Pro-Israel Politicians and Donors Assault Academic Freedom in America

[Riaz Haq]

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]

Sony Thang
@nxt888
🇺🇸JOHN MEARSHEIMER:

"I think once you get outside of the West, almost everybody thinks that the United States and the Europeans are morally bankrupt.

I mean, we are supporting—and I'm choosing my words carefully here—we are supporting a genocide in Gaza.

It's a genocide that people see on their computers and on their TVs on a daily basis.

So they know exactly what's going on here, and the hypocrisy is just quite stunning.

Because the West makes a big deal of the fact that it is morally virtuous, that we are, you know, an exceptional Nation—we stand taller, we see further.

And when you think about the fact that we're complicit in a genocide, I mean, it looks like hypocrisy in the extreme.

So I think outside the West, people understand full well that we are morally bankrupt.

And I think even inside the West, there are lots of people who have just begun to lose hope that we have our moral gyroscopes in place when it comes to dealing with the Middle East."

https://x.com/nxt888/status/1876218966496207177

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Al Jazeera English
@AJEnglish
US documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has accused powerful propaganda campaigns of concealing what human rights groups describe as genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, following Israel’s attacks on the besieged territory.

🔴 LIVE updates: http://aje.io/m1e3s5

https://x.com/AJEnglish/status/1876677193373565188

[Riaz Haq]

James Li
@5149jamesli
The TikTok ban has nothing to do with China, and everything to do with Israel.

Don’t believe me? Just watch. ⬇️

https://x.com/5149jamesli/status/1880888299080098163

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CAIR National
@CAIRNational
The latest sign that anti-Palestinian politicians and lobby groups in America have lost the argument: last night on #SNL, the audience loudly applauded Dave Chappelle as he celebrated Jimmy Carter's solidarity with the Palestinian people and called on President-Elect Trump to show empathy for displaced people, from the Palisades to Palestine.

https://x.com/5149jamesli/status/1880888299080098163

[Riaz Haq]

Caitlin Johnstone
@caitoz
To be clear, it's not some antisemitic conspiracy theory that US lawmakers voted to ban TikTok in order to shut down criticism of Israel among young people. They openly admitted that this was in fact what they were doing.

https://x.com/caitoz/status/1881105807011647541

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Lawmakers Say TikTok Ban Could Curb Pro-Palestinian Sentiment

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/lawmakers-tikto...

Now that a potential TikTok ban has been passed by Congress and signed by President Biden, some lawmakers are getting more comfortable saying what exactly the ban would help them accomplish. In recent days, at least two prominent Republican lawmakers have linked the possible ban to their concerns that content on the extremely popular social media app is too sympathetic to Palestinians under siege in Gaza.

On Friday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) hosted an interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken at this year’s McCain Institute Sedona Forum. Romney questioned Blinken as to why “PR” in favor of fomenting American support for Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza has been so bad.

“The way this has played out on social media has dominated the narrative,” Blinken said of the war. “You have a social media environment in which context, history, facts, get lost — and the emotion, the impact of images dominates.”

In a telling response, Romney noted that while “some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok,” if “you look at the posting on TikTok and the number of Palestinians relative to other social media sites, its overwhelmingly so on TikTok.”