JVP Academic Council Condemns Carnegie Mellon University’s Censorship and Punishment of Anti-Zionist Student Speech

28 July 2026

Dear President Jahanian, Assistant Vice Provost Rosemeyer, and Chair Coulter:

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace condemns Carnegie Mellon University’s decision to curtail student speech, investigate students under the threat of expulsion, and ban these students and campus community members from campus under threat of arrest. These are punitive actions that are not justified by the facts: campus community members, including anti-Zionist Jewish students, participated in a protected university tradition of free speech to express their views on Zionism, which is a political ideology.

For over 100 years, The Fence at Carnegie Mellon has served as a site for free speech where students may write popular, unpopular, contested, or provocative statements. By quashing non-threatening speech that is not “severe or pervasive,” the Carnegie Mellon administration has turned its back on The Fence’s free speech tradition. We demand that Carnegie Mellon immediately drop the investigations, drop the campus bans, and restore free speech on campus. None of their statements threatens violence against any person or group, which is the stated basis for taking such drastic action.

Carnegie Mellon justifies these extreme measures by investigating whether the students’ opposition to Zionism has created a hostile campus environment for Jewish students. The U.S. Federal Government requires that Carnegie Mellon combat antisemitism and discrimination against “[a]ll students who are or are perceived to be Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, or Palestinian.” Carnegie Mellon’s actions, however, create a discriminatory environment for those Muslim, Palestinian, and other Arab students who are non-Zionist or anti-Zionist, as well as for anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jewish students and their allies. 

The students who wrote “Death to Zionism [not: “Death to Zionists”] Wherever we live is our country” in Yiddish on The Fence were, in fact, participating in a Yiddish tradition of opposing Zionism that is as old as the beginnings of Jewish Zionism in the 19th C. Early Yiddish-speaking anti-Zionists, such as many in the Jewish Bund and various religiously observant groups, have long advocated for the end of Zionism, a political movement, but certainly not for the deaths of their fellow Jews. Instead, anti-Zionist Jews have long sought to live free from antisemitism wherever they wish, in nations that guarantee equality for all.

Genocide and war crimes committed by the State of Israel with support from the United States are what prompt contemporary calls for “Death to Zionism.” The Jewish students under investigation align with younger Jews in the U.S., who increasingly recognize that Israel has committed genocide or war crimes and who are less willing to apply “Zionist” to themselves. They know that the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity and that the International Court of Justice is currently deliberating on whether Israel has committed genocide in the Gaza Strip. 

Bigotry thrives on the fiction that entire peoples think, act, or believe alike. The students’ statement on The Fence, “Forcing ideological conformity [Zionism] on Jews is antisemitic,” makes clear that Jews disagree about serious moral matters of moral concern. Carnegie Mellon is not investigating that statement, however, but is enacting the very behavior it criticizes, by assuming that the entire Jewish population identifies as Zionist. Conflating Jewish identity with Zionism not only denies the long tradition of Jewish anti-Zionism but fails to protect Jews by inviting collective blame against Jews for the actions of a state that claims disingenuously to represent their existential needs. By contrast, the statement on The Fence serves to protect Jews as well as Palestinians and their allies, in that it rejects the very logic of collective blame on which bigotry depends—a standard Carnegie Mellon itself has failed to uphold.

Carnegie Mellon University has an opportunity to contribute to world peace by encouraging free and open debate. But instead it appears intent on quashing serious and pressing discussions of the moral and political questions raised by Israeli state policy, Zionism, and its support. We beseech Carnegie Mellon to stand up with courage in the face of current Federal threats, to ensure a non-discriminatory environment for all students, and commit to safeguarding Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli lives.

Sincerely,

The Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace

Contact: Dr. Jonah Rubin, Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing, Jewish Voice for Peace.

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.