received funding from the Israeli government.

The group is behind a number of campaigns targeting activists and 
scholars who work with the Palestine solidarity community in the United 
States.

Sharoni says Dermody also told her that a second person, Jonathan 
Slosser, made an additional five information requests.

In the latest update, Sharoni says she was informed that a request was 
made to disclose all of her travel authorizations and records of what 
she did and who paid for it.


    Intimidation

On Monday, the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/mesa> wrote a letter 
<http://mesana.org/committees/academic-freedom/intervention/letters-north-america.html> 
to SUNY Plattsburgh’s president, provost and dean in support of Sharoni.

“It appears to us that these [Freedom of Information Law] requests are 
part of the continuing campaign to harass and intimidate Professor 
Sharoni because she has expressed certain political views,” MESA 
president Beth Baron and executive director Amy W. Newhall state.

Sharoni is a member of MESA, which has no formal position on BDS.

“We also believe that SUNY Plattsburgh has a clear responsibility to 
defend Professor Sharoni and all of its other employees from threat and 
intimidation, in keeping with the constitutionally protected right of 
free speech and with the principles of academic freedom,” the letter adds.

It also advises university officials to “exercise extreme caution and 
responsible judgment in reviewing and approving [Freedom of Information 
Law] requests for records pertaining to Professor Sharoni, so as not to 
be complicit in furthering the campaign of harassment being waged 
against her.”

Ken Knelly, a spokesperson for the university, stressed to The 
Electronic Intifada that the administration must follow the law. “We are 
subject to the New York State Freedom of Information Law,” which he says 
was created to ensure that the government and its institutions are 
responsive to the public. “The law is based on a presumption of access.”

In response to concerns that the requests may be part of a campaign of 
intimidation and harassment, as Sharoni and MESA argue, Knelly said the 
school will review the requests. “Based on the content of individual 
records requested, we can restrict access if exemptions apply in 
accordance with state law.”

“We need to follow the law,” he said.

Bob Freeman, executive director of New York’s Committee on Open 
Government, told The Electronic Intifada that according to precedent 
dating back to the beginning of the Freedom of Information Law, public 
records are accessible to anyone without regard to the nature of their 
interest.

Freeman noted that a request can only be denied if it meets the standard 
of an “unwarranted invasion of privacy.” He remarked that if every 
government employee could protest that a Freedom of Information request 
was intended to intimidate them, then not many requests would be granted.

But Sharoni and MESA are not alone in believing that faculty members 
should be protected from what could be chilling and frivolous open 
records requests.

In 2012, a joint task force on academic freedom at the University of 
California, Los Angeles published a Statement on the Principles of 
Scholarly Research and Public Records Requests 
<https://www.apo.ucla.edu/policies-forms/academic-freedom>, in response 
to what it calls a “great concern that faculty at public universities 
throughout the country are increasingly the objects of requests through 
state and federal public records acts for emails, notes, drafts and 
other documents.”

“These requests have increasingly been used for political purposes or to 
intimidate faculty working on controversial issues,” it states.

The task force concludes by arguing for a distinction between academic 
public institutions and other government bodies: “The academic 
enterprise is intrinsically different from other enterprises conducted 
for the benefit of the public. Its product, /knowledge/, is intangible, 
yet it informs all of society in countless tangible ways, including 
technology, medical care, ecology and art. Academia can only make these 
tremendous contributions to the quality of our lives if it operates 
according to the standards that /have/ ensured its freedom from bias and 
its unwavering devotion to truth, whatever that truth may be.”

Palestine Legal told The Electronic Intifada that the information 
requests were part of a campaign against Sharoni based on her support 
for Palestinian rights and BDS, and “must be recognized as an 
intimidation tactic.”

“The school has a legal obligation to respond to [Freedom of Information 
Law] requests,” the legal advocacy group added, “but it also has an 
obligation to prevent the ‘unwarranted invasion of personal privacy’ of 
its employees, including by disclosing their employment histories.”

Palestine Legal said the university must “carefully consider the request 
against Sharoni’s privacy rights, especially given the clear intent of 
the [information request] to damage her reputation and employment.”


    Alarming trend

Following the publication of MESA’s letter, SUNY Plattsburgh President 
John Ettling sent a campus-wide email on 14 September affirming the 
school’s commitment to principles of free speech and academic freedom.

Though Ettling did not refer to Sharoni or any specific issue, he 
emphasized the need to protect these principles in the case of unpopular 
positions.

“Consistent with regulations of the SUNY Board of Trustees, the College 
seeks to encourage and preserve freedom of expression and inquiry within 
the entire college community,” Ettling said.

“Some of these expressions may contradict widely held or popular values, 
theories and beliefs. We have a special commitment to protect these 
expressions and should not attempt to repress a particular view because 
it is considered morally or personally offensive to members of the 
college community or the general public.”

But Sharoni, who says she hopes that the administrators stand by the 
president’s statement and do not release the requested information, 
rejects the idea that her speech has been controversial.

“There is nothing controversial or radical about advocating justice for 
Palestinians or supporting BDS,” she told The Electronic Intifada. 
Sharoni noted that her hiring, promotion and tenure advanced smoothly at 
all stages of the process.

“My administration’s utter silence on the matter until today,” she added 
in reference to Ettling’s email, “underscores an alarming trend in 
higher education of appeasing external political entities by curtailing 
the free speech and academic freedom of faculty and students who 
according to administrators work on ‘controversial issues.’”

Sharoni, who is an Israeli citizen and the daughter of a Holocaust 
survivor, doesn’t believe the current campaign is about her. “It is an 
attempt to undermine and discredit scholarly work on Israel/Palestine 
that includes calls to hold Israel accountable for its systemic human 
rights violations and repression.”

But Sharoni has no intention to retreat from her work. “I am going to 
deal with my sense of insecurity and vulnerability by speaking up even 
louder on these issues, by refusing to let administrators define support 
for justice in Palestine as controversial and by letting colleagues who 
don’t work on these issues know what are the broad implications of the 
loss of academic freedom.”


-- 
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