Education – Informed Comment

Protesting MIT’s Disciplining of Grad for pro-Palestine Activism and Advocacy

Committee on Academic Freedom — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 05:06:55 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –

Sally Kornbluth

President

Dear President Kornbluth and Colleagues:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the recent disciplinary action by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) against one of its doctoral students, Prahlad Iyengar, for speech activities protected by the university’s own free expression and academic freedom policies, which generally align with the First Amendment. Our concern is further heightened by MIT’s record of sanctioning Iyengar for other pro-Palestine activism since the spring 2024 semester as well as its repression of pro-Palestine speech and assembly on campus since 7 October 2023.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

On 1 November 2024, the MIT administration sent Iyengar a letter informing him that he had been banned from campus and from accessing any building owned or leased by MIT, and prohibited from contacting several members of the MIT community. In taking these measures against Iyengar without affording him due process, the university cited two incidents that it claimed constituted violations of MIT policies. The first involves an email message that Iyengar sent on 24 October 2024 to fellow graduate students working in the lab of MIT Professor Daniela Rus. The message sought to explain the context behind a pro-Palestine protest directed at Professor Rus’s lab two days earlier. In his email, Iyengar described the protest as a response to Professor Rus’s decision to take on “projects sponsored by the Ministry of Defense of Israel,” notwithstanding Israel’s “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza” and other actions in the Middle East. In his message Iyengar made clear that he did not intend to “shame or intimidate” the email’s recipients, but rather wanted to “offer support” and a “safe space” for those students who wanted “to brainstorm ways” to address “the pressing issue[s]” created by Professor Rus’s work. While MIT asserts that this email message violated its harassment policy, it is hard to see how it can be reasonably characterized as intimidating, hostile or abusive to anyone. The fact that Mr. Iyengar sent just one email message offers further evidence that his action can be deemed neither “severe” nor “pervasive,” as is required by the university’s definition of “harassment.”

The second incident which MIT has cited to justify its sanctioning of Iyengar involves an article that he wrote and published in the MIT-recognized student zine Written Revolution. The article, titled “On Pacifism,” is an extended scholarly discussion of the place of pacifism in pro-Palestine activism. While MIT claims that the article “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT,” Iyengar neither calls for violence nor suggests that students at MIT engage in violent activity. MIT has also expressed concerns about the article’s “inclusion of symbolism from a U.S.-designated terrorist organization containing violent imagery,” referring to two images (out of four in the article) that feature the emblem of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-government designated terrorist organization. MIT has not explained how the inclusion of such images violates relevant MIT policy by threatening or endangering any person on campus, as the policy specifies; nor does the article’s content provide any objective basis for concluding that any person could be threatened, intimated or coerced by it.

Notwithstanding MIT’s suggestions to the contrary, Iyengar’s email message and article – indisputably forms of expressive activity – fall squarely within his right to free expression and academic freedom, as articulated by MIT’s own policies and rules. For example, in its Statement on Freedom of Expression and Academic Freedom the university proudly affirms that, “with a tradition of celebrating provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, MIT unequivocally endorses the principles of freedom of expression and academic freedom.” The statement goes on to note that “[f]ree expression promotes creativity by affirming the ability to exchange ideas without constraints” and that it is “enhanced by the doctrine of academic freedom, which protects both intramural and extramural expression without institutional censorship or discipline.” MIT’s Values Statement reiterates these principles, proclaiming that “because learning is nourished by a diversity of views, we cherish free expression, debate, and dialogue in pursuit of truth….”

While some members of the MIT community may have been offended or distressed by Iyengar’s email message and article, according to the university’s own policies those feelings cannot be used to deprive Iyengar of his right to express his opinions on matters of public and scholarly concern. Indeed, MIT’s Hand and Mind Book notes that “in an academic community, the free and open exchange of ideas and viewpoints reflected in the concept of academic freedom may sometimes prove disturbing or offensive to some,” but “[t]he examination and challenging of assumptions, beliefs or opinions is…[nevertheless] intrinsic to the rigorous education that MIT strives to provide.”

We note that this is not the first time that MIT has sought to curtail Iyengar’s free expression on matters related to Palestine. Since the spring 2024 semester, MIT has subjected him to various instances of harassment and punishment for expressing a pro-Palestine viewpoint, including subjecting him to disciplinary measures for conducting a peaceful exchange with representatives of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin at an on-campus career fair earlier this semester.

More broadly, we are concerned that MIT’s actions against Iyengar are only one of many repressive measures taken by the university against pro-Palestinian advocacy since 7 October 2023. These measures include MIT’s decision to interim suspend pro-Palestine student protestors and bar them from campus in May 2024 without due process, including prohibiting them from accessing student housing and receiving monthly graduate worker stipends; the administration’s general pursuit of aggressive investigations, interrogations and other disciplinary actions against pro-Palestine students over the past year; and its decision to suspend the main pro-Palestine student organization at MIT, the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), and the revocation of CAA’s web domain. These actions have led both students and faculty at MIT to conclude that the university is systematically singling out pro-Palestine viewpoints for repression and sanction.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has recently called attention to the alarming expansion of restrictive policies that intimidate and silence faculty and students, especially those voicing their principled opposition to Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. As the AAUP puts it, “[a]dministrators who claim that ‘expressive activity’ policies protect academic freedom and student learning, even as they severely restrict its exercise, risk destroying the very freedoms of speech and expression they claim to protect.”

The systematic repression of pro-Palestine voices, which has become an undeniable reality across U.S. colleges and universities since 7 October 2023, has severely undermined the integrity, autonomy and mission of this country’s institutions of higher education. Instead of following other universities down this dangerous road, we urge MIT to change course and adhere to its avowed values. In this regard, we reiterate the call made by members of its faculty earlier this year “for MIT to take a leadership role in defending freedom of speech and academic freedom, and . . . engage in constructive efforts to respond to those who are peacefully expressing moral distress in the face of an ethical and humanitarian crisis and in support for life.”

We therefore call on MIT to cease its targeting of Prahlad Iyengar, rescind all outstanding disciplinary sanctions, charges and proceedings against him, and end the university’s ban on Written Revolution’s distribution of the volume in which his article appeared. More broadly, we urge MIT to adhere to its own policies on freedom of expression and academic freedom, and refrain from selectively and disproportionately enforcing its rules against pro-Palestine activism and advocacy.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli

MESA President

Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

How the Taliban are seeking to Reshape Afghanistan’s Schools to push their Ideology

The Conversation — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 05:02:47 +0000

By Enayat Nasir, University at Albany, State University of New York | –

(The Conversation) – The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 was a blow for education across the country – but especially for girls and women. Since then, the Taliban’s leaders have outlawed education for girls after sixth grade, expanded religious seminaries known as madrasas ninefold and reintroduced corporal punishment in schools.

Now, the Taliban are continuing their assault on education for both boys and girls by changing the curriculum in grades 1-12. They have already revised textbooks up to eighth grade, and they’re on track to finish the rest within months. After completion, the revised curriculum will go up for approval by the Taliban’s supreme leader and will likely be followed by swift implementation. The process is straightforward. The supreme leader of the Taliban controls education policy – including the curriculum. Once submitted to him, he has no reason to reject or delay the implementation.

As an educational policy scholar who pushed for educational progress in Afghanistan before the Taliban takeover, I believe these changes echo the tactics of the Soviet-backed regime in the 1980s to impose an ideology through textbooks. They also reflect the stifling climate of the 1990s, which promoted violence and suppressed critical thinking in education. By controlling education, the Taliban aims to instill their totalitarian and extremist religious-based ideology in young minds, ensuring their grip on power for generations to come.

The curriculum changes

Afghanistan’s education system is centralized, meaning all schools follow a single curriculum. The current textbooks are the result of two decades of reforms that followed the country’s recovery from the Soviet invasion and civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

Since 2001, when the Taliban’s last regime fell, the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with international developmental agencies, undertook a critical revision of the national curriculum. This initiative aimed to make curriculum and textbooks inclusive, nondiscriminatory and free from promotion of violence – a departure from previous textbooks that included illustrations of tanks, rocket launchers and automatic weapons.

In the last decade before the Taliban regained power, the Ministry of Education was still attempting to reform curriculum to focus on students’ personal and economic growth. Unfortunately, the ministry never completed the reforms.

Embed from Getty Images
Afghan school boys attend their first class following the start of the new academic year, at a private school in Khost on March 20, 2024. Schools in Afghanistan opened for the new academic year on March 20, the education ministry said, with girls banned from joining secondary-level classes for the third year in a row. (Photo by AFP) (Photo by -/AFP via Getty Images)

Within a few months after their takeover in August 2021, senior Taliban leaders criticized the previous education system and curriculum, saying it was brainwashing Afghan youth and weakening religious values. They called for a reeducation campaign.

Since then, the Taliban have been revising the curriculum and aggressively rewriting textbooks for grades 1-12. This is based on 26 recommendations from their education commission. Some of the changes approved by the commission include:

1.) Removing subjects like formal art, civil education and culture. Instead, schools are increasing time spent on religious studies.

2.) Removing content about human rights, women’s rights, equal rights, freedoms, elections and democracy.

3.) Removing all images of living beings from textbooks, including pictures of humans, animals, sports and anatomy. The Taliban believe that only God creates living beings, and producing or distributing images of God’s creation is prohibited.

4.) Adding religious material to the curriculum that enforces Taliban narratives. This includes teachings that justify violence against those who resist or oppose the Taliban’s views.

5.) Shaping student behaviors to fit the Taliban’s vision of society, similar to what they defined in recent vice and virtue laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public, among other rules.

6.) Requiring schools to teach and assess students on “emirate studies,” which glorify Taliban leaders and their history by characterizing the Taliban takeover as a defeat of secular values, including equal rights, civil society and democracy.

The Taliban have also banned women from studying abroad. In addition, they have prohibited the sale, purchase and reprinting of more than 400 science and philosophy books and confiscated at least 50,000 books on democracy, social and civil rights, art, literature and poetry from publishing houses, bookstores and public libraries.

A 2023 Human Rights Watch report noted an increase in corporal punishment in schools. Even some teachers of nonreligious subjects, like math and science, now have to pass the religious tests to remain employed.

Beyond shaping thought processes, the Taliban aim to influence students’ actions. Through rigid rules and corporal punishments – including humiliation, beating, slapping and foot whipping – they seek to produce immediate behavioral changes that reflect their desired norms. Their ultimate goal is to cultivate individuals who embody the regime’s values and ideologies.

Consequences for Afghan students – and the world

During their first regime from 1995-2001, the Taliban used textbooks with biased content that promoted violent jihad. For example, the alphabet taught to first graders included teachings like “J” stands for jihad and “M” for mujahideen – referring to Islamic guerrilla fighters.

They increased religious education to 50% of the curriculum and banned art, music and photography. They deemed music against God’s will, according to their interpretation of Sharia.

As a result, academic freedom vanished. Student enrollment dropped. Families lost trust in schools, and many teachers left the profession, leading to the eventual collapse of the education system in the 1990s.

The Taliban are threatening to do the same today with their latest curriculum changes. Schools may turn into indoctrination centers instead of places for real learning. I fear that the altered curriculum could breed mistrust in public education. Furthermore, the Taliban removed the 2008 law that made school mandatory. As a result, many parents may pull their kids from schools again.

The ideologically driven curriculum also raises international concerns and has already led to cuts in foreign aid. Donors won’t support institutions that promote discriminatory ideologies. This is straining an already vulnerable education system, threatening its survival.

Ultimately, the Afghan people will bear the brunt of these policies, but the effects could spill beyond the country’s borders and impact the world.

Enayat Nasir, Doctoral Research Assistant in Educational Policy, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Protesting Flawed Disciplinary Process toward Student Protesters at Swarthmore

Committee on Academic Freedom — Sun, 10 Nov 2024 05:02:05 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –

Valerie Smith

President

Swarthmore College

president@swarthmore.edu

Dear President Smith and colleagues:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about the flawed disciplinary proceedings involving a number of its students that Swarthmore College is currently conducting. We regard these proceedings, along with some of the college’s policies and recent actions, as posing a threat to the ability of its students and faculty to exercise their academic freedom and freedom of speech and assembly, thereby calling into question Swarthmore’s avowed commitment to upholding these rights.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

In May 2024, 25 students at Swarthmore College who had engaged in activism in support of Palestinian rights and opposition to Israeli and US policies toward the Palestinians during the 2023-2024 academic year were formally issued letters outlining charges against them; they are currently undergoing disciplinary proceedings. These letters alleged various violations of student conduct policies outlined in the Swarthmore Student Handbook, which differentiates between minor and major forms of misconduct. The character, conduct and context of these disciplinary proceedings raise serious concerns about due process and selective enforcement.

We find it distressing that Swarthmore chose to outsource, to a private law firm, the investigation of the alleged violations, the authoring of charge letters and the determination of what evidence accused students are allowed to access, with no clear or consistent standard across cases. This decision creates a significant risk that the personnel involved will lack adequate knowledge of Swarthmore College’s policies and practices, and that they will not be respectful of due process or of students’ right to freedom of expression and to privacy. For example, we note that, in the case of at least one student, the initial charge letter included the following alleged violations of the Student Handbook: “assault,” “harassment based on a protected class,” and “hate crime.” The “hate crime” charge was subsequently dropped because there is in fact no such category of misconduct specified in the Handbook. These issues call into question the fairness of the disciplinary proceedings and are likely to result in deviations from Swarthmore’s established disciplinary procedures.

Swarthmore has also denied accused students’ requests to have legal representation at disciplinary proceedings, though this is accepted practice at many other colleges and universities. The college has, in addition, allowed the attorney from the external law firm who conducted the investigation and authored the charge letters to participate in the hearings, ostensibly as a witness, which we regard as a gross violation of due process. To make matters worse, reports indicate that Swarthmore has actively encouraged students to initiate criminal or civil proceedings against anyone they believe has committed acts of harassment or assault, if the college has found them guilty of a disciplinary infraction.

The disciplinary proceedings against these 25 students also appear to exemplify selective enforcement. Many of the actions that are being framed as violations of college policy are in fact regular features of the tradition of student activism that Swarthmore College claims to celebrate. We note that students who engaged in protest activity related to sexual harassment and assault, climate change and Black Lives Matter have faced far fewer charges in both number and severity, despite deploying more or less identical methods of protest. At the same time, most of the alleged minor misconduct charges against the 25 students involve posting fliers, putting up posters and chalking political messages in “undesignated areas.” Yet Swarthmore students have been doing the same things regarding other issues for years and continue to do so today, without facing investigation or disciplinary action. This disparity suggests that what is at issue is not the time, place and manner of the actions in which the 25 students are alleged to have engaged but the political perspective they were expressing.

Such content-based discrimination also seems to have informed the Swarthmore administration’s interactions with faculty members on several occasions. We note that last spring the college’s Board of Management invited several faculty members to a discussion, ostensibly about pedagogy. During the meeting board members questioned individual faculty members about their decision to sign a petition supporting the rights of students critical of Israeli and US policies to hold an encampment. We also note that over the past summer the Swarthmore Bias Incident Response Team (BIRT) sent emails to several faculty members warning them that their decision to follow a satirical Instagram account made some students feel unwelcome in their classrooms. These actions threaten the academic freedom and free speech rights of faculty and are likely to have a chilling effect on their ability to express and share their views on matters of public concern.

This country’s institutions of higher education should be places in which all members of the campus community can express their views and seek knowledge freely. In these fraught times college and university leaders have a heightened responsibility to protect the freedom of speech and academic freedom of all members of the campus community. This is all the more important now, when violence is raging in the Middle East, our own government is so deeply involved in what is happening, and various individuals and organizations with a political agenda are seeking to vilify and silence students with whom they disagree.

We therefore call on Swarthmore College to ensure that the investigation and adjudication of disciplinary charges against these 25 students be conducted in a fair and transparent manner, in full conformity with the right to due process. We also call on Swarthmore College to refrain from selective and disproportionate disciplinary measures against students, faculty and staff who are exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly, and their academic freedom, including by expressing their support for Palestinian rights and for changes in Israel, US and college policies. More broadly, Swarthmore must refrain from adopting any policy, or taking any measure, which is likely to exert a further chilling effect on teaching, learning and freedom of expression on campus. Finally, we urge Swarthmore College to publicly and forcefully reaffirm its commitment to protecting the free speech rights and academic freedom, as well as the safety and well-being, of all members of the campus community.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli

MESA President

Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

Taking Issue with Suspension of Harvard Library Access for Students and Faculty staging “Read-In” to Protest Gaza War

Committee on Academic Freedom — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 05:02:59 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | – Middle East Studies Association

Alan M. Garber

President, Harvard University

alan_garber@harvard.edu . . .

Dear President Garber, Provost Manning, and Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian Whitehead:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about Harvard University’s decision to ban a number of undergraduate students, law students and faculty from entering Harvard University’s libraries. We regard this action as a violation of the principles of academic freedom and of freedom of expression, in contravention of the essential role that this country’s colleges and universities play as incubators of democratic ideals and sites for open political expression and debate.

On 21 September 2024 a group of undergraduate students spent time silently studying in Widener Library while wearing kufiyas, a traditional Palestinian scarf, and displaying signs on their personal computers protesting Israel’s wars on Gaza and Lebanon. At least twelve of the students were subsequently banned from the library for a period of two weeks. On 25 October 2024 some twenty-five members of Harvard’s faculty were banned from entering the same library after they conducted a silent “study-in” that involved placing signs supporting the right to free speech on the tables in front of them or attached to their computers. Finally, Harvard Law School students were banned from the Langdell Law Library for engaging in a similar action. We emphasize that all the students and faculty involved were seated in the library, reading and working silently.

The University Librarian has claimed that these students and faculty members were in violation of university policy because their actions were a form of protest, had the potential to make other students uncomfortable and manifested attention-seeking behavior. We note, however, that university policy does not prohibit either the wearing of culturally specific items of clothing in libraries or the expression of political viewpoints by means of signs displayed on individuals’ personal property. Moreover, the allegation concerning “attention-seeking behavior” is so vague and arbitrary that it could be used to justify the suppression of any form of expression, political or otherwise. We note the statement issued on behalf of all six co-presidents of Harvard’s own Council on Academic Freedom, which pointed out that “the students who sat quietly and studied did not interfere with normal campus activity, and Harvard thus has no compelling reason to prohibit their speech. Indeed, our commitment to free expression requires us to allow it.”

In these fraught times, college and university leaders have a heightened responsibility to protect the freedom of speech and academic freedom of all members of their communities. This country’s institutions of higher education should be places in which a broad range of perspectives can be expressed, debated and criticized without fear of defamation, harassment or termination. As MESA’s Board of Directors put it in a statement dated 18 December 2023: “We call on university leaders and administrations to affirmatively assert and protect the rights to academic freedom and freedom of speech on their campuses. We reaffirm that there can be no compromise of the right and ability of students, faculty, and staff at universities across North America (and elsewhere) to express their viewpoints free of harassment, intimidation, and threats to their livelihoods and safety.”

We therefore call on Harvard’s administration to immediately rescind the bans imposed on entry to its libraries and to apologize to all those who were subjected to a ban. We further call on Harvard to publicly reaffirm, and act in accordance with, its avowed commitment to respect for “freedom of speech and academic freedom,” as set forth in the University-Wide Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, in a transparent and content-neutral manner.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli

MESA President

Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

Israel’s Scholasticide and the Irrelevance of US Politics: 11,923 Palestinian Students didn’t Go Back to School this Fall because Israel Killed them

Juan Cole — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 05:15:59 +0000

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Palestinian Ministry of Education released a report this week detailing that 11,923 students in Gaza have been killed by Israel’s total war in the past year.

In addition, 19,199 have been wounded, many with life-altering injuries.

A physician working in Gaza last summer reported to HRW, “We are talking about a huge number of traumatic amputations, especially in children, leaving children with permanent disabilities. Also, many children who were wounded by shrapnel all over their faces and bodies, and I have seen children lose their eyesight due to injuries.”

Leila al-Kafarna, a mother of three with an injured husband continually expelled from place to place in Gaza, told HRW: “I carried my husband on my back, and we kept walking on foot through the sand and gunfire over our heads and planes dropping leaflets. Our children screamed along the way. It felt like the whole world ran and screamed with fear.”

Al-Kafarna continued,

We were there for an hour-and-a-half. Suddenly, I felt something was off. I took Malek’s hand and told him we needed to leave, and that was when I heard something breaking from the walls. I looked up as the missile [munition] was hitting the supermarket, and I lost consciousness…. We were thrown away by the impact and surrounded by rubble. There were people and bodies around and on top of us. Body parts were everywhere.

I woke up with a fire near my face, like a meter away, and I was still holding my son’s arm, so I started running, thinking I’m running with my son…. I was screaming at him to run fast before they bomb again, and then I felt like my son was light, as if there was no weight on the arm. So, I looked and didn’t see my son anywhere near me, and that was when I discovered that I was holding only his arm.

I put the arm down and ran back, and I saw my son running and screaming “Allah, Allah,” and he started telling me to forgive him for any day he treated me badly, as if he was saying goodbye. Malek then fainted.”

One of the nearly 20,000 wounded school children, Malek lost his arm.

Although my headline says that the dead students did not go back to school this fall, actually none of the Gaza Strip’s 625,000 students could go back to school this year. That includes 45,000 first-graders.

Because Israel damaged or destroyed most of the schools and all the universities. All of them. A few months ago, a panel of UN experts said, “With more than 80% of schools in Gaza damaged or destroyed, it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as ‘scholasticide.'”

“School Year,” Digital, Midjourney / Clip2Comic, 2024.

The Palestinian Ministry of Education said that the Israeli Air Force conducted air strikes against 341 Gazan schools, universities, and university annex buildings, and against 65 schools of the UN Relief and Works Agency. Of these, 138 were badly damaged and 77 were completely destroyed.

Although the Israeli authorities represent these school buildings as secret headquarters of the Qassam Brigades militants, a moment’s reflection would be sufficient to conclude that this is a damned lie. Eighty percent of the schools in Gaza were Qassam Brigades HQs? That’s ridiculous. They were grade schools. Students were learning the multiplication tables and English grammar. European and American aid workers familiar with these institutions flatly deny the sinister Israeli cover story. It is the same with hospitals, where the Washington Post and the Associated Press did their own investigations and found that there is no evidence whatsoever to back Israeli claims that Hamas was using them for military purposes. The way you can tell that Netanyahu, his cronies and spokesmen are lying is that their lips are moving.

Al Jazeera quotes a Palestinian mother, Lina, who said, “I miss being a mother with children in school. Now, I am in a tent, struggling to find water and figuring out how to cook on the fire. This is a monotonous, terrifying routine with the ongoing war, bombings and displacement from one place to another.”

During the past year the Israeli military has also killed 561 Palestinian school teachers, and has wounded 3,729, most of them in Gaza.

The few remaining structures are now used to house refugees, so the students are living in their partially destroyed schools with their relatives instead of studying with them. The Israeli Air Force occasionally bombs these schools-cum-shelters, killing more civilians. The presence of a single militant from the Qassam Brigades can justify rubbing out 20 innocent civilians in his vicinity according to the Israeli rules of engagement, the most horrendous among the OECD states. NATO would never permit this behavior and has cut off military cooperation with Israel over its unconcern with minimizing civilian deaths.

UNICEF explains, ‘To respond to this situation, UNICEF and its partners have established 39 Temporary Learning Spaces in the Gaza Strip serving over 12,400 students. In addition, recreational activities, emergency learning kits, and Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS) are being offered to children, youth, caregivers, and teachers in shelters.”

UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Director Adele Khodr said, “We must find ways to restart learning and rebuild schools to uphold the right to education of the next generations in the State of Palestine. Children need stability to cope with the trauma they have experienced, and the opportunity to develop and reach their full potential.” Children are not able to interact with one another and have no structured learning, threatening long-term cognitive development, which is worsened by water shortages and malnutrition.

UNICEF’s efforts are hampered by an 88% budget shortfall. While the US sent $20 billion in weaponry to Israel for the ongoing butchery, it gave UNICEF $1.5 bn last year for its work with children all around the world. UNICEF needed on the order of $3 billion just for Gaza this year. You can donate here. It is tax deductible.

Palestinians are the most literate of the Arabs because the United Nations has educated Palestinian refugee children for decades. Israel’s attempt to destroy the UN Relief and Works Agency and the constant restrictions it puts on agencies like UNICEF, along with its scholasticide in Gaza, are attempts to turn the Palestinians into illiterate dummies who are easily controlled and deprived of all their rights, to erase their very identity as a people.

Scholasticide is genocide.

It doesn’t matter to people in Gaza who wins the US presidential election. Trump tells Netanyahu to “finish the job.” The “job” is creating more amputees like 13-year-old Malek.

Protesting U of Minnesota Barring Students from Campus for Protesting Gaza War

Committee on Academic Freedom — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 05:02:51 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –

Rebecca M. Cunningham
President, University of Minnesota
upres@umn.edu . . .

Dear President Cunningham and Colleagues:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about the decision of the administration of the University of Minnesota (UMN) to indefinitely suspend eight students who participated in an occupation of a university building, Morrill Hall, on 21 October 2024. Whatever one thinks of the students’ action, we regard the university’s decision to bar them from classes, dormitories, dining halls and campus jobs as an unduly harsh sanction that violates their rights to education and sustenance. The fact that this sanction was imposed without the students having had the opportunity to defend their actions in a properly conducted disciplinary process makes it all the more egregious. The university’s actions in this regard seem aimed at deterring students from exercising the dictates of their conscience on matters of urgent public concern. They also contravene the University of Minnesota’s laudable tradition of countenancing contentious student protests.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

On 21 October 2024, some members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), part of the UMN Divest Coalition, held a rally to protest UMN’s recently revised student conduct policy and the Board of Regents’ rejection of requests to divest from Israel-related investments. Divestment had been the subject of ongoing discussions between university leaders and UMN Divest since the dismantling of the spring 2024 protest encampments. Some students and alumni then marched to Morrill Hall, a main administrative building, and barricaded themselves inside, using patio furniture and other items. Protesters declared the building “Halimy Hall,” in commemoration of 19-year-old Medo Halimy, a university student in Gaza who documented daily life in wartime and was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Khan Yunis in August 2024.

According to a 22 October 2024 statement from the Office of the President, the students spray-painted over internal security cameras and damaged other property. The statement asserts that employees in Morrill Hall were unable to exit the building due to protesters preventing their free movement and exit. “These actions crossed the line into illegal activity,” the statement asserts, and on that basis the University of Minnesota Police Department entered Morrill Hall two hours into the occupation, along with Hennepin County police officers, arrested eight students and three alumni. We note, however, that video evidence seems to show students encouraging staff who wished to leave to do so after announcing their occupation and offering escorts to an available exit. Those arrested were released without charge from Hennepin County Jail on 24 October 2024.

The university has issued indefinite interim suspension orders for the eight students, on the premise that they pose an ongoing threat to the university. The orders bar them from attending classes, living in dormitories, eating in dining halls or participating in their campus jobs and activities. Students also face two sets of disciplinary hearings, to which they are permitted to bring lawyers: a first hearing concerning the interim suspension and a second concerning the conduct charges.

We regard the barring of the students from all university activities, before any transparent investigation or disciplinary hearing has been conducted, to be an unduly draconian sanction that contravenes the university’s obligation to educate and to foster debate, however heated. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has recently called attention to the alarming expansion of restrictive policies that intimidate and silence faculty and students, especially those voicing their principled opposition to Israel’s genocidal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank. As the AAUP put it, “Administrators who claim that ‘expressive activity’ policies protect academic freedom and student learning, even as they severely restrict its exercise, risk destroying the very freedoms of speech and expression they claim to protect.”

The University of Minnesota’s recently issued protest guidelines state that “engagement that is inconsistent with University policies becomes civil disobedience.” We remind you of the generative role of civil disobedience in the university’s own history. For example, in January 1969 African American students occupied Morrill Hall to protest discrimination and racism, an event documented by the University Archives. Their action led to the founding of the African American and African Studies Department later that year.

Students engaged in conscientious political action who are willing to accept the consequences of their actions ought not to be prevented from continuing their education. We therefore call on you to rescind the indefinite suspension orders imposed on the eight students and to ensure that any disciplinary process to which they are subjected is conducted in a fair and transparent manner and in accordance with generally accepted standards.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli
MESA President
Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

Protesting Wake Forest University’s Cancellation of a Lecture by Professor Rabab Abdelhadi

Committee on Academic Freedom — Wed, 02 Oct 2024 04:02:25 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –

Dear President Wente and Provost Gillespie:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our concern about Wake Forest University’s decision to cancel a scheduled lecture by Professor Rabab Abdelhadi, who is currently director of San Francisco State University’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative. We regard Wake Forest’s action as a severe violation of the principles of academic freedom.

According to media reports, Professor Abdelhadi was scheduled to speak on 7 October 2024 at an event sponsored by five academic units at Wake Forest. After the event was announced, a number of campus organizations launched an online petition drive demanding that the university cancel it. Apparently bowing to pressure, the university cancelled the event. In an email message to the campus community announcing the decision, the two of you stated: “We have also made the conscious decision not to host events on this day that are inherently contentious and stand to stoke division in our campus community. We are living in complex times, and yet we remain hopeful about the future because of this caring community and our shared mission to serve humanity.”

Exercising caution about contention and “stoking division” may be a laudable goal, but for Wake Forest to cancel an academic event because some people object to an invited speaker’s perspective on an issue of public interest betrays the university’s avowed commitment to academic freedom and to the free and open exchange of ideas, principles which are fundamental to the integrity and mission of our institutions of higher education. Moreover, the contention and “division” which you seek to avoid – when thought of as healthy disagreement and debate among scholars and students – is a laudable goal in and of itself for a college or university. Whether or not everyone at Wake Forest agrees with Professor Abdelhadi’s opinions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, silencing her cannot be acceptable at an institution which claims to uphold academic freedom and freedom of speech.

In these fraught times, college and university leaders have a heightened responsibility to protect the freedom of speech and academic freedom of all members of their communities – and their invited guests. This country’s institutions of higher education should be places in which a broad range of perspectives can be expressed, debated and criticized without fear of defamation, harassment or termination. As MESA’s Board of Directors put it in a statement dated 18 December 2023: “We call on university leaders and administrations to affirmatively assert and protect the rights to academic freedom and freedom of speech on their campuses. We reaffirm that there can be no compromise of the right and ability of students, faculty, and staff at universities across North America (and elsewhere) to express their viewpoints free of harassment, intimidation, and threats to their livelihoods and safety.”

We therefore call on you to immediately reverse the decision to cancel Professor Abdelhadi’s lecture at Wake Forest. We further call on you to vigorously reaffirm your commitment to uphold academic freedom and freedom of speech at Wake Forest and to actively foster an atmosphere of free academic inquiry and discussion, including the unhindered right of faculty and invited guests of the campus community to express their political opinions in the public realm.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli

MESA President

Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

Protesting Cornell University’s Suspension and threatened Deportation of graduate Student Momodou Taal for Protest

Committee on Academic Freedom — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 04:06:51 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –

Dear Interim President Kotlikoff, Provost Bala, Dr. Lombardi and Ms. Liang:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our extreme concern about your decision to temporarily suspend Cornell graduate student Momodou Taal, without proper due process, on the grounds of his alleged disruptive participation in a pro-Palestine campus protest. We are particularly concerned that, as a result of this callous and arbitrary decision, Mr. Taal, an international student attending Cornell on an F-1 visa, is facing immediate deportation, without adequate opportunity to defend himself against these allegations.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression, both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

Mr. Taal, who is an instructor at Cornell University as well as a graduate student, has been a vocal advocate for Palestinian rights. On 18 September 2024, along with approximately 100 other students, he participated in, and gave a short speech at, a demonstration outside of a career fair held at the university’s Statler Hotel. The demonstrators were protesting the presence on campus of defense contractors Boeing and L3Harris, whom they regarded as complicit in Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian population of Gaza. Video evidence from the protest shows that some students pushed through a police line to enter the job fair site, with others following. However, the footage also appears to show that Mr. Taal did not come into direct contact with the police line and entered the grounds only after access had been achieved by other students. Once inside, the students conducted a nonviolent demonstration which disrupted the job fair through chants and drumming, resulting in the fair being shut down. It is important to note that, according to his account, Mr. Taal was present in the hotel lobby for only a few minutes and left the protest early; we understand that he does not appear in any of the video footage documenting the protest inside the hotel.

On 23 September 2024 Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff issued a statement condemning the student protestors for what he described as “highly disruptive and intentionally menacing behavior.” He claimed that demonstrators had violated university rules by pushing aside Cornell Police officers, forcibly entering the career fair site, creating excessive noise and disrupting display tables. He warned that the students involved would face immediate suspension or employment sanctions. However, of all the students who participated in the demonstration, Mr. Taal was reportedly the only one to receive a message directing him to report to Cornell’s Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards. On the same day that the Interim President made his statement, Mr. Taal was informed of his temporary suspension, given a physical copy of a no-trespass order barring him from campus, and notified that his F-1 visa would be terminated. It is our understanding that he was not fully informed of the specific allegations against him or given a reasonable opportunity to respond to them.

Mr. Taal appealed his suspension on 25 September 2024. One day later that appeal was rejected by Dr. Ryan Lombardi, Vice President of Student and Campus Life. We are deeply concerned about the apparent lack of a properly conducted formal investigation into the allegations against Mr. Taal, the denial of an adequate opportunity for him to respond to the allegations against him, Cornell’s failure to hold a disciplinary hearing before a full review panel and violations of Mr. Taal’s procedural rights under Cornell’s own policies. On 27 September 2024 Mr. Taal submitted a second, and as we understand it final, appeal to the Provost’s Office and is currently awaiting a response. We note that this is not the first time Mr. Taal has been specifically targeted for his pro-Palestinian activities: in April 2024 he was one of just four students threatened with suspension over involvement in a pro-Palestine encampment that involved hundreds of participants.

We believe that there is good reason to conclude that Cornell University, by ignoring due process and arbitrarily suspending Mr. Taal, has violated its own Student Code of Conduct Procedures. Moreover, the university administration must have been aware that his suspension would result in the termination of his F-1 visa, subjecting him to deportation. We believe that the use of suspension resulting in deportation sets an extremely dangerous precedent and threatens the free speech rights and the academic freedom of Cornell’s students, faculty and staff. We also note that, as a member of Cornell Graduate Students United-UE, Mr. Taal is entitled to union representation in disciplinary matters, as outlined in the union’s Memorandum of Agreement with the university. Given that the union has asserted its right to bargain over the disciplining of Mr. Taal, your administration’s unilateral actions appear to violate this agreement.

Mr. Taal is a promising graduate student with an outstanding academic record. As a Black Muslim international student, he is among the most vulnerable members of Cornell’s student body and deserves, at a minimum, the same level of procedural protection and consideration that Cornell’s policies are supposed to afford to all its students. The university’s actions are an affront to its stated commitment to diversity and inclusion and to its Core Values, which emphasize “free and open inquiry and expression—tenets that underlie academic freedom—even of ideas some may consider wrong or offensive.” Moreover, by taking discriminatory disciplinary action against a marginalized student, without due process, the university’s actions are also likely to have a chilling effect on other members of the campus community – especially other racialized and international students – thereby undermining their ability to exercise their First Amendment rights to free speech and assembly and their academic freedom. In this context we call your attention to the statement issued by MESA’s board of directors and its Committee on Academic Freedom on 6 May 2024 which denounced actions by university leaders that delegitimize and repress campus advocacy opposing Israel’s war in Gaza.

We therefore join the Cornell chapter of the American Association of University Professors and the Cornell Graduate Student Union as well as many members of the Cornell community and the public in calling on you to immediately rescind the temporary suspension of Mr. Taal. We further urge Cornell University to refrain from arbitrary and draconian disciplinary measures against students, faculty and staff exercising their right to freedom of speech and assembly, and their academic freedom, including by expressing their views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli

MESA President

Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California

Protesting the Firing of Tenured Professor Maura Finkelstein for Criticizing Zionism

Committee on Academic Freedom — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 04:06:44 +0000

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association | –

Dear President Harring, Provost Furge and Professor Dowd:

We write on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) and its Committee on Academic Freedom to express our grave concern about the announcement by Muhlenberg College that it intends to terminate Dr. Maura Finkelstein, a tenured member of the college’s faculty, because of an Instagram post that she had reposted. Even if some people may find the post objectionable, we believe that Professor Finkelstein’s reposting is protected by the First Amendment and by the principles of academic freedom. It cannot reasonably be construed as a violation of Muhlenberg College’s equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policy or justify her termination.

MESA was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on the Middle East and North Africa. The preeminent organization in the field, the Association publishes the prestigious International Journal of Middle East Studies and has nearly 2,800 members worldwide. MESA is committed to ensuring academic freedom and freedom of expression both within the region and in connection with the study of the region in North America and outside of North America.

Dr. Finkelstein is a cultural anthropologist whose research has addressed multiple geographies and theoretical realms. Her first book, The Archive of Loss: Lively Ruination in Mill Land Mumbai, charted the experiences of textile mill workers in the city of Mumbai. She is currently at work on a second book about equine-assisted therapy. Her scholarship and pedagogy have also engaged a range of issues relating to Palestine/Israel; her teaching includes a course on Palestine and she has published peer-reviewed work on her experiences teaching this material.

In the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 assault on Israel, Professor Finkelstein was subjected to intense attacks as a result of the criticism of Israel and of Zionism that she expressed in published work, academic forums and social media posts. Among other things, a number of donors to and alumni of Muhlenberg College circulated a petition demanding her removal from her tenured position. In January 2024 Professor Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave after reposting someone else’s Instagram post which was critical of Zionism and Zionists. The Muhlenberg College administration subsequently claimed that Professor Finkelstein’s reposting had violated its equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policy.

An outside firm hired by the college to investigate the case determined that Professor Finkelstein’s Instagram post had not constituted a violation of college policy. However, an ad hoc committee appointed by Muhlenberg’s Title IX office subsequently reversed this determination, without specifying the grounds for its decision. In late May 2024 Professor Finkelstein was informed that the college intended to terminate her for cause, because her Instagram post allegedly “met the standard for online discrimination and harassment involving hateful speech. It was severe and objectively offensive, and it denies or limits the ability to participate in the College’s programs.” She has appealed and is awaiting the decision of the college’s Faculty, Personnel and Policies Committee.

We note that Muhlenberg College has declared that it “endorses the robust, stimulating and thought-provoking exchange of ideas, which requires in-depth and complex educational experiences as well as the space for divergent perspectives.” We further note that neither college policy nor federal law defines those who adhere to or advocate for particular political ideologies (such as Zionism) as members of legally protected classes. As we have pointed out elsewhere, critiques of Israeli policies or of Zionism must not be conflated with antisemitism, nor should expressions of political opinion be sanctioned.

We therefore call on you to immediately reverse the decision to terminate Professor Finkelstein and to publicly declare her exonerated of the charges brought against her. We further call on you to vigorously reaffirm your commitment to uphold academic freedom and freedom of speech at Muhlenberg and to actively foster an atmosphere of free academic inquiry and discussion, including the unhindered right of faculty and other members of the campus community to express their political opinions in the public realm.

We look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Aslı Ü. Bâli
MESA President
Professor, Yale Law School

Laurie Brand
Chair, Committee on Academic Freedom
Professor Emerita, University of Southern California