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<h1 id="reader-title">New attack on free speech: Pro-Israel
groups wage war on campus freedom</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">David Palumbo-Liu -
September 24, 2016<br>
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<p>College campuses traditionally have been the sites of
social and political protest — the combination of youth,
intellectual energy, free speech, and academic freedom
is a powerful catalyst for vibrant and often heated
debate. Given the strain this can sometimes place on the
equilibrium of universities, it is not surprising to see
limits placed on speech and action. What is unusual is
for pressure to come from groups outside the university.
That’s precisely what is happening today when it comes
to the topic of Israel and Palestine, and the overreach
of some pro-Israel organizations into campus free speech
is such that even those who oppose an academic boycott
of Israel have condemned their actions.</p>
<p>A number of recent cases have come onto the scene just
as the academic year has begun. Not only have these
cases continued previous trends regarding the stifling
of speech and the retaliation against those who are
critical of Israeli state policies toward the
Palestinians, they have raised such efforts to a new
level.</p>
<p>The <a
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=http://www.amchainitiative.org/&source=gmail&ust=1474740642979000&usg=AFQjCNFCItG5yNDL2cJX7x7qVxxEFGMMyw"
target="_blank" href="http://www.amchainitiative.org/">Amcha
Initiative</a>, <a target="_blank"
href="https://canarymission.org/">Canary Mission</a> and
other groups claim that they are fighting anti-Semitism
on campus. But because they equate criticism of Israel
with hatred of Jews as a people, any act or speech
critical of Israel may be construed as anti-Semitic.
These groups then exert political pressure on
administrators to punish what they call anti-Semitism,
and administrators will often bend to their will to
avoid bad publicity, abrogating their responsibilities
to protect free speech and academic freedom.</p>
<p>In October 2014, a group of prominent Jewish scholars
issued a statement criticizing Amcha’s tactics:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>It goes without saying that we, as students of
antisemitism, are unequivocally opposed to any and all
traces of this scourge. That said, we find the actions
of AMCHA deplorable. Its technique of monitoring
lectures, symposia and conferences strains the basic
principle of academic freedom on which the American
university is built. Moreover, its definition of
antisemitism is so undiscriminating as to be
meaningless. Instead of encouraging openness through
its efforts, AMCHA’s approach closes off all but the
most narrow intellectual directions and has a chilling
effect on research and teaching.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet Amcha’s tactics pale before those of Canary
Mission, which claims: “The Canary Mission database was
created to document the people and groups that are
promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on college
campuses in North America.
Every individual and organization has been carefully
researched and sourced.”</p>
<p>But Canary Mission is not just “documenting people and
groups,” it is also contacting their employers and
universities to smear reputations with distorted
depictions of activities and opinions, endangering these
activists’ careers both inside and outside the
academy. Writing in the Academe Blog of the American
Association of University Professors, <a
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://academeblog.org/2016/08/01/another-blacklist-emerges/&source=gmail&ust=1474740642980000&usg=AFQjCNESX-PR9qh7x7FKjlFU3eJlJGGv5A"
target="_blank"
href="https://academeblog.org/2016/08/01/another-blacklist-emerges/">Hank Reichman</a> calls
Canary Mission a “genuine blacklisting site … which is
potentially far more dangerous [than Amcha] for academic
freedom.”</p>
<p>Some who have been targeted are speaking out,
describing what it’s like to be targeted by Canary
Mission and how it has affected their lives.</p>
<p>Liliana, a junior majoring in international relations
who did not want to be identified further, said, “Canary
Mission gave me the worst anxiety. They launched a
Twitter campaign to get me fired from my job. Luckily,
my job’s human resources called and were totally
supportive. They recognized them as a hate group and
were ultimately concerned about my safety. I was so
thankful. However, the anxiety that doesn’t seem to go
away is the fact that I might not be able to enter
Palestine. I have family there and my mother especially
is worried about what we will endure at the border
crossing next time we go. When my profile first got put
up, I had trouble eating and sleeping. I would wake up
with bad anxiety and start gagging as if I were going to
vomit … I can handle grade-school bullying. What bothers
me is the constant worry about what’s going to happen to
me because of it. I also feel uncomfortable having my
pictures out there. It puts me at risk for sexual and/or
physical violence.”</p>
<p>Shezza Abboushi Dallal, who graduated from Barnard
College in May 2016 with a history degree, told me that
she and about 15 other organizers with the campus groups
Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia
Jewish Voice for Peace woke up one day to find newly
published profiles appearing on the first page of a
Google search. These profiles featured “dozens of
quotes, photographs, and videos that had been collected
from an array of online platforms — including our
private social media accounts,” Dallal said. “Pictures
of me accompanied by humiliating and inciting captions
were being tweeted and retweeted … It was incredibly
shocking to have documentation of involvement of which I
am resiliently proud be distorted and manipulated to
appear as the exact opposite of what it is — an effort
to stand for the human rights and dignity of a people in
the face of occupation, oppression, and gross violation
of international law. Equally shocking was the knowledge
that countless individuals were being empowered to
contribute to such an initiative, while having their
acts of intimidation protected by the site’s anonymity.”</p>
<p>Sumaya Awad of Williams College wrote: “My future was
threatened by this ominous and libelous website labeling
me a ‘terrorist threat.’ Canary Mission was created to
make students like me feel atomized and threatened, to
push us away from activism and to erode the rights of
Palestine activists to mobilize.”</p>
<p>Students and faculty being profiled by Canary Mission
are proud of their actions and have no desire to disavow
them. What they object to is the way they say Canary
Mission has taken fragments of statements and
recontextualized them, distorting their original
meaning, broadcasting them all over the Internet and
then contacting employers, future employers and
universities, all while operating under the cloak of
anonymity.</p>
<p>An <a
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.google.com/url?sa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D5%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0ahUKEwj39szewJ7PAhWDaz4KHXdsC6EQFggyMAQ%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fmlaboycott.wordpress.com%252F2016%252F08%252F22%252Fdefend-campus-free-speech-oppose-canary-missions-blacklisting-of-students-and-scholars%252F%26usg%3DAFQjCNGtXhOvKHlX07M_4EyDuxT871knDg&source=gmail&ust=1474740642980000&usg=AFQjCNH0Tqc97wHxCxwNJfzNWcx95MZNWA"
target="_blank"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj39szewJ7PAhWDaz4KHXdsC6EQFggyMAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmlaboycott.wordpress.com%2F2016%2F08%2F22%2Fdefend-campus-free-speech-oppose-canary-missions-blacklisting-of-students-and-scholars%2F&usg=AFQjCNGtXhOvKHlX07M_4EyDuxT871knDg">open
letter opposing Canary Mission’s tactics</a> will be
released this week, signed by more than 1,000 scholars
including Robin D.G. Kelley, Daniel Boyarin, James
Schamus and Joan Scott. [Full disclosure: I am also a
signatory.]</p>
<p>The letter reads in part:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As faculty who serve, have served, or are likely to
serve on an admissions committee at graduate and
undergraduate university programs across the country,
we unequivocally assert that the Canary Mission
website should not be trusted as a resource to
evaluate students’ qualifications for admission. We
condemn Canary Mission as an effort to intimidate and
blacklist students and faculty who stand for justice
for Palestinians…</p>
<p>Although, as individual faculty, we hold a range of
viewpoints on Israel-Palestine, we recognize that
student advocacy for Palestinian human rights is not
inherently anti-Semitic, and that such advocacy
represents a cherished and protected form of free
speech that is welcome on college campuses. We reject
the McCarthyist tactics used by Canary Mission. Canary
Mission’s aim is to damage these students’ futures,
and to punish them for their principled human rights
activism. We urge our fellow admissions faculty, as
well as university administrators, prospective
employers and all others, to join us in signing below
and standing against such bullying and attempts to
shut down civic engagement and freedom of speech.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the case of faculty who are employed at public
universities, another tactic used to harass activists
has been to delve into their personnel records, as in
the case of Simona Sharoni. <a target="_blank"
href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/09/13/professor-who-advocates-israel-boycott-latest-face-demands-records-about-her-career">As
reported in Inside Higher Education,</a> Sharoni, a
professor of gender and women’s studies at SUNY
Plattsburgh who was raised in Israel and previously
taught there, is a strong proponent of the Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS). Recently her
university informed her that a series of public records
requests had been made to gather information on her
“hiring, continued employment and conferences attended
while at Plattsburgh.”</p>
<p>IHE goes on to note a strongly worded letter written on
Sharoni’s behalf by the Middle East Studies Association,
which reads in part: “It appears to us that these
[open-records] requests are part of the continuing
campaign to harass and intimidate Sharoni because she
has expressed certain political views … We therefore
call upon university officials to exercise extreme
caution and responsible judgment in reviewing and
approving [such] requests for records pertaining to
Sharoni, so as not to be complicit in furthering the
campaign of harassment being waged against her.” It also
urges the university to “publicly and vigorously affirm
its commitment to the principles of free speech and
academic freedom as well as its intention to defend
Sharoni and other faculty members against harassment and
threats by politically motivated individuals and groups
based outside the university community.”</p>
<div data-toggle-group="story-14595312"
class="toggle-group target hideOnInit">
<p>Another case among many is that of Prof. Rabab
Abdulhadi of San Francisco State University, who has
long been the target of harassment due to her work as
the director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities
Diaspora program there. Outside groups have pressed
administrators to investigate how she carries our her
duties — building research and study opportunities for
her campus with colleagues abroad is construed by such
groups as association with “terrorists.” Recently
Abdulhadi negotiated a Memorandum of Understanding
between SFSU and An-Najah University in the West Bank.
In this and other ventures she has gone through the
proper procedures and secured the requisite
authorization. SFSU’s administration has defended
Abdulhadi, finding that she acted in accord with its
rules and in order to fulfill her job.</p>
<p>In 2014 SFSU president Leslie Wong stated, in
response to Amcha’s continued attacks on Abdulhadi,
“Faculty can and do communicate with others relevant
to their research, communicating by various methods
that can involve travel. Professor Abdulhadi’s
academic work in race and resistance studies requires
examination of some of the world’s most challenging
and controversial issues. San Francisco State
University will continue to respect academic freedom,
and we will not censor our scholars nor condone
censorship by others.”</p>
<p>But Amcha and other organizations are not satisfied
with leaving universities to manage their own affairs.
Besides these acts of intimidation against students
and faculty, sometimes reaching into their personal
lives, organizations are also trying to influence what
kinds of courses can be taught at the university.</p>
<p>At the University of California, Berkeley, a course
on Palestine was criticized by Jewish groups, who — in
a campaign organized by Amcha — wrote to the U.C.
administration urging that the course be censored. A <a
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://academeblog.org/2016/09/15/berkeley-bans-a-palestine-class/&source=gmail&ust=1474740642980000&usg=AFQjCNF5RWg4QDd1GETfo9g76clEY23Pkw"
target="_blank"
href="https://academeblog.org/2016/09/15/berkeley-bans-a-palestine-class/">thorough
report</a> on this episode by John K. Wilson in
Academe Blog explains how administrators suspended the
course in midsession, a highly unusual act, especially
given the fact that the groups protesting the course
had not even asked for such a radical move. This can
be seen as yet another instance where university
administrators react defensively in ways that violate
proper procedure and faculty governance.</p>
<p>The U.C. administration first explained that its
decision to suspend the class was because the
instructors had not received the proper authorization
to offer it. Yet as Wilson’s article documents, the
instructors had indeed gathered all the proper
authorizations. It was apparently the administration
that had erred in not being aware of the necessary
procedures in the first place. Of course, there’s a
decent chance that the administration’s rationale for
suspending the course was simply a pretext for bending
to the will of outside organizations.</p>
<p>As Wilson writes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If there was a breakdown in bureaucratic procedures
(and there is no evidence of it), then it is the
obligation of the university to fix those procedures
in the future, not to ban a course and punish a
facilitator and his students who reasonably followed
every written rule.</p>
<p>This decision sends a clear message to the campus:
controversial speech will be punished, especially if
it is critical of Israel.</p>
<p>This course suspension is absolutely indefensible,
completely unacceptable and purely motivated by
politics and public relations. It is a violation of
academic freedom, shared governance, U.C. Berkeley’s
guidelines, the Regents Policies, and the First
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A letter from students in the class, written to the
administrators who authorized the suspension, points
out the irony of something like this happening at
Berkeley:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The decision to suspend Ethnic Studies 198:
Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis is a
violation of our academic freedom. This is an
alarming development to have transpire on the same
campus that not only hosted the Free Speech
Movement, but which also routinely claims and
utilizes the same Movement’s legacy to market itself
as a world-class institution, a bastion of tolerance
and diversity, and the site of intellectual
inquiry — inquiry that is sometimes discomforting,
but always enriching. Your decision constitutes
nothing less than an act of discrimination against
students who wanted to debate and discuss this
contentious issue in a spirit of genuine sincerity,
mutual respect and open-minded curiosity.</p>
<p>Again: the decision to suspend our course is both
discriminatory and a violation of our academic
freedom. We demand the reinstatement of the course.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>As a result of protests from both students and
faculty at Berkeley, as well as elsewhere, on Sept. 19
the administration <a target="_blank"
href="http://palestinelegal.org/news/2016/9/19/uc-berkeley-reinstates-course-on-palestine">relented</a>
and, in a letter to the instructors, reinstated the
course. As John K. Wilson noted in a <a
target="_blank"
href="https://academeblog.org/2016/09/19/allowed-again-but-question-remain-about-suspension-of-berkeley-class/">followup
piece,</a> the U.C. dean involved in this case may
not have had the authority to suspend the course in
the first place, or to insist that instructors alter
the course’s content as a condition of its
reinstatement. This sets a dangerous precedent, when
an outside group can exert such influence as to change
the content of a course, bypassing the rights and
responsibilities of faculty and interfering with what
students can learn and how they can learn it.</p>
<p>Much of this overreach by anti-boycott groups turns
out to be unwarranted and unnecessary. When
challenged, as in the Berkeley case just mentioned,
complaints against pro-Palestinian education and
activism as “anti-Semitic” are often shown to be
unfounded. The vast majority of the charges
anti-boycott organizations have leveled against
pro-Palestinian activism has failed to stick. At the
University of California at Irvine, <a
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.google.com/url?sa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D1%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0ahUKEwjUod6ewp7PAhWKGT4KHc9aBr8QFggeMAA%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fpalestinelegal.org%252Fnews%252F2016%252F6%252F23%252Fuc-irvine-moves-to-criminalize-student-protest-of-israeli-soldiers-again%26usg%3DAFQjCNHZoea6GSKNi0ZgTVuUO3OFQ9d-hw&source=gmail&ust=1474740642980000&usg=AFQjCNHQpR3SJK5qwMkwQKfqbJfm7gjWZQ"
target="_blank"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjUod6ewp7PAhWKGT4KHc9aBr8QFggeMAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpalestinelegal.org%2Fnews%2F2016%2F6%2F23%2Fuc-irvine-moves-to-criminalize-student-protest-of-israeli-soldiers-again&usg=AFQjCNHZoea6GSKNi0ZgTVuUO3OFQ9d-hw">as
reported</a> by Palestine Legal:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>After interviewing witnesses and reviewing
extensive video footage, UCI’s Office of Student
Conduct released a 58-page report finding that SJP
students arrived peacefully at the event but were
locked out by its organizers … Members of SJP,
joined by students from other student groups, began
demonstrating outside the event when they were
locked out. The report confirms SJP’s account that
their protest was peaceful, and found claims made by
attendees of the event that protesters blocked the
exits and threatened attendees to be
unsubstantiated.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At San Francisco State, <a
data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?hl=en&q=https://www.google.com/url?sa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D2%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0ahUKEwiws-G5wp7PAhWDNz4KHbhHBfYQFggiMAE%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fpalestinelegal.org%252Fnews%252F2016%252F9%252F2%252Fsfsu-concludes-protest-targeted-israeli-policies-not-jewish-students%26usg%3DAFQjCNGSvVU1N6mdh2ipjVkQ1-8vOAHr6g%26bvm%3Dbv.133387755,d.cWw&source=gmail&ust=1474740642980000&usg=AFQjCNHmrbn_zJlYVB0e5d4JB2vjp63xQw"
target="_blank"
href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiws-G5wp7PAhWDNz4KHbhHBfYQFggiMAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpalestinelegal.org%2Fnews%2F2016%2F9%2F2%2Fsfsu-concludes-protest-targeted-israeli-policies-not-jewish-students&usg=AFQjCNGSvVU1N6mdh2ipjVkQ1-8vOAHr6g&bvm=bv.133387755,d.cWw">a
study concluded</a> that contrary to charges brought
against demonstrators, a protest against Jerusalem
Mayor Nir Barkat’s visit was not anti-Semitic: “On
September 1, San Francisco State University (SFSU)
released a report examining a protest of Jerusalem
Mayor Nir Barkat who visited the campus in April.
After interviewing 20 witnesses and reviewing
extensive documentation, the impartial investigator
concluded that the protest was disruptive, but that it
posed no safety risks and focused on the mayor for the
policies he promotes.” As Palestine Legal reports,
“Student protestors were accused of threatening Jewish
students with violent and anti-Semitic messages. SFSU
singled out the General Union of Palestinian Students
(GUPS) for discipline despite the participation of
many students from diverse groups. GUPS members
were also targeted with death threats, rape threats,
online profiling and in-person harassment following
the protest.”</p>
<p>Despite the failure of these charges, such actions
will continue, largely because part of their purpose
is to tie up resources and energy, and make
administrators act preemptively to disallow events
that might pose a problem.</p>
<p>Those not involved in the debate over
Israel-Palestine may not be concerned about Canary
Mission and its methods. But these tactics can be used
by any group. Especially in educational institutions,
it is essential to recognize outside organizations
whose goal is to interfere with the mission and ethos
of education, and who seek to silence, smear and
intimidate those with whom they disagree.</p>
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