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<h1 class="title" id="page-title">“Civility” is the Israel lobby’s
new weapon against free speech on US campuses</h1>
<div class="submitted">
<span property="dc:date dc:created"
content="2014-09-07T22:53:52+00:00" datatype="xsd:dateTime"
rel="sioc:has_creator">Submitted by <span class="username"
xml:lang="" about="/users/ali-abunimah"
typeof="sioc:UserAccount" property="foaf:name" datatype="">Ali
Abunimah</span> on Sun, 09/07/2014 - 22:53</span> </div>
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media-element file-full" style="width:618px;">
<div class="content"><b><small><small><small><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/civility-israel-lobbys-new-weapon-against-free-speech-us-campuses">http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/civility-israel-lobbys-new-weapon-against-free-speech-us-campuses</a></small></small></small></small></small></b><br>
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<p>As I was driving through Indiana <em>en route</em> to Michigan
this weekend, I saw this billboard for a local sheriff’s
election campaign. There, above the uniformed police officer
with his military-style crew cut, is the slogan “Return to
Civility.”</p>
<p>It seemed the perfect metaphor for what “civility” has come to
mean on US campuses: the forceful policing, at the behest of
Israel lobby groups, of any discourse or activism critical of
Israel.</p>
<p>In the wake of Israel’s latest Gaza massacre, the civility
police are cracking down hard. Most notoriously, administrators
and trustees at the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/university-illinois-urbana-champaign">University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign</a> have used the <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/univ-illinois-admits-pre-emptive-firing-israel-critic-steven-salaita">excuse
of “civility”</a> to fire <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/steven-salaita">Steven
Salaita</a> for his strong criticisms of, among other things,
Israel’s slaughter of hundreds of children in Gaza.</p>
<p>But civility crackdowns are now breaking out across the
country. Another alarming case involves a student at Ohio
University.</p>
<h2>Pouring cold water on free speech</h2>
<p>Last week Ohio University President Roderick J. McDavis
challenged the newly elected student senate president Megan
Marzec to take the “<a
href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/08/16/chilly-challenge.html">ice
bucket challenge</a>.” This is a stunt where someone pours a
bucket of ice water over their head on video to raise awareness
of the disease <a
href="http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/amyotrophiclateralsclerosis/detail_ALS.htm">ALS</a>.</p>
<p>It has become a very mainstream activity which allows the
participant to appear philanthropic at no political risk (former
President <a
href="http://www.wjla.com/articles/2014/08/george-w-bush-takes-ice-bucket-challenge-for-als-106282.html">George
W. Bush took the “challenge,”</a> inadvertently recalling his
administration’s use of water-boarding as a form of torture).</p>
<p>But what Marzec did – as Palestinians have done with their own
“<a
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/gaza/11054873/Rubble-Bucket-Challenge-launched-in-Gaza.html">rubble
bucket challenge</a>” – is to subvert the meme.</p>
<p>She made a video in which she pours a bucket of fake blood over
her head to protest Israel’s abuse of Palestinians.</p>
<p>“I’m urging you and OU [Ohio University] to divest and cut all
ties with academic and other Israeli institutions and
businesses,” Marzec says in the 50-second video that she posted
on her Facebook page Wednesday afternoon, <a
href="http://www.dispatch.com/content/blogs/the-eteam/2014/09/ou-bucket.html"><em>The
Columbus Dispatch</em> reports</a>.</p>
<p>“This bucket of blood symbolizes the thousands of displaced and
murdered Palestinians, atrocities which OU is directly
complacent in through cultural and economic support of the
Israeli state,” she adds. (The original instance of the video <a
href="http://vimeo.com/105055017">is no longer available</a>
but I am including this copy in my post because I believe people
should see that it is, contrary to the lurid criticisms, rather
tame, polite and indeed civil.)<br>
</p>
<p>Marzec was quickly and swiftly denounced. The Twitter account
of the Student Senate tweeted: “On behalf of the student senate,
we humbly apologize for the video President Megan Marzec
posted.” </p>
<div id="file-28813" class="file file-document file-text-oembed
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<h2 class="element-invisible oembed-title"><a
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<p>The campus group Bobcats for Israel and Alpha Epsilon Pi, a
Jewish fraternity, <a
href="http://www.thepostathens.com/news/article_314ada9a-353a-11e4-9ed6-0017a43b2370.html">called
for her resignation</a>.</p>
<p>“In part of the video she promotes the BDS (boycott, divestment
and sanctions) movement, which is anti-Semitic,” one student
critic <a
href="http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/news/local/article_48dc4b22-3467-11e4-91a3-001a4bcf887a.html">told
<em>The Cleveland Jewish News</em></a>.</p>
<p>Marzec herself has reported receiving death threats for her
protest. She showed <a
href="http://www.thepostathens.com/news/article_314ada9a-353a-11e4-9ed6-0017a43b2370.html"><em>The
Athens Post</em> newspaper</a> messages she’d been sent that
“ridiculed her as a woman, among other insults,” and said that
she’s been subjected to “a whole slew of very vile things.”</p>
<p>But she strongly defended her protest. “It’s clear to me that
my video was not anti-Semitic,” she told <em>The Post</em>. “Any
reframing of the video is caused by outrage that I am standing
in solidarity with oppressed Palestinians.”</p>
<p>More than 600 people have <a
href="http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/solidarity-with-megan-marzec-no-attacks-on-free/">signed
an online petition</a> in “solidarity with Megan Marzec’s
right of free speech to publicly state her political opinions on
the liberation of Palestine.” It also condemns “any attempt to
employ threats and/or acts of interpersonal violence to
intimidate Ohio University students into silence.”</p>
<h2>“Civility”</h2>
<p>Enter the president of Ohio University, who has come down not
on the side of Palestinians victimized by massive Israeli
violence, not on the side of Marzec who was trying to draw
attention to that violence, and not against those denigrating
and threatening her.</p>
<p>Instead, the university and President McDavis issued a <a
href="http://www.ohio.edu/compass/stories/14-15/9/President-Message-ALS.cfm">campus-wide
call for “civility”</a> that criticized <em>only</em> Marzec.</p>
<p>“Her actions do not reflect the position of Ohio University or
President McDavis,” the university statement says. “We recognize
the rights of individual students to speak out on matters of
public concern and we will continue to do so, but want to be
clear that the message shared today by her is not an
institutional position or a belief held by President McDavis.”</p>
<p>And then here is the “civility” punchline (emphasis added):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In a university community of our size, there are many issues
that merit our attention and dialogue. As stewards of the
public trust, we have a responsibility to encourage the free
exchange of ideas. For it is through dialogue on conflicting
views that we will move toward mutual understanding.</p>
<p>I take great pride in the fact that Ohio University is a
community that tackles hard issues head-on. <strong>The
conflict in Israel and Gaza is no exception. But the manner
in which we conduct ourselves as we exercise our right to
free speech is of utmost importance.</strong></p>
<p>In my First Year Student Convocation address, I emphasized
the idea that we are a University family. As members of a
University family, we will not always agree, <strong>but we
should respect one another.</strong> And when we engage in
difficult dialogue on issues such as this, <strong>we must do
so with civility and a deep appreciation for the diverse and
resilient international community in which we live.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Who is being protected?</h2>
<p>There is much to be said about McDavis’ invocation of the
“family” – with all its connotations of patriarchy, hierarchy,
privacy, discipline and infantilization as a metaphor – but I
will leave that for another day.</p>
<p>There are important unstated assumptions in McDavis’ statement.
Notably, he seems to be saying that by criticizing Israeli
violence against Palestinians, and urging the institution to end
its complicity, Marzec was somehow targeting and injuring a
component of the campus community or “family.”</p>
<p>Unless there is a brigade of the Israeli army with particularly
sensitive feelings permanently stationed on campus, this cannot
be the case.</p>
<p>Rather, the implication seems to be that criticism of Israel
and its actions is deemed offensive to Jewish students. This is
certainly implied by the intervention of the Jewish fraternity.</p>
<p>But we must always reject the equation of Jewish students with
the State of Israel, no matter how often pro-Israel groups and
university administrations insist on it.</p>
<p>This is the Israel lobby’s new tactic, as I have argued in my
recent book <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/my-new-book-battle-justice-palestine"><em>The
Battle for Justice in Palestine</em></a>: to equate
criticism of Israel or solidarity with Palestinians with “hate
speech,” “hate crimes” or even attacks on an individual such as
sexual or racial violence that must be ultimately subject to
university or juridical discipline and punishment.</p>
<p>In the case of Salaita, this meant the loss of his job based on
libelous and speculative claims that his statements about Israel
would mean students in his classroom might be endangered.</p>
<p>In the same vein, when Palestine solidarity groups have
distributed <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/mock-eviction-notices">mock
eviction notices</a> as a tactic to educate peers on campus
about Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes, they have
usually faced false allegations from Zionist groups that the
dorm rooms of Jewish students were “targeted.”</p>
<p>It is in this context that <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/northeastern-sjp">Students
for Justice in Palestine at Northeastern University</a> was
banned last Spring, an unprecedented act of repression that the
administration only <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/northeastern-lifts-suspension-students-justice-palestine">rescinded</a>
after a fierce student campaign and a national outcry. The year
before they were banned, Northeastern SJP had been <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/students-forced-sign-civility-statements-walk-out-protest/12705">forced
to sign a “civility statement,”</a> following an organized
walk-out of a talk given by Israeli soldiers.</p>
<p>This is the same basic idea behind the wave of complaints
against various universities made by Zionist individuals and
organizations under <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/tags/title-vi-civil-rights-act">Title
VI of the US Civil Rights Act</a> in recent years alleging
that campus Palestine solidarity activism was making Jewish
students feel “unsafe.”</p>
<p>While the strategy has so far <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/victory-campus-free-speech-us-dept-education-throws-out-anti-semitism">failed
at the legal level</a>, it is succeeding with university
administrations, who are rushing to issue “civility” statements
explicitly or implicitly targeting utterers of speech critical
of Israel.</p>
<p>It cannot be mere coincidence that Nicholas Dirks, chancellor
of the University of California at Berkeley, sent an email to
the entire campus community last week also calling for
“civility.”</p>
<p>Ostensibly marking the 50th anniversary of Berkeley’s famed
Free Speech Movement, Dirks said, “we can only exercise our
right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in
doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other
with civility.”</p>
<p>What does “civility” mean in this context? Does it mean saying
“please,” “thank you,” “sir” and “ma’am” to war criminals? Or
does it mean electing a sheriff instead of a professor to run a
university to make everyone feel “safe” and secure?</p>
<p>(A similar statement has also <a
href="http://news.psu.edu/story/325057/2014/09/05/message-leadership-penn-state?utm_source=newswire&utm_medium=email&utm_term=325031_HTML&utm_content=09-05-2014-00-07&utm_campaign=Penn%20State%20Today">just
been issued from Penn State University</a>. No particular
cause is mentioned as prompting the statement and it does not
mention Palestine, but I expect to see more of these.)</p>
<p>Dirks, as I recount in <em>The Battle for Justice in Palestine</em>,
was the vice president at Columbia University who, prior to
taking his new job at Berkeley, boasted about his role in the
witch-hunt against Professor <a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/people/joseph-massad">Joseph
Massad</a>.</p>
<h2>Losing their grip</h2>
<p>Zionism is losing its grip. It has lost the substantive debate
on the past and future of Palestine in the academy. It no longer
has a hold on the hearts and minds of young people the way it
did in the years after the 1967 War.</p>
<p>Many of the Jewish students whose “safety” is being invoked to
justify the campus crackdowns are joining – and in some cases
leading – chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and
similar groups.</p>
<p>Key Israel lobby groups, as I explain in the book, see US
campuses as the battleground on which the future of US support
for Israel will be secured or lost.</p>
<p>Raw power – intimidation, denial of tenure, firings and other
kinds of discipline – are being used to try to stop the growth
of Palestine solidarity on campus.</p>
<p><a
href="http://electronicintifada.net/content/salaita-firing-shows-where-zionism-meets-neoliberalism-us-universities/13826">Corporatized</a>
university administrations across the country are fully
complicit in this repression. And this iron fist is being
wrapped in the velvet glove of “civility.”</p>
</div>
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