Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 05, 2024
Israel Continues Deadly West Bank Incursion, Destroying Streets, Homes, Water & Health Infrastructure
Sep 05, 2024
In the occupied West Bank, at least five Palestinians were killed today in an Israeli airstrike on a car in the city of Tubas. A sixth Palestinian, 16-year-old Majed Fida Abu Zeina, was shot dead by Israeli forces in the Faraa refugee camp near Tubas. The Wafa news agency reports Israeli forces barred ambulances from reaching the boy and dragged his body out of the camp using a military bulldozer.
On Wednesday, mourners held a funeral procession near Jenin for a Palestinian girl killed by an Israeli sniper. This is the girl Lujain’s father, Osama Musleh.
Osama Musleh: “The soldiers are surrounding the town. I tried to save her. I tried to do something, but I couldn’t. The army is surrounding our area. I called for ambulance. They arrived late because a snipper shot toward them. … She is 16 years old. The only thing she did is she looked from the window, and the soldier saw her and shot her, one bullet that targeted her forehead.”
At least 19 people have been killed in Jenin since last week, when Israel launched its largest West Bank offensive in two decades. Jenin’s Governor Kamal Abu al-Rub said Israeli armored bulldozers have razed 70% of Jenin’s streets, destroying more than a dozen miles of water and sewage pipes along with electrical and communication cables. Jenin’s main public hospital has been locked down, and 4,000 residents of Jenin have been forced from their homes at gunpoint.
Gov. Kamal Abu al-Rub: “The situation in the areas which are under siege is bad. The Israeli army is preventing food, water, ambulances and journalists from reaching these besieged areas, so we don’t know what is happening in the areas which they consider to be military closed areas. We are getting lots of calls for help. … This invasion is the worst, largest and most painful to Palestinian people because the Israeli army is destroying the infrastructure, which means a blow to the local economy in Jenin.”
Israel’s Genocide in Gaza Continues as New Leak Details How Netanyahu Torpedoed Ceasefire Deals
Sep 05, 2024
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli attacks have killed at least 18 Palestinians since Wednesday. One assault on a tent encampment for displaced Palestinians killed four people near Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza. The strike destroyed dozens of tents and wounded many others, including children. In southern Gaza, medical workers have begun vaccinating tens of thousands of Palestinian children in the city of Khan Younis against polio — the second stage of a U.N.-led polio eradication effort.
Meanwhile, Hamas has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of deliberately undermining efforts to forge a ceasefire and hostage release deal by refusing to withdraw Israeli troops from the Philadelphi Corridor along Gaza’s border with Egypt. This comes as newly published documents show how Netanyahu and Israeli negotiators purposefully prolonged Israel’s assault on Gaza by making new demands during ceasefire talks. The documents published by the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth also reveal that three of the six hostages found dead in Gaza last weekend were due for release under a ceasefire agreement drafted in May.
U.S. Criticizes Netanyahu’s Failure to Reach Ceasefire But Continues to Arm His War on Gaza
Sep 05, 2024
President Biden said Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not doing enough to reach a ceasefire and hostage release deal. On Tuesday, a group of more than two dozen rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Refugees International, sent the Biden-Harris administration a letter highlighting, “International and U.S. law, as well as your administration’s policies … require suspending weapons transfers to the Israeli government.”
Portland, Maine, to Divest from Israeli Companies Tied to Israel’s Assault on Palestinians
Sep 05, 2024
The Portland City Council in Maine unanimously voted to divest all funds from companies complicit in Israeli human rights violations and war crimes against Palestinians. Organizers say Portland is the fourth U.S. city, and the first on the East Coast, to adopt such a divestment resolution, which comes after intense campaigning from rights groups including Maine Coalition for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace Maine.
“From the River to the Sea”: Meta Says Palestinian Solidarity Slogan Is Not Hate Speech
Sep 05, 2024
Meta has ruled the phrase “from the river to the sea” is not hate speech. Pro-Israel groups have accused people who use the long-standing rallying cry for Palestinian liberation of being antisemitic, and attempted to shut down speech promoting Palestinian rights on social media. But Meta’s Oversight Board ruled “from the river to the sea” is “often used as a political call for solidarity, equal rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people, and to end the war in Gaza.”
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Northwestern Suspends Journalism Professor Steven Thrasher After Gaza Solidarity Protest
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 05, 2024
We speak with journalist, author and academic Steven Thrasher, the chair of social justice reporting at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He was singled out by name during a congressional hearing about pro-Palestine protests on college campuses earlier this year, with one Republican lawmaker calling him a “goon” for protecting students in an encampment from violent arrest. Northwestern filed charges against Thrasher for obstructing police that were later dropped, but students returning to Northwestern for the fall term will not see him in their classrooms because he has been suspended as Northwestern says he is under investigation. In his first interview about the affair, Thrasher tells Democracy Now! that he stands by his actions and that he has “received no due process” from his employer. He says the university has previously celebrated him, including in “glowing” job reviews and by publicizing his work. “What they don’t like is that I am now applying the same social justice journalism principles that I’ve applied to race and that I’ve applied to LGBTQ people, to COVID and HIV, that I was now applying those to Palestine,” says Thrasher.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York, joined with Juan González in Chicago.
As students return to school for the fall, we spend the rest of the hour looking at how university administrators continue to crack down on Gaza solidarity student protests and professors. An op-ed in The Chronicle of Higher Education called it a, quote, “assault on the truth.”
We begin with a guest who last joined us in May after he was attacked by name during a congressional hearing about pro-Palestine protests on college campuses. As Republican Congressmember Jim Banks grilled Northwestern University President Michael Schill, he singled out Northwestern University journalism professor Steven Thrasher, who had been to the Gaza solidarity encampments at Northwestern in Chicago and other schools as a professor and as a journalist.
REP. JIM BANKS: Steven Thrasher, who’s one of the goons in the photo behind me, he’s a professor of journalism at Northwestern. He and several of your faculty members locked arms. They scuffled with police officers, blocked the police officers on your campus from doing their job. Do they continue to teach students at Northwestern University after this embarrassing incident?
MICHAEL SCHILL: So, I will not comment on individual faculty members, nor on matters —
REP. JIM BANKS: President, is it — is it your decision, your decision alone, to allow those professors to continue to teach students on your campus?
MICHAEL SCHILL: We believe in due process at the — at Northwestern University.
REP. JIM BANKS: You believe in due process except for —
MICHAEL SCHILL: We will follow —
REP. JIM BANKS: — the decision that you made about Coach Fitzgerald.
MICHAEL SCHILL: We followed the contract. That was —
REP. JIM BANKS: Had your cake and eat it, too.
MICHAEL SCHILL: — due process. We had an investigation. But I don’t — I’m not going to go on and on about that.
AMY GOODMAN: After this congressional hearing, Northwestern filed charges against professor Steven Thrasher for allegedly obstructing police at the encampment, which Cook County prosecutors dropped. Since then, Professor Thrasher has continued to speak out. But students at Northwestern will not see him in their classrooms as they return to campus, because he has been suspended with pay as Northwestern says he’s under investigation. He’s joining us today in New York to publicly speak about this for the first time.
Steven Thrasher is an acclaimed journalist and author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. His forthcoming book is called The Overseer Class: Representation as Repression. He is at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, chair of social justice in reporting.
Professor Thrasher, welcome back to Democracy Now! Why don’t you explain in your own words what has happened to you since the Gaza protests?
STEVEN THRASHER: Thanks for having me, Amy.
So, at the Gaza encampment, as you saw in the video, I was one of a number of professors and graduate students who surrounded our students to try to make sure that nobody hurt them. The day before, there had been horrific violence at several other universities where we had seen that students had been brutally hurt by university police.
And I was on Democracy Now! and did some therapy and thought things were kind of going OK by the time that I finished the school year and planned to go offline for the summer to work on my next book. I was out of the country for the whole summer. And actually, the day that I had left the United States and landed in Europe, I found out that the Northwestern police wanted to talk to me, and eventually found out that I was one of four people that they’re pressing charges against. Now, it was really disturbing. This was many months after the fact. Like many other situations on other campuses, most of the four of — all four of us had been very outspoken, who are being charged, and most of us were LGBTQ people. And we found out that they are pressing these charges. And the state of Illinois had thrown out all kinds of other cases. They threw out our case, as well.
But the day that I found out that the state of Illinois was throwing out the charges, I also found out that my fall classes had been canceled and that I was not going to be allowed to teach in the fall pending an investigation. So, this was, of course, very upsetting, particularly — and this is something I’m hoping that Professor Franke might speak about, as well — particularly because my classes were very LGBTQ classes. I’m the Daniel Renberg chair of social justice in reporting with a focus on the LGBTQ community. And I also was teaching a class on LGBTQ recording methods and viruses and viral media. So, my classes were canceled. I’m the only person who teaches LGBTQ classes. I had to let eight different people know, who I had contracted to be a grading assistant, to come in as guest speakers, to do tours, who were all LGBTQ journalists and alum. I had to let them know that they wouldn’t be working, as well. And, of course, it was a huge disappointment to our LGBTQ students.
It was really odd to hear President Schill talk about due process, because I have received no due process in being taken out of the classes. I’m still being paid, but I did not get the fair due process. I was told that I would not be allowed until investigations into complaints against me, to intemperate social media usage, and into my beliefs around objectivity in journalism had been investigated.
And this is all very strange, because I’m going through the tenure process. My mid-tenure review had just been done last year. Like all faculty, it was put off for a year because of COVID, on my timeline. But I got a glowing mid-tenure review. And my endowed chair, the Daniel Renberg chair of social justice in reporting, had just been renewed in October. The university has praised and done a lot of PR about the work that I do around objectivity in journalism and social justice journalism. They put me on the cover of the alumni magazine just the year before.
What they don’t like is that I am now applying the same social justice journalism principles that I’ve applied to race and that I’ve applied to LGBTQ people, to COVID and HIV, that I was now applying those to Palestine. And so, they don’t like that. And that the Congress is putting pressure on them to put pressure on me, they’re aiding that.
So, it’s a really, really dangerous and sad situation. I’ll be fine personally no matter what happens, but the idea that a social justice journalism professorship cannot talk about one of the most important social justice measures — issues of our time, the genocide in Gaza, that a journalism professor can’t talk about a issue and a situation where 171 of our colleagues have been murdered, journalists in Gaza, that we can’t talk about these things, that we can’t take a stand for free expression and the safety of our students on campus as they’re becoming more militarized, all of this is, of course, extremely upsetting.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Steve Thrasher, what are the specific charges against you? And also, what has been the reaction of your fellow faculty members?
STEVEN THRASHER: I really haven’t talked — I mean, this is the first time that I’m really talking about it publicly. I made a commitment to myself that I would finish my next book and not get derailed from that. And I finished it on Tuesday, so now I’m talking to you on Thursday.
I don’t want to get too much into the specifics, but one of them is called “complaints against you.” This is a very vague thing that’s come up all over the country, that they’ll say that there are complaints. And the complaints, which I’ve seen, which there’s no merit to, those complaints are very much at odds with what was written up for me in my mid-tenure review, in which my mid-tenure review, Dean Whitaker wrote that I go above and beyond the call for my students. And my endowed chair, which was also renewed, I got very specific praise about being a leader in the field of journalism education. And I’ve received awards for my mentorship of Northwestern students. So, none of that really bears much on the complaints.
Also, I was told about my use of social media, which is something that I have done, with a lot of passion at times, but with part of my journalism practice, to speak about issues that are important to me. And in the Northwestern University magazine article that was about me when my book came out, they actually highlighted, in a very positive way, the way that I use social media. Again, I don’t think they like me using the tools that I’ve used to talk about HIV, LGBTQ issues and race issues to be applying it towards Gaza, because all of the complaints about my social media are about interactions that I’ve had with people about Palestine.
And the third one is an incredibly ridiculous thing to be complaining about. It’s about my commitment to the idea of objectivity in journalism. And this is something I’ve talked about on Democracy Now! before. It was part of what my application and my job talk when I was hired as the Daniel Renberg chair of social justice in reporting, and it’s been a cornerstone of the books I teach, like Lewis Wallace’s The View from Somewhere, guests I’ve brought onto campus.
Part of my practice is that I don’t believe in the idea of faux objectivity in journalism. I do believe in rigor and putting a lot of effort into your work, and that viewers, listeners and readers have a right to know the positionality of the person reporting the news to them, because that gives them a frame of reference for how they can think about it critically. But this idea that somehow I am not objective enough, when my job is focusing on social justice in journalism and LGBTQ issues, and when I had just been very glowingly reappointed for doing my job and that the university has very much embraced my book and many of the articles I’ve written that come from a position of social justice, is really a ridiculous thing. The field of journalism education, like all academic disciplines, has ways that people argue about the central tenets of that discipline. One of them is objectivity. People have different feelings about it. I’ve made mine clear. But this is not something that should be, you know, any way disqualifying for someone who has a professorship that is focused on social justice issues.
AMY GOODMAN: And before we turn to another professor, this one at Columbia University School of Law in New York, Steven Thrasher, your message to the returning academic community, to professors and students alike?
STEVEN THRASHER: My message is we have nothing to be ashamed of. We have nothing to be afraid of. We are doing something that is very important.
And back in October — I’m not yet tenured. I’m filing for tenure, and I plan to file for tenure on schedule this fall, because I think that my record deserves to let me have that hearing. But back in October, after everything started getting really, really bad in Gaza, I made a video asking, you know, “Should untenured professors like myself talk about this?” And I said, “Absolutely,” because it’s a moral issue. If you become tenured trying to stay silent through this stuff, you’ll become the kind of professor you don’t want to be.
And even though I have been — I have been physically beaten up by the police of my university, I’ve been interrogated in front of Congress, I’ve been threatened with jail, and now I am suspended with pay and not allowed to teach, this is the work that we need to do in these very difficult moments. This is a genocide. This is something that is having an enormous impact not just on many of us in the United States, but on 600,000 students who have lost their ability to get to school in Gaza, on 14,000 children who have been killed in Gaza.
And so, what we have to do as educators is teach. And even if I don’t — I hope I go back into the classroom at Northwestern, but even if I don’t, maybe the teaching that I have to do is what I’m doing right now. Maybe all of us as educators right now, the most important teaching we can do is to teach our students that there are things that are morally important that we have to speak about, and that we have to show our students that they are worth taking the consequences. But, ultimately, we are going to be OK, because what we are doing is something that is righteous.
AMY GOODMAN: Steven Thrasher is chair of social justice in reporting at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in Chicago, author of The Viral Underclass.
Next up, we’ll be joined by Columbia University professor Katherine Franke, now under investigation after an interview she did on Democracy Now! Stay with us.
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“Campus Has Become Unrecognizable”: Columbia Prof. Franke Faces Firing After DN Interview on Gaza
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 05, 2024
Columbia University law professor Katherine Franke last appeared on Democracy Now! in January to discuss an attack on Columbia’s campus targeting pro-Palestinian student activists with a foul-smelling liquid that led to multiple hospitalizations. Following her interview, Franke now faces termination after two Columbia professors filed a complaint against her claiming she had created a hostile environment for Israeli students; she also became a target for Republican lawmakers.
Franke joins Democracy Now! to discuss the campaign against her, the ongoing crackdown on pro-Palestine activism at Columbia and more. “There’s an overreaction by the university, a weaponization of the disciplinary system against students and faculty in ways that in my over 40 years at Columbia I have never seen,” she says.
We are also joined by attorney Kathleen Peratis, who is representing Franke along with the Center for Constitutional Rights after she quit her former law firm, Outten & Golden, because it dropped Franke as a client, saying she was too controversial. “What happened at Outten & Golden is the kind of thing that’s happening all over,” says Peratis.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan Gonzalez.
As we continue our look at the academic war on dissent on college campuses, we’re joined now by another acclaimed professor, who has long been outspoken in her support of Palestinian rights and could lose her job at the Columbia University School of Law after she was denounced in a congressional hearing and more. Columbia University School of Law professor Katherine Franke is a member of the executive committee of the Center for Palestine Studies, on the board of Palestine Legal.
In April, then-president of Columbia University Minouche Shafik was grilled at a congressional hearing on allegations of antisemitism on campus by New York Republican Congressmember Elise Stefanik.
REP. ELISE STEFANIK: Let me ask you about Professor Katherine Franke from the Columbia Law School, who said that all Israeli students who have served in the IDF are dangerous and shouldn’t be on campus. What disciplinary action has been taken against that professor?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: I agree with you that those comments are completely unacceptable and discriminatory.
REP. ELISE STEFANIK: But I’m asking you: What disciplinary action has been taken?
MINOUCHE SHAFIK: She has been spoken to by a very senior person in the administration, and she has said that that was not what she intended to say.
REP. ELISE STEFANIK: Do you see the concern that speaking to these professors is not enough, and it’s sending a message across the university that this is tolerated, these antisemitic statements from a position of authority in professors in the classroom is tolerated?
AMY GOODMAN: That was in April. Two Columbia University professors then claimed professor Katherine Franke had created a hostile environment for Israeli members of the Columbia community after she appeared on Democracy Now! in January to discuss a chemical attack on pro-Palestinian student activists at Columbia. Let’s go to some of that interview with Professor Franke.
KATHERINE FRANKE: Columbia has a program. It’s a graduate relationship with older students from other countries, including Israel. And it’s something that many of us were concerned about, because so many of those Israeli students, who then come to the Columbia campus, are coming right out of their military service. And they’ve been known to harass Palestinian and other students on our campus. And it’s something the university has not taken seriously in the past. But we’ve never seen anything like this. And the students were able to identify three of these exchange students, basically, from Israel, who had just come out of military service, who were spraying the pro-Palestinian students with this skunk water. And they were disguised in keffiyehs so that they could mix in with the students who were demanding that the university divest from companies that are supporting the occupation and the war, and were protesting and demanding a ceasefire. So we know who they were.
AMY GOODMAN: So, a number of the pro-Palestinian students who were hit with that chemical spray were hospitalized. After this interview, Columbia professor Franke now faces termination after two Columbia professors filed a complaint against her with Columbia’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. She’s now represented by attorney Kathleen Peratis and the Center for Constitutional Rights. For decades, Kathleen Peratis was a senior partner at Outten & Golden. And she, along with the law firm, represented Professor Franke. But Peratis resigned from the law firm a few weeks ago, following the firm’s sudden decision to terminate Franke as a client, saying she was too controversial. They’re both joining us now.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Professor Franke, let’s begin with you. You’re facing termination at Columbia School of Law?
KATHERINE FRANKE: It’s possible, Amy. That’s on the table and has never been ruled out. And in the climate in which we are now living, particularly at Columbia, things that used to be routine and expected are not happening. There’s an overreaction by the university, a weaponization of the disciplinary system against students and faculty in ways that in my 40 — over 40 years at Columbia I have never seen. So, I — inshallah, that will not happen; I will not be terminated. And I fully expect I’ll be exonerated and found — as your audience just saw, I have not said antisemitic things about Israeli students. But it’s hard to know what’s going to happen. We have a new administration, a new president. I’m hoping for the best with her, but I don’t know.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Kathleen Peratis, if you can explain what happened? You’ve been representing Katherine Franke, your law firm, Outten & Golden, which you’ve been a senior partner at for many years.
KATHLEEN PERATIS: Katherine became a client in February shortly after the charges were filed against her, internal charges, frivolous charges, in my opinion. But in these days, frivolous charges are weaponized. We’ve been processing it, negotiating, engaging with the investigators. And as Katherine became more and more high-profile, more and more controversial, as our institutions have been failing us all over the place, my law firm, I believe, also failed us by deciding that Katherine was too controversial, and suddenly, over my objection, terminated their representation.
AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re still representing her?
KATHLEEN PERATIS: I am, but my firm isn’t.
AMY GOODMAN: And you’re not with your firm anymore?
KATHLEEN PERATIS: I quit.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re a Jewish attorney.
KATHLEEN PERATIS: I’m Jewish.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Professor Franke, I wanted to ask you — you mentioned that you’ve been a part of the Columbia community now for more than 40 years. Could you compare the climate right now at universities like Columbia to past uprisings of students or protests in previous decades?
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, Juan, you know Columbia and its history and proud history of being a place where students protested around a wide range of current events, whether it was during your era in the '68 protests against Vietnam or racism on campus or domestically, or, more recently, students have protested around divestment, the university's divestment from fossil fuels, creating a Black studies department, the Iraq wars, DACA, you know, the ending of DACA by the Trump administration, South African apartheid. Columbia has always been a platform for students to engage the world, learn about the world, be critical analysts of what’s happening in their world, both in the classroom and outside the classroom.
And what we’re seeing now is that the university will no longer tolerate protests and critical engagement. I think it’s important to recognize the problem here is not just what’s happening in, like, the images you’re seeing here of protests outside the buildings, but they’re also regulating what we can do inside the buildings. They’re monitoring our syllabi. I have a colleague who was fired because he had the nerve to bring a settler-colonial analysis to the Israeli project, the occupation of Palestinians — something that is done routinely in academic settings. He was told, “No, that’s a step too far. We can’t talk that way about Israel or Palestine.” And he was terminated. So, not only is the university allowing itself to be weaponized by the right-wing conservative politicians in — excuse me, in D.C. in ways that are squelching and then punishing student protest, but the faculty are now experiencing it, as well.
And I have to say, this is what I fear for this fall, is a new kind of surveillance, a new kind of chilling of how we teach our classes. And then the students who are in our classes actually go to the university and drop a dime, if you will, but complain about us, because we have the nerve to mention Palestine in our classes. And I know several colleagues who are under investigation right now for the fact that they incorporated into their courses readings that had to do with Israel-Palestine. And the students said, “Oh, that made me feel uncomfortable, and therefore I’m going to file a complaint against you that you are antisemitic.” Almost all of these professors are Jewish professors who actually are experts in things like the Holocaust, in things like collective trauma. So, the readings were relevant.
But, Juan, our campus has become unrecognizable. I want to invite you back to spend some time on campus and for you to see how it has transformed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d also like to ask Kathleen Peratis if you could share with us some more of what happened within your law firm, the idea that a powerful law firm even is now afraid to tackle issues related to individuals accused of some wrongdoing in terms of Palestine.
KATHLEEN PERATIS: I don’t want this to be about me or my law firm. I want it to be about Katherine. But what happened at Outten & Golden is the kind of thing that’s happening all over. My firm prides itself on representing employees who get in trouble at work, accused of doing things that they didn’t do. That’s exactly what’s happening with Katherine. But because of what’s happening in Israel-Palestine, even my law firm is ditching clients who have a righteous claim. And it’s sad. It’s disappointing. And unfortunately, as I said, our institutions are failing us.
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How U.S. College Administrators Are “Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests”
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
September 05, 2024
As the fall term gets underway for students across the United States, we speak with journalist and academic Natasha Lennard about how college administrators are attempting to quash Gaza solidarity actions following mass protests at campuses across the country in the spring. One example is New York University, which recently updated its student policy to make criticisms of Zionism potentially punishable under its anti-discrimination rules. “It’s extremely dangerous,” says Lennard, who teaches at The New School. “It performs de facto apologia for Israel, and to have that put into writing by a university so clearly is just open for further abuses.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring into this conversation another professor, Natasha Lennard, columnist at The Intercept, associate director of the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism Program at The New School, not far from Columbia University. Her most recent piece, “College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests.” Can you put Professor Thrasher and Professor Franke’s experience in a broader context of the universities from here in New York, NYU, to other universities around the country?
NATASHA LENNARD: Absolutely. And thank you. It’s lovely to be back. And I firstly want to say thank you to Professor Franke and Professor Thrasher for being among the professors who refuse to be silenced in this moment of what is widely being called a “new McCarthyism.” And I think that’s an accurate description.
Their cases are not unusual, and it is indeed sad, and it is indeed disappointing, indeed no less than ghoulish. We are having, both de facto and through policy, both in terms of new regulations and student conduct guides coming through for this semester, as well as punitive actions against students and professors, a real reification of the claim that Israel critical speech and pro-Palestinian speech should count under violations of Title VI nondiscrimination law and regulations and policy in universities. What that does is align university policy with the right-wing agenda of Congress and right-wing lawmakers who follow in the footsteps of a right-wing Israeli-U.S. consensus.
And I think if a university is not a place where that can be critically challenged, especially at a time of genocide, when there are no universities left standing in Gaza — which we cannot forget — and the concerns of our academy is the speech of professors speaking out for academic freedom and speaking out for the liberation of an occupied people, we’re in very dark times indeed.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Natasha Lennard, you write in your piece in The Intercept that, quote, “Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU” — New York University — “guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include 'Zionists' and ’Zionism’”?
NATASHA LENNARD: Yes, this is a very exemplary, in the worst of ways, document that was just released by the administration at NYU. It is a new updated guide of student conduct about nondiscrimination and harassment. It goes further than any document I have seen in asserting that Zionism, when used critically, should or at least readily can be understood as — and I quote the document — a “code word.” It doesn’t say that occasionally by antisemites that Zionism is used as a code word. It takes that as a given.
So, that is — to clarify, that is a student conduct guide, very poorly written, very open to misuse, that is asserting that the political ideology founded in the 19th century of the ethnostate of Israel being a Zionist project, that that should be considered part of the protected class of Jewish identity, religion and ethnic and shared ancestry. That is what we’re seeing in attempts of statehouses nationwide to attach Zionism, the political ideology, to the protected class of Jewish identity. It’s extremely dangerous. It performs de facto apologia for Israel. And to have that put into writing by a university so clearly is just open for further abuses and an escalation of the sort of repression we’ve already seen.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Franke?
KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I teach a class on citizenship and nationality in Israel and Palestine. And we begin with a critical look at the concept of Zionism. Of course, it was advanced as a place, as an idea, about the safety of the Jewish people being located in Mandate Palestine, but there were plenty of Jewish people at the time who said, “This is actually a horrible idea from the perspective of the safety of Jewish people, because what it says is the Jews all belong in Israel and nowhere else, not in Europe, not in the United States, nowhere else. And so this will lead to more violence, more expulsions, more antisemitic pogroms, if we lean in too much to the idea that Jews belong primarily and especially in Israel.” And those were critiques coming from Jews, again, themselves.
So, if we are not allowed to talk about that anymore in universities, what we’ve done is surrendered the very idea of the university itself. And that is so much what troubled us about Minouche Shafik, our president — former president of Columbia’s testimony in Congress, and some of those other presidents who came, who were called before Congress, is they not only did not put up a robust defense of the idea of a university where we teach students how to be critical thinkers in such a critical time, but they actually joined in to the criticism of the university. My president did not stand up for any one of us, nor did Professor Thrasher’s at Northwestern.
And this is part of what concerns me, is that our universities are places now where we could not have a protest and say things that are now being said in Tel Aviv by Israelis. The protests that are happening there this week, if they took place on Columbia’s campus, our students would be expelled or charged with very serious disciplinary violations. This is where we’ve come. It’s impossible to talk about the kinds of things that, Amy, in your setup, of the just horrible things that are happening right this week in Jenin, in Gaza — we can’t talk about that at Columbia. That’s part of what concerns me is, is that we don’t know our history, and these new policies are keeping us from learning it.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Natasha Lennard, we just have about 30 seconds, but you’ve noted that universities are not only facing attacks from Congress, they’re also being subjected to lawsuits all around the country. Could you talk about that briefly?
NATASHA LENNARD: Yes, we’ve seen a series of litigation, including at NYU, Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, brought by often unnamed students and faculty, often very frivolous suits that universities are forced to answer to nonetheless, and then, through settlements and often nonpublic agreements, are then forced to change policy, often leading to the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to have to leave it there, but we’re going to continue this discussion over time. We’ll link your piece, Natasha Lennard, “College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests.” She’s at The New School. Columbia Law professor Katherine Franke, Kathleen Peratis, civil rights lawyer, and Steven Thrasher. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.