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<font size="1"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/11/14/zoom-censorship-leila-khaled-palestine/">https://theintercept.com/2020/11/14/zoom-censorship-leila-khaled-palestine/</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Zoom Censorship of Palestine Seminars Sparks Fight Over Academic Freedom</h1>
<div class="gmail-PostByline-names"><a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/alicesperi/"><span>Alice Speri</span></a>, <a class="gmail-PostByline-link" rel="author" href="https://theintercept.com/staff/sambiddle/"><span>Sam Biddle</span></a><span class="gmail-PostByline-date"><span> - November 14 2020</span></span>
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<div class="gmail-moz-reader-content gmail-reader-show-element"><div id="gmail-readability-page-1" class="gmail-page"><div><div><p><u>Few companies have</u>
benefited from the coronavirus pandemic as much as Zoom, the online
conferencing platform that has become a ubiquitous substitute for
in-person interaction, work, and school. But a fight over Zoom’s right
to censor speech is now brewing across the academic world, after the
company shut down a seminar at San Francisco State University earlier
this year over the participation of Palestinian activist Leila Khaled.
Last month, Zoom continued its crackdown and canceled several online
events organized at other universities that did not include Khaled
herself but were critical of Zoom’s censorship of her.</p>
<p>Khaled, 76, is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, a resistance group and political party that the U.S.
government <a href="https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/">lists</a>
as a foreign terrorist organization. She rose to prominence after her
role in two plane hijackings in 1969 and 1970 — and as the first woman
to hijack a plane she has since earned global recognition, regarded as a
terrorist by some and a feminist icon by others. On September 23,
Khaled, who has long spoken in solidarity with liberation movements
worldwide, was one of several speakers set to participate in a seminar
on gender and resistance narratives at SFSU, a public university. But
the seminar became the target of a coordinated campaign by pro-Israel
groups, which pressured both the university and Zoom to cancel it.</p>
<p>In response to the pressure, Zoom argued to SFSU officials that the
seminar might have violated federal laws and therefore the company’s
terms of service, by providing “material support” for terrorism. It
ultimately canceled the event the day before it was scheduled to take
place. Zoom’s actions were followed by Facebook, which removed the
livestream link, as well as a page advertising the event, and threatened
to shut down the pages of the event’s sponsors, and by YouTube, which
shut down the livestream 23 minutes after the event had started. The New
York Post <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/11/05/feds-probe-ca-universitys-attempted-zoom-meeting-with-hijacker/">reported last week</a>
that the U.S. Department of Education is now conducting a probe into
SFSU’s invitation to Khaled, on the grounds that it “violated civil
rights rules and the conditions of federal grants the university
received.”</p>
<p>In October, Zoom also shut down three seminars organized in
solidarity with SFSU at New York University, the University of Hawaii at
Manoa, and the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom. At least
eight other seminars that were part of the same day of action were
allowed to proceed on the platform, and Khaled did speak, on October 3,
on <a href="https://samidoun.net/2020/10/3-october-free-palestine-launching-of-the-month-of-global-solidarity-with-the-palestinian-people-with-leila-khaled/">another Zoom seminar</a> that was unaffiliated with a university.</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>For
all Zoom’s invocations of anti-terrorism laws, a spokesperson also
noted that ultimately the company reserves the right to bar anyone from
using its services, for any reason or none at all.</p></blockquote><div><p>Reached
by email, Zoom spokesperson Andy Duberstein wrote that anyone was
welcome to use the company’s platform so long as they didn’t run afoul
of “applicable U.S. export control, sanctions, and anti-terrorism laws,”
but declined to explain which anti-terrorism law would have applied,
nor how the SFSU event would have violated it.</p>
<p>“In light of the speaker’s reported affiliation or membership in a
U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, and SFSU’s inability to
confirm otherwise, we determined the meeting is in violation of Zoom’s
Terms of Service and told SFSU they may not use Zoom for this particular
event,” Duberstein wrote. But for all its invocations of anti-terrorism
laws, Duberstein also noted that ultimately the company reserves the
right to bar anyone from using its services, for any reason or none at
all, pointing to a section of the company’s terms of service that states
“Zoom may investigate any complaints and violations that come to its
attention and may take any (or no) action that it believes is
appropriate, including, but not limited to issuing warnings, removing
the content or terminating accounts and/or User profiles.”</p>
<p>A spokesperson for Google, which owns YouTube, wrote in a statement
that the company terminated the livestream “for violations of our
policies on Violent Criminal Organizations.”</p>
<p>“Specifically, the livestream contained ‘content praising or
justifying violent acts carried out by violent criminal or terrorist
organizations,’” the spokesperson wrote. A spokesperson for Facebook
said in a statement that the company “removed this content for violating
our policy prohibiting praise, support and representation for dangerous
organizations and individuals, which applies to Pages, content
and Events.”</p>
<p>Zoom’s intervention adds a new layer to the long-running debate on
university campuses over the Israeli occupation of Palestine, but its
implications reach far beyond that, several scholars and free speech
advocates warned. The platform’s censorship has raised questions about
the role of private tech companies in curtailing academic freedom and
constitutionally protected speech, particularly in the context of public
universities. The incidents also reignited criticism of a controversial
definition of anti-Semitism promoted by pro-Israel groups and endorsed
by President Donald Trump in an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism/">executive order</a> issued last year, which critics say severely limits all debate of Israeli policy.</p>
<p>At a time when the pandemic has seen much of university life move to
private online platforms, many feared that Zoom’s censorship marked a
slippery slope.</p></div><div><p>“There is no law
requiring Zoom to block the event featuring Leila Khaled,” said Faiza
Patel, co-director of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security
Program. “Zoom’s actions, along with its later decision to block events
on censorship by Zoom, show us once again that private companies who
are not bound by free speech rules often use their discretion to
selectively block voices. Terms of service are then used to present
one-off business decisions as nothing more than the application of their
rules.”</p>
<p>“It’s very dangerous for a third-party private vendor to be in the
position of deciding what is legitimate academic speech and what is not —
it violates all of the customs and norms of the academic culture,”
echoed Andrew Ross, a professor at NYU and member of the American
Association of University Professors. “This should concern everyone in
higher education right now.”</p>
<p>The AAUP’s NYU chapter was among dozens of groups and hundreds of scholars to issue <a href="https://www.change.org/p/amed-studies-support-whose-narratives-gender-justice-resistance-a-conversation-with-leila-khaled?recruiter=533862704&recruited_by_id=2660a230-0d2f-11e6-9293-6f6104883178&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=petition_dashboard&use_react=false">public condemnations</a> of Zoom’s censorship, arguing in <a href="https://academeblog.org/2020/10/23/statement-from-the-nyu-aaup-on-zoom-censorship-today/">a statement</a>
that “if Zoom will not walk back its policy of canceling webinars
featuring Palestinian speech and advocacy, college presidents should
break their agreements with the company.” While SFSU officials publicly
expressed their disagreement with Zoom, their response was far too
timid, critics charged. And at the University of Leeds, officials have
responded by opening an investigation into the event. “The universities
effectively caved, failed to back their faculty, and failed to support
academic freedom,” said Heike Schotten, a professor at the University of
Massachusetts Boston, which successfully held an event in solidarity
with SFSU. “They have legal counsel, they have endowments, they have
enormous power,” Schotten said. “They could influence Zoom to not be
censoring their faculty. It’s a matter of political will.”</p>
<p>Bobby King, a spokesperson for SFSU President Lynn Mahoney referred The Intercept to <a href="https://president.sfsu.edu/message-president/academic-freedom-debate-continues">public statements</a>
she made on the incident. “President Mahoney has been a tireless
proponent of academic freedom during her first year at San Francisco
State University,” King added. “And she will continue that effort while
also recognizing that academic freedom may also lead to difficult
interactions and conversations.”</p>
<p>A spokesperson for the University of Leeds wrote in an email that
“the University is committed to promoting and positively encouraging
free debate, enquiry and protest within the requirements placed on it by
the law. It tolerates a wide range of views even when they are
unpopular, controversial or provocative. Indeed the University has never
banned an event or speaker because of the subject matter and it hosts a
broad range of debates and speeches on a wide range of subjects.”</p>
<p>A spokesperson for the University of Hawaii said in a statement that
the university was disappointed at Zoom’s cancellation and disagreed
with the company’s decision. “Academic freedom and the ability to engage
in the free expression of diverse and complex viewpoints form the very
foundation of higher education,” the spokesperson wrote.</p>
<p>NYU did not respond to a request for comment.</p>
<p>While consistent with longstanding efforts to control narratives
about Palestine, Zoom’s cancellation of the SFSU seminar also marked a
notable escalation in the fight over campus speech because it argued not
so much that the event was offensive as that it was criminal — and
specifically in violation of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2339B">federal anti-terrorism laws</a>.
While several legal experts dismissed the claim as baseless, the
invocation of anti-terrorism laws worried civil rights advocates,
particularly given the current political moment, which has seen the
Trump administration slap a “terrorist” label on activist movements from
Black Lives Matter to antifa.</p>
<p>“This is an illustration of efforts to further expand already deeply,
deeply problematic laws that criminalize advocacy as material support
for terrorism,” said Dima Khalidi, director of Palestine Legal, a group
that fights efforts to legally harass pro-Palestine activists. “In a
case like this, where it’s really pure speech at issue, if this is
interpreted to constitute material support for terrorism, we are in
trouble. … You can see where this can lead us.”</p></div><div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/11/GettyImages-1137874452-edit-1024x682.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="Eric Yuan, founder and chief executive officer of Zoom Video Communications Inc., stands at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, U.S., on April 18, 2019." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="261"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications Inc., stands at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, on April 18, 2019.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images</p></div></div><div><h3>“You Will Be Canceled”</h3>
<p>In mid-September, about a week before the SFSU seminar was to take
place, an attorney from the Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel legal advocacy
group, sent a letter to Zoom’s founder and CEO Eric Yuan. The group,
which funds legal actions challenging criticism of Israel, warned Zoom
about the upcoming event and argued that Khaled’s participation in it
“may give rise to violations” of federal law and incur fines or
imprisonment of up to 20 years. “The mere facts that Khaled is member of
a designated foreign terrorist organization and is being provided with a
platform on which to speak can give rise to a violation,” the attorney
wrote, “even if she chooses to speak about a topic completely unrelated
to terrorism.” The Lawfare Project <a href="https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/LP_Letter_to_Gonzalez_re_SFSU_2020_09_14.pdf">also notified</a> the U.S. Department of Justice about the event.</p>
<p>Legal scholars The Intercept spoke with argued that the invocation of federal anti-terrorism law was an overreach.</p>
<p>Patel, of the Brennan Center, explained that the stance is based on a
flawed application of laws proscribing “material support” to terrorist
groups, a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/domestic-terrorism-material-support-law/">controversial and constitutionally murky</a>
provision of federal anti-terror law that criminalizes certain forms of
loosely defined aid or advocacy for designated foreign terrorist
organizations. “The fact that Khaled is associated with a group that is
on the FTO list does not mean that laws prohibiting material support for
terrorism kick in,” Patel said, noting a <a href="https://casetext.com/case/holder-v-humanitarian-law-project-3">Supreme Court ruling</a>
that only material support that is “coordinated with or under the
direction of” a foreign terrorist organization is prohibited. The
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine had nothing to do with
Khaled’s planned participation in the SFSU seminar.</p>
<p>The left-wing PFLP was founded in 1967 as a nationalist, secular
organization and militant group fighting the Israeli occupation of the
West Bank. The group was behind a number of hijackings of civilian
airliners in the 1960s and 1970s, and individuals associated with it
have been behind assassinations and other attacks in more recent
decades. The PFLP was at one point the second largest faction within the
Palestine Liberation Organization, but its political influence dwindled
in the 1990s with the fall of its Soviet patrons and the Oslo Accords.
Khaled was arrested by British police following the 1970 hijacking, in
which a fellow hijacker but no passengers were killed, and she was
released shortly afterward in a hostage exchange. She has since served
as a member of the Palestinian National Council, the parliamentary body
of the PLO, which, unlike the Palestinian Authority, represents
Palestinians both inside the occupied territories and in the diaspora.</p>
<p>“It is more than a stretch to say that Khaled’s 1970s association
with PFLP meant that a virtual talk by her decades later could be
regarded as violating the law,” Patel said. “Such an overbroad
interpretation of the law would almost certainly be unconstitutional.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“It
is more than a stretch to say that Khaled’s 1970s association with PFLP
meant that a virtual talk by her decades later could be regarded as
violating the law.”</p></blockquote><div><p>In a
statement to The Intercept, Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at the
Lawfare Project, defended the group’s legal claim, arguing that the SFSU
seminar did constitute coordination with a foreign terrorist group
because extending an invitation to Khaled was tantamount to plotting
with the PFLP itself: “Webinars do not occur ‘organically’ — they
require coordination and planning in advance of the event.”</p>
<p>“SFSU’s use of its videoconferencing platforms — and its professors
moderating the webinar — provides precisely the kind of legitimacy to
PFLP that makes it easier for it to persist, recruit members, and raise
funds,” Filitti wrote. “It is important to note that the issue here is
not one of freedom of speech or ‘academic freedom,’ but rather about
criminal <em>action<strong> — </strong></em>namely material support to an FTO.”</p>
<p>Days after the Lawfare Project’s letter, Zoom’s chief compliance and
ethics officer, Lynn Haaland, repeated the group’s argument in a letter
to SFSU and the trustees of the California State University system,
adding that according to Zoom’s terms of service, users agree not to use
Zoom’s services “in any manner that violates applicable law.” Should
users violate the terms, Haaland warned, Zoom reserved the right to take
action, “including potential disclosure to relevant government
authorities, termination of violating meetings while in progress,
termination of the Trustees’ account and termination of the use of Zoom
services.”</p>
<p>Zoom’s letter initiated a back and forth between Haaland and
California State University’s deputy general counsel, Leora Freedman,
obtained by The Intercept via a public records request. In her
responses, Freedman initially wrote that the university was “unable to
confirm” Khaled’s membership in the PFLP. She added that because of the
pandemic, “nearly all” instruction for more than 480,000 California
State University students was being held virtually. “We are very
grateful to Zoom for its important role in this achievement,” Freedman
wrote. When Haaland noted that Khaled had publicly acknowledged her
affiliation with the PFLP in the past, Freedman wrote that the
university “respectfully disagrees” with Zoom’s position that her
participation would violate federal law.</p>
<p>But while pushing back against Zoom’s arguments, SFSU seemed to have
resigned itself to give in. University officials notified the professors
who had organized the seminar about Zoom’s plans to cancel it and
recommended they seek legal representation. “As I hope you understand,
the University vigilantly protects academic freedom and freedom of
expression to the greatest extent possible under the law,” SFSU’s
provost Jennifer Summit wrote to professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi
Kinukawa. “The rights of academic freedom and free expression, however,
have legal limits.”</p>
<p>Abdulhadi and Kinukawa said that the university had effectively
abandoned them and that it had abdicated its responsibility to defend
academic freedom and the rights of their students. They saw school
officials’ communications with them, stressing the potential criminality
of the event, as an effort to silence them.</p>
<p>“She basically said that we should look it up and find a good
lawyer,” Kinukawa said, referring to the provost. “It’s a scare tactic.”</p></div><div><p>Through
an attorney, the professors replied that they were aware of material
support for terrorism laws and that they did not believe they were
violating them. Khaled was not getting paid to speak, and she planned to
participate in the seminar in a personal capacity, not as a
representative of the PFLP. “Faculty members such as Professors
Abdulhadi and Kinukawa and others who speak up in support of the rights
of the Palestinian people are constantly under attack from Lawfare and
other organizations that do everything possible to crush any opposition
to the policies of the State of Israel,” Abdulhadi’s attorney, Dan
Siegel, wrote to the provost. “We appreciate and expect San Francisco
State University to uphold the rights of faculty against such attacks.”</p>
<p>Abdulhadi, a Palestinian professor who for years has been the target
of harassment and legal campaigns because of her outspoken criticism of
Israel, argued that the university did nothing to ensure that the event
could take place and failed to provide an alternative platform to stream
the event. More than 1,500 people had registered for the Zoom seminar,
and 4,000 had expressed their interest in it on Facebook. Abdulhadi also
took issue with the participation of Mahoney, the university president,
at an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=652453222345044&ref=watch_permalink">online vigil</a> held by the San Francisco Hillel and co-sponsored by two university offices in protest of the seminar.</p>
<p>In internal meetings, SFSU faculty expressed concerns with Zoom’s
censorship. “It could completely derail our remote teaching,” Jonathon
Stillman, a member of the university’s academic senate, said in a <a href="https://senate.sfsu.edu/meeting-minutes-archive/september-22-2020">meeting</a>.
Krystle Pierce, another member, noted concern that the university was
showing support for the Hillel vigil but not the canceled seminar. King,
the spokesperson for Mahoney, said in a statement that “while the
president remains steadfast in her support for the rights of faculty to
teach and conduct their scholarship free from interference, she also
made it quite clear that she condemns violence, especially against
unarmed civilians. Her participation in a vigil reflected that.”</p>
<p>“She also has reached out to and met with students who felt silenced
by Zoom’s cancellation of the event,” King added. “President Mahoney is
equally concerned with the social media attacks experienced by many
students and faculty engaged in activism, teaching and research related
to the Middle East.”</p>
<p>In other administrative meetings, members asked about any recourse
available to the university, but SFSU has not indicated that it plans to
pursue a remedy. In a statement following the event’s cancellation, the
Lawfare Project proclaimed <a href="https://www.thelawfareproject.org/releases/2020/9/22/victory-lawfare-project-and-endjewhatred-movement-cause-zoom-to-cancel-leila-khaled-webinar">victory</a> and promised more public pressure campaigns against what it claimed was “Jew hatred.”</p>
<p>“All communications platforms have been put on notice: block
terrorism and cancel anti-Semitism, or you will be canceled,” the group
wrote.</p>
<p>The cancellation sparked an intense backlash at SFSU and across the
academic world. On October 23, a month after the original seminar was
scheduled to take place, faculty and students at a dozen different
universities planned to hold a series of events in solidarity with SFSU,
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_WTKyQXVyA&t=528s&ab_channel=USACBI">playing prerecorded videos</a>
of Khaled speaking and discussing academic freedom. Organizers
specifically called for the events to be held on Zoom, with additional
streams on other social media platforms. Many of <a href="https://usacbi.org/2020/10/join-the-growing-list-of-events-we-will-not-be-silenced-october-23-national-day-of-action/">those events</a> went ahead as planned. But Zoom shut down three of them.</p></div><div><p class="gmail-caption">Video that students and faculty at the University of Hawaii posted on YouTube.</p>
<p>After their event was canceled, University of Hawaii students and faculty posted a video in which they read <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9zFvShGtoA&feature=youtu.be">Khaled’s words</a>
in their own voices. “The UH administration has done nothing to protect
our rights of free speech and academic freedom,” Cynthia Franklin, a
professor there, wrote in an email. “We and the students and community
members who made this video do so with awareness that it is our voices
that could be censored next.”</p>
<p>Adam Saeed, a student at the University of Leeds, had organized an
event through the Palestine Solidarity Group, a student group he
co-chairs there. But the day after he publicized the event on the
group’s Facebook page, he received an email from the university’s
student union, which administers student groups’ activities, warning him
that the event had not been approved. “There are genuine pressures on
the student union not to platform any Palestinian voices,” Saeed said,
noting that the group regularly faces pushback for its activities. “They
will use the term terrorism against anyone who talks about
Palestinians’ human rights.” A spokesperson for the university and the
student union wrote in an email that the university’s “approach to
freedom of expression extends to all, regardless of any political — or
other — stance they take.” The spokesperson added that the event was
denied permission because the organizers had not followed the required
protocol or given sufficient notice about the existence of an external
speaker. But Saeed said that there were no external speakers, as Khaled
did not directly participate in the seminar, and the only other speaker
was a member of the university’s own faculty.</p>
<p>Saeed scheduled the event anyway, using his personal Zoom account,
but just over an hour before the event was to start, he received an
automated email from Zoom notifying him that he had “successfully
deleted” the event, which he had not. His account had been disabled.
Saeed then reached out to a group unaffiliated with the university,
Apartheid Off Campus, and moved the event over to its Zoom and Facebook
accounts. To avoid Zoom’s detection, he changed the event’s name from
“We will not be silenced with Leila Khaled” to “meeting.”</p>
<p>He also emailed Zoom to demand an explanation but never heard back,
though his account was reactivated a few days later. “It is absolutely a
horrible thing how much control they actually have over our freedom to
communicate with each other,” he said. “All this authority is given to
this shadowy institution of Zoom, which is this ultimate deciding power
about what can be said and cannot be said.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>He
received an automated email from Zoom notifying him that he had
“successfully deleted” the event, which he had not. His account had been
disabled.</p></blockquote><div><p>On the day of
NYU’s event, Ross realized that the link had been deactivated — which
didn’t surprise him, although nobody from the administration had heard
from Zoom about the company’s intention to cancel it. At the last
minute, the university switched the seminar to Google Meet, but that
event was immediately disrupted by trolls shouting racist and sexist
insults. “My tech assistant thinks they were bots,” said Ross. “And we
do know that organized Zionist groups who are the people who put
pressure on institutions, they do use bots to circulate misinformation.”
Organizers ultimately held the event privately and later posted a
recording of it. In a letter to the university’s AAUP chapter and other
faculty, NYU President Andrew Hamilton wrote, “I am troubled whenever
there is interference with academic programming organized by our
faculty, and we have expressed our consternation to Zoom about their
intervention in the event, which came without notice and explanation.”
But Hamilton also defended Zoom’s decision: “While their interpretation
might be open to argument, it is not a surprise that businesses will
steer away from actions that they believe may leave them open to
criminally liability.”</p>
<p>“I would also note that terrorist violence conflicts with
academic freedom,” Hamilton added. “It is at odds with values that
universities hold dear: reason, dispassion, freedom of speech and
inquiry, respect for individuals and individual liberties.”</p>
<p>In their response, the faculty noted their disappointment that the
university was not providing any “safeguards” against future shutdowns.
“Surely, this was an opportunity for NYU to review its contractual
relationship with Zoom, and to reassure faculty and students that
further speech censorship would not be tolerated,” they wrote. The
professors also took issue with Hamilton’s statement that terrorist
violence conflicts with academic freedom. “Why is that the lesson to be
drawn from the censorship of this event?” they wrote. “As scholars, it
is our job to analyze and interrogate these designations, and not to
accept them as given. Teaching, research, and the exchange of ideas on
these important matters is impossible if they are subject to being
construed as illegitimate, or as somehow in conflict with academic
freedom.”</p>
<p>Duberstein, Zoom’s spokesperson, told The Intercept that the company
shut down the three events because organizers there had written in the
event descriptions “that Ms. Khaled would appear in some capacity,” he
wrote. Some of the events were advertised on social media as “featuring
Leila Khaled,” although a description of the day of action made clear
that Khaled would not be appearing in person but rather that the
seminars would include a “<a href="https://usacbi.org/2020/10/join-the-growing-list-of-events-we-will-not-be-silenced-october-23-national-day-of-action/">message</a>”
from her. Duberstein did not clarify whether the company would also
consider a pre-recorded message by Khaled, or a video of her speaking
elsewhere, a violation of its terms.</p>
<p>The faculty behind the initiative believe that Zoom responded to
complaints about individual events filed by pro-Israel groups, which
have a stronger presence on some campuses than others. “What Zoom is
saying now is that it doesn’t go around monitoring content and that it’s
not its job as an internet platform provider,” said Schotten of UMass.
“But if they receive complaints, they investigate them, and that’s why
you see this happening to certain webinars and not others. In some
places, the Zionists are more organized and more entrenched.”</p>
<p>Zoom’s move to abruptly block an individual from using its platform
in response to angry complaints reflects its coming out as an
influential American technology firm. Companies like Facebook, Twitter,
and Google have for many years failed to create a consistent set of
rules determining what kinds of activities are permitted and what
are beyond the pale. And just like the more established Silicon Valley
stalwarts, Zoom’s action here seems to reflect public relations angst
more than any kind of coherent content moderation framework or sound
legal rationale.</p>
<p>In the absence of a clear, transparent rulebook that can be applied
equitably across ideologies, tech giants have improvised their content
moderation policies in response to outrage from one party or another,
gesturing vaguely to their respective terms of service as justification.
But while Facebook and Twitter have been pummeled in the court of
public opinion for failing to stop violent extremists from spreading
their messages, <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/eff-court-holding-twitter-responsible-providing-material-support-terrorists-would">attempts</a> to hold them criminally liable under the “material support” clause cited by Zoom have been <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/summary-ninth-circuit-dismisses-civil-suit-against-twitter-isis-attack">tossed</a> <a href="https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2020/03/material-support-for-terrorism-lawsuit-fails-a-third-time-colon-v-twitter.htm">out</a> of actual courts <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262248/supreme-court-rejects-stuart-force-facebook-section-230-lawsuit-algorithms">time</a> and <a href="https://www.jurist.org/news/2019/04/lawsuit-dismissed-against-social-media-companies-for-role-in-pulse-night-club-shooting/">time</a> again.</p>
<p>“That these private companies have the power of censorship over
classrooms at public universities is really troubling,” said Khalidi of
Palestine Legal. “There are interesting legal questions here and the
potential to really interrogate the role that these massive social media
companies are playing in our public life.”</p></div><div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/11/GettyImages-1272641281-edit-1024x682.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90" alt="Protesters from multiple Palestinian rights organizations demonstrate outside the White House on September 15, 2020 in Washington, DC." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="261"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Protesters
from multiple Palestinian rights organizations demonstrate outside the
White House on Sept. 15, 2020 in Washington, D.C.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images</p></div></div><div><h3>Censoring Palestine</h3>
<p>Palestine discourse has long been a target of free speech battles on
university campuses and beyond. Students and faculty speaking in support
of the rights of Palestinians or criticizing Israeli policies have
faced a sleuth of <a href="https://theintercept.com/2018/11/22/israel-boycott-canary-mission-blacklist/">intimidation tactics</a>, including <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/10/04/israel-palestine-blacklists-canary-mission/">online blacklists</a>, lawsuits, and legislative efforts to silence boycott campaigns.</p>
<p>These initiatives are often run by <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/03/25/adam-milstein-israel-bds/">well-funded</a>
and secretive organizations — part of a broader effort to influence
campus discourse through a diversified network of political mobilization
groups and student publications. Many of these groups, promoting a host
of conservative and libertarian causes, appear to be independent but,
in fact, work in coordination, noted Isaac Kamola, an assistant
professor at Trinity College who studies the impact of dark money on
campus speech issues.</p></div><div><p>“There’s an
infrastructure that’s in place,” he said in an interview. “And there are
certain elements of these donors’ networks that are deeply involved in
Israel-Palestine issues, in pushing back against especially Palestinian
activists on campus.”</p>
<p>Well-funded, pro-Israel groups are also behind campaigns to pressure
Facebook and other social media companies to censor Palestine content on
their platforms. Over the past several years, both <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/11/2/twitter-suspends-accounts-of-palestinian-quds-news-network">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://fortune.com/2016/09/28/facebook-censorship-palestinian/">Facebook</a> have suspended accounts belonging to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/26/13055862/facebook-israel-palestinian-journalists-censorship">Palestinian journalists</a>, with the latter later claiming that the suspensions had been an “error.” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/world/middleeast/facebook-struggles-to-put-out-online-fires-in-israeli-palestinian-conflict.html">A 2016 New York Times report</a>
noted that “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the
company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by
removing most of them.”</p>
<p>“There is a massive amount of harassment of Palestine supporters,”
said Khalidi. “It’s intended to shield Israel from criticism, to prevent
people from understanding what Israel does.”</p>
<p>Lawsuits in particular, even when bringing questionable claims, have
proven to be an efficient tool for stifling criticism of Israel because
of the resources and time they consume. The American Studies
Association, for instance, was sued in 2016 over its endorsement of a
boycott of Israeli universities, before a federal judge <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/02/06/judge-dismisses-lawsuit-opposing-american-studies-groups-support-israel-boycott">dismissed the lawsuit</a>
last year. “They just tied people up for several years in litigation,
and that was the intention,” said Ross, who is a member of the
association. “They specialize in launching lawsuits that are frivolous
but are intended to provide a lot of anguish for those who are targeted.
The point of [groups like Lawfare] is really to exhaust its victims
and wear them down.” While Zoom did not shut down all events in
solidarity with Khaled last month, faculty who organized some of them
are already bracing for legal harassment. Schotten noted that after the
event, her university received a request for records by the <a href="https://palestinelegal.org/who-is-david-abrams">Zionist Advocacy Center</a>,
a group that has filed a series of mostly failed lawsuits against
Israel critics. “Their reason for existence is to sue universities,” she
said.</p>
<p>NYU <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/10/02/new-york-university-settles-anti-semitism-case-education-department">reached a settlement</a>
with the U.S. Department of Education last month, after the university
was sued over charges that it did not do enough to prevent a “hostile
environment” for Jewish students on campus. As part of the settlement,
NYU acknowledged no wrongdoing but committed to partially adopting a
definition of anti-Semitism that is held by the International Holocaust
Remembrance Association. The sweeping <a href="https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/working-definition-antisemitism">definition</a>
was adopted by a number of countries, local governments, and public
institutions, and endorsed by the Trump administration in a 2019
executive order, which tied federal funding for universities to
adherence to this expanded concept of anti-Semitism. NYU was the first
university to be sued following the executive order endorsing the IHRA
definition, which lists among examples of “contemporary” anti-Semitism
the position that the state of Israel is “a racist endeavor.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>“There
is a massive amount of harassment of Palestine supporters. It’s
intended to shield Israel from criticism, to prevent people from
understanding what Israel does.”</p></blockquote><div><p>“It
is a highly controversial definition because they more or less treat
all criticism of Israeli policy as an example of anti-Semitism,” said
Ross. “That’s a huge problem for a lot of institutions, but it hasn’t
stopped many of them from adopting that definition under pressure, for
fear of being branded anti-Semitic themselves.”</p>
<p>In other cases, the silencing campaigns have focused aggressively on
some outspoken faculty. Abdulhadi, for instance, has faced years of
attacks while teaching at SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and
Diasporas Initiative, including accusations that she “glorifies
terrorism” and is a “Hamas supporter.” Flyers were posted around campus
calling her a “Jew hater,” and she has received torrents of abusive
emails and several death threats, including voicemails, as well as an
anonymous letter warning her to be careful about her personal safety.
“Careful when crossing intersections, careful when walking alone at
night,” said the letter, “accidents will happen.”</p>
<p>The harassment has also been institutionalized: Abdulhadi saw her
program’s budget and classes cut in response to Zionist groups’ pressure
campaigns against her, and an exchange with a Palestinian university
and academic delegations to Palestine canceled on the grounds that she
was meeting with “terrorists,” she said. Zionist groups advocated for an
academic award she received to be rescinded. And in 2017, the Lawfare
Project sued her, SFSU, and the California State University system,
among others, accusing Abdulhadi of promoting anti-Semitism and
unfavorably grading students who espoused Zionist views. A federal judge
<a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/548748b1e4b083fc03ebf70e/t/5d9d04bec3774d341e290b87/1570571497045/Dimissal%2BOrder%2B10-29-18.pdf">dismissed that lawsuit</a>
with prejudice in 2018. Critics also filed a complaint with the
Department of Education against UCLA, after Abdulhadi gave a lecture
there in which she compared Zionism to white supremacy.</p>
<p>Abdulhadi told The Intercept that the relentless attacks have been a
response to her efforts to build a university program about Palestinian,
Arab, and Muslim experiences. “They did not want to institutionalize
that,” she said.</p>
<p>“I have been subjected to these attacks for 13 years,” she added,
noting that SFSU has consistently failed to support her. “They are
basically trying to push me out because I keep speaking up.”</p></div><div><div><p><img src="https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2020/11/GettyImages-463525536.jpg?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1024&h=684" alt="Palestinian activist Leila Khaled addresses the crowd at the DOCC Hall in Orlando East, Soweto, South Africa on February 15, 2015." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="392" height="262"></p><p class="gmail-caption">Palestinian activist Leila Khaled addresses a crowd at the DOCC Hall in Orlando East, Soweto in South Africa on Feb. 15, 2015.</p>
<p class="gmail-caption">
Photo: Ihsaan Haffejee/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images</p></div></div><div><h3>Speech v. Terrorism</h3>
<p>Growing up as a Palestinian woman living under Israeli occupation,
Abdulhadi had deep admiration for Khaled long before meeting her. “All
of us wanted to be Leila Khaled; none of us wanted to be housewives,”
she said. Abdulhadi said that even though the canceled seminar was about
feminist narratives, Khaled welcomed challenges to her role in the
hijackings and difficult questions about valid means of resistance. “I
think that was something that they did not want people to see,” said
Abdulhadi. “It was very important not to let people get exposed to her
because then people will say, ‘Oh my God, we need to rethink everything.
We need to revise all the narratives about Palestine that we have.’”</p>
<p>Saeed, the University of Leeds student, who is also Palestinian,
called Khaled an “inspiration” and the “unapologetic face of the
Palestinian struggle.”</p>
<p>“She’s painted as this nonsensical, violent, radical extremist, but
no one talks about where is she from, what is her history, what is the
history of the Palestinian people,” he said. “Palestinians are not
allowed to speak about how they feel.”</p></div><blockquote><span></span><p>Regardless
of Khaled’s political affiliation, scholars argue that the ability to
freely discuss complex subjects like political violence is essential to
academic freedom.</p></blockquote><div><p>Regardless
of Khaled’s political affiliation, scholars argue that the ability to
freely discuss complex subjects like political violence is essential to
academic freedom. “Having her speak in a class at a university is a
perfectly legitimate event,” said Ross, adding that scholars of
terrorism routinely reference content by alleged terrorists as part of
their instruction. “This appeal to federal law was really baseless.”</p>
<p>Legal scholars agreed. “I think Zoom has taken a very far-reaching
and broad interpretation of the material support provisions — broader
than, as far as I am aware, any court has interpreted it,” said David
Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.</p>
<p>“Any attempt by the government to restrict academic freedom in this
manner would undoubtedly violate the First Amendment,” said Brian Hauss,
an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.</p>
<p>But the debate over Khaled has also reignited a broader, long-running
one over the notion of terrorism itself, the charged and shifting
meanings attributed to the word, and the question of whose prerogative
it is to label someone a “terrorist” in the first place. Ross pointed to
the example of Nelson Mandela, the late South African president and
Nobel Peace Prize winner, and his association with the African National
Congress, a political party which the U.S. listed as a foreign terrorist
organization until 2008, “long after Mandela was widely lauded as a
hero in this country.”</p>
<p>Schotten, who has written about terrorism in her scholarship, argued
that the word “terrorist” functions as a slur. “Accusations of
‘terrorism’ remain among the most powerful silencing tools that exists
in U.S. public discourse; it’s such a powerfully racist term that has a
whole set of unconscious associations,” she said. “It’s very
strategically smart that Zionists have seized upon that.”</p>
<p>Still, while critics of pro-Palestinian scholars have long accused
them of sympathizing with terrorists, Zoom’s argument that academic
speech was in violation of anti-terrorism laws marks a significant
escalation in the targeting of campus debate. The material support for
terrorism law has been criticized in the past as overbroad and racist.
But Zoom’s interpretation expands the law’s impact even further,
criminalizing speech and academic discourse.</p>
<p>“Zoom’s capitulation here is a terrible precedent for academic
freedom,” said Khalidi. “If we allow this to stand, I think it will
embolden certainly pro-Israel groups to make these kinds of accusations
and complaints against what’s happening in our classrooms. But it also
probably will embolden other groups.”</p></div></div></div></div>
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