Pro-Israel Politicians and Donors Assault Academic Freedom in America

Dec 14, 2023

Widespread student protests on the US campuses against Israel's genocidal war in Gaza are being labeled antisemitic by pro-Israel politicians and donors. They have now joined forces to intimidate the leadership of top American universities. President Liz MaGill of the University of Pennsylvania has already been forced out. Leaders at Harvard and MIT are also under threat. The Pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Brandeis Center have called on 200 college presidents to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups. Faculty members and instructors at several public and private colleges have either been placed on leave or fired for comments about the conflict, according to Bloomberg columnist Noah Feldman. These actions are a direct assault on the academic freedom in America, with long term negative consequences for the world's most admired institutions of higher education.

Pro-Palestine Protest at UCLA. Source: Daily Bruin

Academic Freedom:

Academic freedom is about free exchange of ideas on campus by students and faculty. It is considered essential for learning. Limiting this freedom hurts pursuit of excellence which has helped American colleges and universities become the envy of the world. This freedom must be defended by all Americans to maintain the excellence of institutions of higher learning in America.

US Congress:

GOP politicians see these pro-Palestine protests on US campuses as a fundraising opportunity. Harvard alumna Rep. Elise M. Stefanik ’06 (R-N.Y.) aggressively questioned presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT to score points with the Israel lobby. “At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment?” asked — to which Gay twice responded that “it depends on the context.”

GOP politicians like Stefanik are deliberately conflating slogans such as "From the River to the Sea, Free Palestine Free" with call for genocide of Jews. In fact, this chant is only about ending the long brutal Israeli Occupation of Gaza (along the Mediterranean Sea) and the West Bank (of the Jordan River).

Jewish Donors:

Several Jewish donors of major private sector universities have either cancelled their donations or threatened to do so over the Pro-Palestine protests. Investors Bill Ackman and Ross Stevens have been among the most vocal pro-Israel donors at Harvard and Penn. They both called for the ouster of the presidents of these universities over what they call "antisemitism" on campuses.

The aggressive behavior of Jewish donors is serving to reinforce the antisemitic stereotype of wealthy Jews. As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich put in a Guardian Op Ed: "As a Jew, I cannot help but worry, too, that the actions of these donors will fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose – based on the perilous stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world".

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion:

Some right-wing politicians and donors have attacked DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs as the cause of what they call "antisemitism" on campuses. These programs help bring in faculty and students from under-represented groups to colleges and universities that have traditionally been almost entirely white. They blame DEI because many new students from minority background tend to sympathize with Palestinians who they see as oppressed. Many of them see Israel as a "Western settler-colonialist oppressor par excellence", according to the Wall Street Journal.

Israel has long been seen as a settler colonial state . It was established by the displacement of the indigenous population of Palestinians and their replacement by Europeans, similar to places like America and Australia. This process of Israel's creation was endorsed by top British politicians like Winston Churchill.

“I do not admit that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger,” former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the Peel Commission in 1937, “even though he may have lain there for a very long time.” He denied that “a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the Black people of Australia,” by their replacement with “a higher grade race.”

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Riaz Haq

Glenn Greenwald

@ggreenwald
US's leading universities -- at the behest of the Trump administration -- are implementing radically expanded "hate speech" codes to ban a range of criticisms about Israel and individual Jews.

The IHRA is one of the gravest state attacks on Americans' campus free speech rights.

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1945497307710906536

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Glenn Greenwald

@ggreenwald
Here are just some of the ideas banned under the IHRA. The GOP-led Congress, with ample Dem support, already tried implementing this censorship code to protect Israel into US law.

It's rapidly becoming required hate speech law at universities. IHRA examples of "anti-Semitism."

https://x.com/ggreenwald/status/1945497834934956224

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Zachary Foster
@_ZachFoster
Columbia University has just adopted
@TheIHRA
definition of anti-semitism into its anti-discrimination policies.

Meaning, Columbia students can call every country in the world "a racist endeavor" except for one country.

They can call the United States, Germany, France, Hungary, China, Egypt or any other country in the world a "racist endeavor."

But if they call Israel a "racist endeavor" -- the same Israel described as an apartheid state by every major human rights organization in the world (e.g.
@ICAHD
in 2010,
@UNESCWA
in 2017,
@YeshDin
in 2020,
@AdalahCenter
in 2020,
@btselem
in 2021,
@hrw
in 2021,
@fidh_en
in 2021,
@alhaq_org
in 2022,
@Addameer
in 2022,
@AlMezanCenter
in 2022
@cacalqudsuni
in 2022
@AdvocacyJlac
in 2022,
@miftahpal
in 2022, the
@UN
in 2022, the
@ICJ_org
in 2022,
@DAWNmenaorg
in 2022,
@amnesty
in 2022) -- they would be in violation of Columbia University policy.

https://x.com/_ZachFoster/status/1945331723517952271

Jul 16
Riaz Haq

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Trita Parsi
@tparsi
It's difficult to fully fathom how terrible Hillary is on foreign policy.

But there is something else going on here as well.

For decades, the US foreign policy elite served as a filter - it decided what information and what analysis on foreign affairs would reach the American public. They called this filter "education."

All the ills of social media notwithstanding, it has nevertheless allowed Americans to bypass this filter and see the world uncensored and form their own opinions.

To Hillary and the establishment, that is terrible.

"We have done a miserable job teaching young people history," she says.

What she really means is that the establishment has done a miserable job forcing young Americans to only view the world through that filter - and slavishly reject all other versions of reality.

Because the education she talks about is still there. It's just that young Americans are no longer satisfied with being spoon-fed establishment information but want to find out for themselves.

And when the establishment lie that Israel is only defending itself is confronted with images of Israel committing genocide, the establishment narrative falls apart.

And it terrifies Hillary that Americans are finding out not only about this lie - but all the foreign policy lies they have been told.

Many of them by Hillary herself.

https://x.com/tparsi/status/1985198422110945300

Nov 3
Riaz Haq

The Congressional Black Caucus’s Silent Partnership With AIPAC
The influential group of lawmakers has damaged its reputation as “conscience of the Congress” by staying silent on the Gaza genocide.

ANTHONY CONWRIGHT

https://www.thenation.com/article/society/congressional-black-caucu...

More than a year has passed since the International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, issued its first order in the landmark case brought against Israel by South Africa, which contends that Israel has been committing acts of genocide in its war in Gaza. The ICJ found that “with respect to the right of the Palestinians in Gaza to be protected from acts of genocide…and the right of South Africa to seek Israel’s compliance,” South Africa’s case was “plausible.” Plausible: a restrained word that, in this context, fails to convey the harsh truth of the war Israel has been conducting. Palestinians are being starved, displaced, and slaughtered. More than 60,000 Palestinians have died, and 1.9 million are being brutally displaced, in a manner eerily similar to the dispossession of their forebears in the Nakba of 1948. By the end of September, according to a group of international food-aid organizations, more than 600,000 Palestinians would be experiencing famine, a completely preventable calamity marked by extreme food deprivation, acute malnutrition, and starvation-related deaths.

-----

By accepting AIPAC’s endorsements and money, CBC members are, to use a biblical turn of phrase, selling their birthright for a mess of pottage. AIPAC readily sets aside the political concerns of the CBC in its efforts, spending lavishly on campaigns for GOP members of Congress targeting measures on racial equality, which totaled more than $17 million in the 2023–24 cycle.

AIPAC—together with its two political action committees, AIPAC PAC and United Democracy Project—has one purpose: defending Israel at all costs. “We support candidates…based on one criteria [sic]—their commitment to strengthening the US-Israel relationship,” AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told Politico in 2024.

----------------

Jeffries and all seven members of the CBC’s leadership voted to send military aid to Israel; none cosponsored any bills or resolutions to limit such aid or block US arms sales. (Four of the six CBC members who currently serve on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have a similar record of eloquent silence on Israel’s relentless war on Gaza and US support for it.)

---------------

Two years into the Gaza genocide, there has been some progress: More than half of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus now support a ceasefire. But while a ceasefire is a step in the right direction, it will do nothing to end the occupation that Palestinians continue to suffer under. A ceasefire resolution that does not name genocide does not reflect a politics grounded in conscience—it is an expedient political cover of the lowest order.

------

This is the moment when the CBC can present itself as the conscience of Congress with honor—by leading the effort to guide this country through a key moral test of the 21st century. It’s true that demanding an end to US aid to Israel on the grounds that it’s advancing a genocide would likely expose legislators to yet more retaliation from AIPAC and the Israel lobby. But it’s equally true that the CBC must meet the genuine challenge of this historical moment. Adopting a position of unyielding defiance to Israel and its genocide in Gaza would lead both the CBC and the Democratic Party in a new direction that both organizations desperately need to follow. Instead of trying to wish away the atrocities committed by Israel, the Congressional Black Caucus could build and lead a multiracial coalition of resistance to a lobby that betrays the caucus’s mission, besieges its members, and injures its constituents. By resisting with a unified voice, the leaders of the CBC can make a difference. It is time to stand up.

yesterday

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Pro-Israel Politicians and Donors Assault Academic Freedom in America

Riaz Haq

Riaz Haq

Riaz Haq