Academics Have a Responsibility to Speak Out Against Palestine Repression

Part of the Series

Challenging the Corporate University

In times of crisis, academics must be public intellectuals. Why invest our lives in becoming experts in history, society, policy, science, or any other field of study and then remain isolated in an academic cocoon for safety or career advancement? The consequences of silence for our profession and our society are too great.

Recent events on college campuses have made it clear that academic freedom in the classroom is not safe if the public role of academics is unsafe. During the summer, while most faculty and students were off campus, university administrators across the country, without any faculty input, enacted new regulations to silence dissent on campus. Actions by both students and faculty will be sharply restricted. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing Indiana University over newly imposed time restrictions on political expression. The ACLU suit argues that the rules prohibit people from talking about politics to a friend or standing silently with a sign during restricted times.

At the start of the 2024-2025 academic year, more than 60 colleges and universities were being investigated by the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Approximately 80 percent were the result of reports by conservative and Zionist legal advocacy groups that claimed universities failed to sufficiently address antisemitic incidents and statements during protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza. The Education Department conducts investigations even when the complainant was not the victim of a campus incident. The editor of the conservative website Campus Reform submitted over 30 complaints charging campus antisemitism, leading to 13 investigations. Secondhand complaints by people uninvolved in any incident set the stage for further political repression on campus.

Following spring 2024 demonstrations by pro-Palestinian activists against Israel’s destructive attack on Gaza, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered an independent review of antisemitism on City University of New York (CUNY) campuses. The report’s conclusions — that CUNY was poorly prepared to address antisemitism by students and faculty on its campuses and new procedures were needed — were widely covered in the news media. What received significantly less attention was the finding that antisemitic incidents at CUNY were the result of a “small, vocal minority of individuals” and were not a widespread problem.

Also missing from news coverage was the CUNY report’s definition of unacceptable antisemitic speech and its attack on faculty. Governor Hochul and the authors of the report endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which includes “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” and “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” This standard has been widely used to qualify almost any criticism of Israel as antisemitic, including discussion of Israel as a European settler colony, its treatment of Palestinians, and charges that it is an apartheid state. The CUNY report argues that IHRA provides guidance that helps explain that antisemitic speech and conduct masquerading as criticism of Israel or Zionism is still antisemitism.

While professing to defend “First Amendment rights fully and without restriction” and the ability of faculty to expose students to “uncomfortable concepts,” the CUNY report asserted that when students and faculty, including tenured faculty, “engage in antisemitic conduct or conduct that creates an unsafe environment at CUNY, they must be held accountable,” a threat clearly intended to silence student and faculty voices. The report suggests that some faculty inflamed conflict on campus and warned faculty members not to engage in “implicit bias.” It recommends CUNY reevaluate its “faculty recruitment and hiring processes,” echoing the pressure on faculty to sign anti-communist loyalty oaths in the 1950s.

The situation is even worse at other universities and in other states. On October 8, 2023, the day after the deadly attack by Hamas on Israel, the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee released a statement blaming Israel for the “unfolding violence” because “millions of Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live in an open-air prison.” The response to the student statement was immediate and virulent. Politicians and university donors called for severe punishment of individuals and banning the group. Leaders of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard issued a statement calling on the University to denounce repugnant speech. University President Claudine Gay eventually resigned following a congressional hearing in which she was accused of insufficiently denouncing student protests against the Israeli assault on Gaza. But the point is that the initial attack on Israel by Hamas, no matter how horrific, did not happen in a vacuum, and there needed to be ways for students and faculty to examine the history of the region and express their views.

Muhlenberg College, a Lutheran school in Pennsylvania, suspended and then fired tenured anthropology professor Maura Finkelstein after she reposted a statement from a Palestinian American poet on Instagram. The original post argued: “Why should those genocide-loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat-out racist. Don’t normalize Zionism.” Finkelstein, who is both Jewish and pro-Palestinian, was denounced in a mass email campaign, in the local media and by politicians and a formal complaint was made against the university to the Department of Education. Whether you agree with her or not, the history of Zionism and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is something that should be discussed on college campuses and by faculty in their role as public intellectuals.

In Florida public universities, students are encouraged to rat out teachers for making statements a student considers divisive or inappropriate to the class. Tenured faculty are reviewed to enforce what and how they teach. Legal scholars are told that as public employees there are restrictions on where they can speak and what they can say, including at public hearings.

In the University of Virginia’s attack on teaching the truth about the history of the United States, student-led tours for incoming freshman were suspended because a right-wing alumni group accused the tours of alienating prospective students by presenting a “woke version” of the university’s history — including that Thomas Jefferson, the university’s founder, was an enslaver. Right-wing trustees appointed by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin now hold 13 of 17 seats on the board, giving them the power to redirect the university and shape the faculty.

Meanwhile, in response to protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, Concordia University in Montreal recently instituted a new policy prohibiting faculty from issuing collective political statements. And at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, the appointment of Israeli historian Raz Segal as faculty director of its Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies was rescinded because of pressure from a pro-Israel group that objected to his description of Israel as an apartheid and settler-colonial state guilty of genocide in its assault on Gaza.

Even the most accomplished faculty members are not immune to censorship. Princeton University professor of African American studies Ruha Benjamin recently received an $800,000 award from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. In its announcement of the award, the MacArthur Foundation praised professor Benjamin for “integrating critical analysis of innovation with attentiveness to the potential for positive change” and for her “grassroots activism” that helps shape “social policies and cultural practices.” The university’s media department interviewed Benjamin for an article celebrating her achievement. But the final article eliminated quotes where Benjamin discussed how she was under investigation by the university because of her support for student pro-Palestinian demonstrations last spring.

In 1967, during protests against the war in Vietnam, the University of Chicago adopted the Kalven Committee report on the “University’s Role in Political and Social Action,” embracing the idea of institutional neutrality as an academic goal. With the protests against the murder of George Floyd and the Israeli decimation of Gaza galvanizing campuses, Princeton University, Vanderbilt University and the Ohio State University adopted institutional neutrality policies. In an attempt to avoid continuing student protests, a number of universities are embracing the idea of “institutional neutrality,” refusing to take a position on any controversial or political issue, but there are problems with this position. Protesters of the illegal Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the war on Gaza are demanding that universities disclose their investments and divest their endowments from companies — like weapons manufacturers — doing business with Israel. Both divestment and continued investment can be seen as violations of neutrality. In addition, some donors, trustees, and state and federal officials, as we saw in congressional hearings about antisemitism on campus, want universities to silence discussion of Israel’s war crimes. That is definitely not “neutrality.” Administrators have been pressured to resign at Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, and students and faculty are intimidated by blacklists intended to block their employment. Trustees generally see their role as raising money and protecting a university’s brand, which can both come at the expense of academic freedom when students and faculty take positions at odds with wealthy donors.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) plays a crucial role in defending both academic freedom and academics as public intellectuals. It condemns newly revised administrative policies designed to prevent peaceful campus protests by students, faculty and allies, and accuses administrators of imposing “severe limits on speech and assembly that discourage or shut down freedom of expression” and that “undermine the academic freedom and freedom of speech and expression that are fundamental to higher education.” The AAUP denounces policies that “curtail the rights of faculty, who are entitled to freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as citizens. Institutions of higher learning should aim to foster an environment in which faculty, graduate employees, students, and other members of the campus community are free to discuss and debate difficult topics, inside and outside the classroom.”

Despite (or because of) the repressive conditions faculty are encountering in higher education, it is vital for academics to write for the public. Not only are conditions for intellectual work threatened, but as Victor Ray, a professor at the University of Iowa, wrote for Inside Higher Education, how can we remain silent when biodiversity is faced with mass extinctions, the impact of global warming may be irreversible, white supremacist violence is on the rise in the United States and neofascist movements are gaining ground in a number of countries?

I blog regularly, originally for Huffington Post and now mostly for Daily Kos, and I use the university email to circulate my writing to a list of over 5,000 people on a listserv that the university’s tech department helped me construct. When challenged — and I have been — I insist that my blogs and articles are part of my service to the profession and the broader community. The only condition that the university requested, a condition that I agreed to, is that my email messages include “Blogs, tweets, essays, interviews, and e-blasts present my views and not those of Hofstra University. To unsubscribe, reply UNSUBSCRIBE in subject.” I make a similar statement when I testify at public hearings or speak at community events.

No faculty member should feel compelled to temper what they say or write. Martin Luther King Jr. called the refusal to accept injustice as the norm and finding ways to challenge it “creative maladjustment.” Herbert Kohl argued that educators could apply the concept to reinterpret institutional rules in creative ways.

Former AAUP President Cary Nelson argued that while “academic freedom protects your right to say what you want,” it does not “protect you from professional consequences for doing so.” Nelson is right; when you exercise academic freedom, especially as a public intellectual, there are consequences, consequences that I accept. Adjuncts and untenured faculty risk losing their positions. Tenured faculty can be denied endowed chairs or appointments to semi-administrative positions.

Sadly, because of the power of money in U.S. politics and in higher education, in a very real sense, only academics as public intellectuals remain in a position to respond to concerted silencing. But know, when you speak, whether in the classroom or in a public forum, there will be consequences. Speak anyway and fight back. Let Ruha Benjamin of Princeton be a model! We have powerful allies. The American Association of University sanctioned the New College of Florida after DeSantis launched what they consider an “aggressively ideological and politically motivated” takeover and remake of the college. Also in Florida, three political science professors filed a federal lawsuit when the University of Florida attempted to prevent them from testifying on a legal challenge to the state’s voting laws arguing that the ban violated their First Amendment rights. Nationwide, the ACLU and the AAUP are combating censorship.