CARTOON: AMERICAN FASCISM: Mowing The Academic Grass, University Censorship Expands
The corporatized industry of American higher education is hardly a site of social justice and liberatory knowledge production. There is, however, something particularly ghoulish in NYU’s actions here.
“Anti-Palestinian repression on U.S. campuses since October 7 has not been subtle. Students and faculty face far-reaching discriminatory censure and defamatory allegations for pro-Palestinian advocacy, as administrators jump to appease pro-Israel donors and conservative political interests.” — The Intercept
Cartoon by Mark Taylor / DeMOCKracy.ink
It’s Gonna’ Be A Lot Worse: College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways To Crush Gaza Protests
The new conduct guide comes in the wake of federal litigation brought against NYU by three pro-Israel Jewish students, who accused the university of failing to intervene in an atmosphere they said made them feel unsafe.
[Editor’s Note: Unquestioning acceptance of what is taught is not education, it is indoctrination. It is not about nurturing the creative thought needed in a rapidly crumbling world. It’s about cranking out drones. The Israeli ZioNazis regularly ‘mow the grass’ by doing periodic mass killings in Gaza. Now the same thing is being done to the intellectual health and defense of the United States. — Mark Taylor]
By Natasha Lennard
The Intercept (8/27/24)
As students and faculty faculty in the U.S. return to campuses for the fall semester, there are innumerable reasons to continue demonstrating against institutional complicity with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The need for those protests is as urgent as it’s ever been.
University and college administrations, however, are not only signaling plans to treat pro-Palestinian speech with intellectual dishonesty, they’re making clear they plan to use their specious logic to inflict evermore repressive intolerance.
New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.
Corporatized industry of American higher education
The corporatized industry of American higher education is hardly a site of social justice and liberatory knowledge production. There is, however, something particularly ghoulish in NYU’s actions here.
School communities are returning to a new academic year after a summer in which Palestinians have seen no shred of respite from Israel’s U.S.-backed eliminationism: constant bombing and forced displacement, a campaign of targeted starvation, purposeful destruction of water supplies, and denial of basic medical care. Instead of fighting against U.S. material support for these conditions, however, university administrators like those at NYU have spent that same summer prefiguring ways to demonize anti-genocide protesters as bigots.
Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”
The university’s NDAH rules are intended to reflect the school’s legal obligations, including to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination and harassment based on a student’s race, color, national origin, religious identity, shared ancestry, or ethnicity.
“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.” …
NOTE: You can link to a good Democracy Now! interview with the reporter who wrote this story discussing the next phase of free speech suppression and academic freedom betrayal on US college campuses. It is truly, a new McCarthyism. Link to video
EXCLUSIVE: Northwestern Suspends Journalism Professor Steven Thrasher After Gaza Solidarity Protest
Democracy Now! (9/5/24)
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. …
13-minute video
Columbia Prof. Franke Faces Firing After Interview On Gaza: "Campus Has Become Unrecognizable"
Democracy Now! (9/5/24)
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.
10-minute video
Adjunct Professor Fired By DePaul University After Optional Assignment About Gaza
By Sabrina Franza, Samah Assad, Mikayla Price
CBS News Chicago (5/24/24)
CHICAGO (CBS) -- An adjunct professor was fired from her role at DePaul University, after offering an optional assignment to her students in which she asked them to explore the biological and health impacts Israel's war in Gaza has on Palestinians.
Dr. Anne D'Aquino taught Health 194, Human Pathogens and Defense, across from the now torn-down pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the quad.
"Students were distracted," D'Aquino said. "A lot of them were volunteering at the encampment. A lot of them had friends that were at the encampment." It was a topic that was overall unavoidable, she said.
Biochemist and professor Dr. D'Aquino was hired on April 1 to teach Health 194. She said she felt this course, in particular, would allow her to discuss the intersections of humanities and biology.
"This is a reprimand towards me that's also sending a message to other faculty that to not speak up about this; that Palestine is not a topic of conversation in the classroom - and that you will be removed," she said. "I also think it's a message to students, too, that if your faculty; your staff can't speak about it, then you can't either."
According to the syllabus, the course in part explores microbiology research and its relevance to everyday life, current events, as well as microbiology knowledge to "big picture impacts on individuals and communities."
"Taking real-world examples and applying our biology to it, and then communicating that to the general public—since many of the students will be doing that in their profession," D'Aquino said.
D'Aquino said she was terminated for asking students to do just that—offering an optional alternative to the previously-assigned topic of avian flu, and instead focusing on the effects of the war in Gaza.
"The day that I added the optional assignment, there was a large attack on Rafah, and I didn't want that to be left unacknowledged," she said. The optional assignment asked for scientific analysis and critical thinking to understand "the impacts of genocide on human biology."
On May 7, one day after presenting the optional assignment, she said she received a phone call from the Chair of Health Sciences, who claimed that DePaul had received student complaints about feeling unsafe in the class and said that it was outside of the "realm of microbiology."
D'Aquino said that the Chair noted that "for what it's worth," she had "really good content" on D2L or the online portal where students can access their class content.
Using the accurate terms
D'Aquino also said her department questioned her word choice—specifically the reference to "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing." CBS 2 asked her why she chose the words she did.
"Because those are the accurate terms," she said, "A lot of rights groups—including the UN rights group—have demonstrated that there is reasonable evidence to accurately describe this as a genocide."
D'Aquino was referring to a report from the UN Human Rights Council in March, which found "reasonable grounds" that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
"We've heard time and time again from scientists that what's happening in Gaza, and Palestine more broadly, is a public health issue," D'Aquino said. "There isn't clean water. The infrastructure for sewage and sanitation is torn down—it's destroyed. Hospitals are destroyed. Infection is running rampant." …
Students Rally For DePaul Professor Fired Over Optional Assignment On Gaza Genocide: Protesters hit the DePaul University campus on Thursday to try to get an adjunct professor reinstated after she was fired over a student assignment about the war in Gaza. An appeals board unanimously decided that by firing now-former adjunct professor Dr. Anne D'Aquino, DePaul violated her academic freedom. That recommendation is now going to the provost at DePaul for a final decision. "I'm sad to no longer be teaching my students or see their final projects," said D'Aquino. "I'm sad that I don't get a chance to say properly goodbye to them or tell them how blown away I was by their creative and thoughtful work." D'Aquino was surrounded by students as she spoke at the protest on campus Thursday. But she is not allowed back in her former classroom. … Read the rest
“New McCarthyism”: University Professors Across The Nation Are Losing Their Jobs Over Gaza Genocide
“Of the cases that we’ve opened, none of them have been related to pro-Israel speech. All of them have been in support of the Palestinian cause. We are at the dawn of a “new McCarthyism. This may be the tip of the iceberg.”
By Natasha Lennard
The Intercept (5/16/24)
Many scholars committed to Palestinian liberation can no longer do their jobs. That’s because many of the professors most supportive of Palestine don’t have jobs anymore.
This is nowhere truer than in the Gaza Strip — where all 12 universities have been reduced to rubble, and more than 90 professors have been reported killed during Israel’s assault on the territory. The gravity of what United Nations experts warn could amount to U.S.-backed “scholasticide” has no equivalent on American soil.
Yet Israel’s attempted eradication of intellectual life in Gaza echoes far beyond the territory, with U.S. universities ensuring that some professors vocal in their support of Palestine can no longer do their jobs either.
Since the beginning of Israel’s war on Gaza, academics in fields including politics, sociology, Japanese literature, public health, Latin American and Caribbean studies, Middle East and African studies, mathematics, education, and more have been fired, suspended, or removed from the classroom for pro-Palestine, anti-Israel speech.
What the late, legendary civil rights attorney Michael Ratner coined as “the Palestine exception to free speech” is not new, though its escalation in the months since October has been ferocious.
These educators have little in common. They live in different cities and states and hail from different countries. Some have been teaching in their institutions for decades, some were newly hired. Some taught at private universities, others public. They have varying degrees of job security, from a tenured professor to the most precarious adjunct contracts. And they are racially, ethnically, religiously, age, and gender diverse.
What they share is that, in recent months, they have all staked out positions in favor of Palestinian freedom — positions that lead them to be targeted by pro-Israel groups.
Defending the American right to protest
From campus to campus, professors have defended students’ right to protest, but when scholars themselves espouse support for Palestine and opposition to the Israeli state, professional consequences have frequently been grave.
There’s no official tally of the number of academic workers who have lost jobs or faced suspension over support for Palestine, not least because higher education in this country is disarticulated, often privatized, and reliant on short-term contract labor. By and large, professors facing job loss and suspensions over Palestine have brought these allegations into public view by speaking out themselves. Scores of academics across the country are likely under investigation, and many stand to have their contracts quietly expire without renewals.
The Intercept spoke with more than a dozen professors, both adjuncts and those with tenure, whose employment has been imperiled by their pro-Palestine speech. Of the professors I talked to, all were at one point under investigation since October 7; some of the probes closed without findings of wrongdoing. Several faced varying degrees of suspensions, and four of the professors lost their jobs or expect to lose them next week when the semester ends without the renewal of their contracts.
The interviews, including those with campus labor activists and academic associations, revealed a pattern of politically motivated repression where campaigns by pro-Israel advocates can mar the careers of academics because of comments that express outrage at Israel’s ongoing occupation and its war in Gaza. …
Mark,
We’ve come a short way, baby. Consider the protests against the Vietnam war in the 60’s/70’s; universities were a hotbed of protest.
What the fuck happened? Ohhhhh, right…ZIONAZISM.
When I mentioned to an acquaintance that I’d prefer to live in China or Russia, he sputtered But you’d have no freedom of speech! Needless to say I howled with laughter.
Your drawings … your political statements via illustration… they are very important. They need to get to a wider audience beyond this echo chamber. Damn I wish I had your skill set.