Jewish Academics Condemn Criminalization of Campus Protest
As Jewish academics, researchers, and higher education professionals, we condemn the growing trend of university administrators suppressing free speech and criminalizing protest for Palestine on college campuses across the country.
As the far right rises to power in the United States, protecting freedom of speech, academic freedom, and the right to dissent has never been more important. U.S. universities are aiding the far right’s authoritarian agenda by targeting students, faculty, and staff who speak out and protest against genocide and in defense of Palestinian human rights. What we have witnessed over the past year is a new McCarthyism that endangers students, faculty, staff and amounts to an assault on free speech and the right to protest all over the country; this repression is all the more ominous as it arises in the context of protests against a genocidal Israeli assault on Gaza that has taken the lives of tens of thousands of people and immiserated millions more.
Across the country university administrators are defending censorship, police suppression and violent and punitive attacks on students, faculty, and staff as means to secure Jewish “safety.” As scholars of antisemitism, 20th century fascism, peace and conflict studies, and Zionism, we are appalled by this instrumentalization of antisemitism to justify these attacks. Many of us are the descendants of people who endured egregious antisemitic violence including the Nazi Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, and pogroms. It is with this personal and scholarly perspective that we speak out against university administrations instrumentalizing histories of Jewish suffering to silence dissent, which itself is a betrayal of Jewish ethics. We take this opportunity to reiterate a point that should by now be obvious: that anti-Zionism, which encompasses both opposition to Israeli settler colonialism and also, commitment to Palestinian liberation, is not antisemitism. Nor is criticism of the Israeli military’s campaign of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and starvation in Gaza. From our perspective as Jewish academics and experts, anti-Zionism is, rather, an application of the Jewish values on social and economic justice.
We are specifically concerned that universities and colleges are punishing students, staff and faculty who condemn Israeli state violence and protest for Palestinian freedom, when we believe that engaged campus community members should be welcomed and thanked for bringing some of the most important political issues of our time to campus life. Beyond university disciplinary processes( which are themselves increasingly also deployed to quash legitimate speech), in some cases campuses have even outsourced disciplinary matters to state prosecutors and local police. This is alarming and must be stopped. The following are not exceptional cases but rather illustrate a growing and horrifying trend of punitive, even violent action taken by university administrations against those who speak out for Palestinian rights. (For a more extensive, yet still incomplete, list of campus repression incidents this academic year, see here.)
- This fall, four students were arrested at University of Rochester and charged with felonies for posting “Wanted” posters featuring University administrators and faculty who materially or rhetorically support the Israeli military. Despite the majority of the posters targeting non-Jewish individuals, the University decried the posters as “antisemitic.” Students face up to 7 years in jail and a $5,000 charge.
- This month, the NYPD arrested eight individuals nonviolently blocking access to a library at New York University calling on the University to divest from companies profiting from the Israeli military’s assault on Gaza. NYU has declared five professors and dozens of students “persona non grata,” barring them from entering NYU buildings. We stand with the AAUP, which has condemned NYU’s decision.
Police Actions against Gaza Solidarity Sukkahs at University of California, Berkeley and University of North Carolina, Charlotte
- Campus administrators called the Berkeley police department to dismantle a Gaza Solidarity sukkah erected by Jewish students seeking to celebrate their faith. After students rebuilt the sukkah, university administrators once again called the police for an early morning raid that completely broke apart the religious structure. At UNC-Charlotte, students were forced to dismantle their Gaza solidarity sukkah by administrators under threat of police violence. Students complied and stayed behind on the quads to socialize, study, and prepare for Shabbat. Administrators called in police and threatened the students with arrest.
Meanwhile, these same universities are ignoring real, material threats to the well-being of their students, faculty, and staff. To cite one example, the far-right Zionist group Betar is using artificial intelligence facial recognition technology to compile a list of students on visas participating in pro-Palestine protests for the Trump administration to use in its planned deportations. This is the same group that threatened vigilante violence against pro-Palestine protesters at UCLA.
With the incoming Trump administration, campus communities are bracing for increased state interventions including the targeting of undocumented students, the restriction of reproductive rights and bodily freedoms, as well as the criminalization of dissent, the freedom of assembly and affiliation, and protest. In this moment of potentially escalating state repression, we call on the administrations of universities and colleges across the country to ensure the safety of all their students, and to stop targeting students, faculty, and staff who exercise fundamental democratic rights when they speak out and protest in defense of Palestinian freedoms.
This is a pivot point in U.S. history and all of us are needed in the fight for our freedom of speech, academic freedom, and right to protest. If we are not actively engaged in stopping the violence and repression both in Palestine and in the United States, then we risk collaborating with them. Universities must respect the basic rights of our students, staff and faculty. Join us in defending free speech, the right to protest, and in taking action to halt the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.
JVP is a national, grassroots organization working towards Palestinian freedom and Judaism beyond Zionism. With roughly 750,000 members, supporters, and participants in the last year, JVP is the largest such organization in the world. The Academic Council is a network of scholars within JVP with a shared commitment to JVP’s core values.
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