FREEDOM CRISIS: Oppressive Attacks On Free Speech Ramp Up Across The Nation
Understand one basic fact: Without our First Amendment right — not privilege — to free speech, none of our other rights will be protected. Speak, or Submit.
TO SET THE STAGE: Attacks On Free Speech Need To Be Seen In The Frame of Our First Amendment RIGHT, Not Privilege
And understand one basic fact: Without our First Amendment right — not privilege — to free speech, none of our other rights will be protected. Speak up, or Submit.
FBI Agents HUMILIATED Trying To Intimidate Homeowner Over Free Speech
[Editor’s Note: OMG! This is a delicious video!!! Pass along and ahre as a ‘how-to’ video.— Mark Taylor]
The Jimmy Dore Show (9/30/24)
6-minute video
Meet The First Tenured Professor To Be Fired For Pro-Palestine Speech
“I think that the pressure from donors and alums was so intense that I became a huge liability.”
By Natasha Lennard
The Intercept (9/26/24)
Maura Finkelstein never hid her support for Palestinian liberation during her nine years working as a professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College, a small liberal arts school in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
“I have always had an ethical practice of making sure that I include Palestine in my teaching,” Finkelstein told me. “It was never outside the bounds of what I do.”
For Finkelstein, who is Jewish, this was not always easy. More than 30 percent of Muhlenberg’s 2,200 students are Jewish, many of them vocal supporters of Israel.
Neither her longtime public support of Palestinians, however, nor the courses on Palestine she taught in her early years at the school prevented Finkelstein from earning tenure in 2021. Following the arduous tenure process, professors are supposed to enjoy lifetime job security and robust safeguards of academic freedom. The bar for dismissal from a tenured academic position is by design meant to be extremely high, requiring justifiable cause.
“I was immediately upset with the college, as there were zero updates as to what was happening,” one anonymous student told The Muhlenberg Weekly. “[F]rom the limited information that I do know, it seems like a heinous violation of Dr Finkelstein’s academic freedom, something which Muhlenberg claims to pride itself on having.”
Maura Finkelstein in occupied East Jerusalem in 2018. Photo: Courtesy of Maura Finkelstein
In late May, however, Muhlenberg told Finkelstein that she was fired. The reason? She had shared, on her personal Instagram account, in a temporary story slide, a post written not by herself but by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters.
“Do not cower to Zionists,” Kanazi wrote on January 16. “Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Why should these genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist.” At the time, Israel had already killed over 22,000 Palestinians in Gaza, the majority of whom were women and children.
For Finkelstein’s repost of Kanazi’s words, the college determined that their employee of nine years had violated its equal opportunity and nondiscrimination policies.
“The College at all times follows its mission, policies and procedures with respect to matters arising under our Equal Opportunity and Nondiscrimination Policy and the Faculty Handbook,” said Todd Lineburger, Muhlenberg’s vice president for communications. “Per those policies and procedures, the College does not comment on confidential matters.”
“The First Case”
In this time of extraordinary repression in academia, Finkelstein appears to be the first professor to be dismissed from a tenured job over anti-Zionist speech since the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Her dismissal sets a grim new precedent against a backdrop of right-wing attacks on higher education nationwide. As The Intercept has reported, numerous professors without the protection of tenure have faced the loss of work in apparent retaliation for speaking out against Israel’s genocidal war and apartheid regime. Hundreds of students have faced and continue to face grave disciplinary consequences for participating in Gaza solidarity encampments and protests.
In the last 11 months, other tenured professors have been suspended and investigated for making strong criticisms of Israel and Zionism in their extramural speech — statements made outside the classroom. …
“It has been chilling,” she said of the school’s treatment of Finkelstein, then reconsidered: “I used the word chilling in the Fall. I think at this point I will call it an icy tundra.”
Cornell Under Fire As Suspended Pro-Palestinian Student At Risk Of Deportation
Momodou Taal, a Ph.D. student at Cornell University, could be deported as a result of his pro-Palestinian activism on campus. (Photo: Momodou Taal)
By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams (9/28/24)
Two members of Congress on Friday joined the growing chorus of voices criticizing Cornell University for the administration's treatment of Ph.D. student Momodou Taal, a U.K. citizen who could be deported as a result of his pro-Palestinian activism on the Ithaca, New York campus.
"It is appalling that Cornell University appears ready to deport an international student without regard for due process, simply because of their presence at a protest. It is wrong, and I urge the university to reverse course immediately," U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a top congressional critic of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip, said on social media early Friday.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)—another opponent of genocide in Gaza who is set to leave the House of Representatives at the end of this term after losing his primary to a pro-Israel candidate—spoke out in support of Taal Friday evening.
"Momodou Taal participated in a peaceful student protest against weapons contractors' presence in a career fair—Cornell set into motion his deportation."
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for the November election, "showed us how he felt about Black immigrants, and I urge Cornell to refrain from doing the same," Bowman said on social media.
"Momodou Taal participated in a peaceful student protest against weapons contractors' presence in a career fair—Cornell set into motion his deportation," he explained. "Cornell must reverse his suspension. Student protest and free expression are critical rights that universities need to uphold for students and faculty alike."
Cynical sleight of hand
Joel M. Malina, Cornell's vice president for university relations, has told multiple media outlets this week that "universities can disallow enrollment and bar a student from campus, but do not have deportation powers."
In response, Taal's attorney, Eric Lee, has called that statement "a cynical sleight of hand," given that "the administration has made the decision to persecute Mr. Taal for free speech activity knowing full well that doing so will subject him to serious immigration consequences," which sets "a dangerous national precedent."
Taal, 30-year-old a Ph.D. candidate in Africana studies who was teaching a writing seminar at Cornell, is part of the Coalition for Mutual Liberation. He was among over 100 students who marched into the on-campus career fair last week due to participation from Boeing and L3Harris, defense contractors that students targeted for "supporting the ongoing war in Gaza."
In a video interview with Taal published on Friday, The Cornell Daily Sun's Gabriel Levin noted that the newspaper does not know of any other students suspended because of the career fair protest. Taal suggested that he is being targeted because of his identity as a Black Muslim man and he is seen as a leader of pro-Palestinian campus activism.
9-minute video
Early Monday, Taal received an email about a Cornell police complaint against him related to the career fair protest—which contains allegations that the graduate student denies—and his resulting suspension. He has been barred from campus.
Because Taal has attended the Ivy League school with an F-1 visa, the suspension means he could soon be deported. …
BS ALERT! UC Berkeley Law School Dean Fabricated “anti-Semitic” Incident
UC Berkeley Law School dean Erwin Chemerinsky, right, used an 11 April interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper to lie that he had been the victim of an anti-Semitic attack by his own students.
By Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Intafada (9/6/24)
“I’m a 71-year-old Jewish man. I’ve heard anti-Semitic things throughout my life. But I’ve never seen the anti-Semitism on our campuses that’s been there since October 7,” Erwin Chemerinsky claimed as he spoke on a panel on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month.
The First Amendment lawyer and dean of the University of California Berkeley’s prestigious law school purported to be speaking from personal experience, about an incident that happened when he hosted third-year law students for a dinner at his home.
“Chemerinsky described an anti-Semitic incident he faced in April, which garnered national headlines,” Jewish Insider reported.
“Beforehand, some of them [students] shared a flyer with a caricature of Chemerinsky holding a blood [sic] knife. It read ‘No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves’ – though the dean had never spoken about Israel publicly.”
Chemerinsky claimed that the flyer depicted him with blood on his lips, in addition to blood on the knife and fork.
As reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Chemerinsky told the panel that these “posters were hung around the law school.”
“At the dinner, a student berated him and his wife about the situation in Gaza and refused to leave,” according to Jewish Insider.
But the story Chemerinsky told in Chicago – and has been retelling for months – is replete with distortions, mischaracterizations and outright lies aimed at painting himself – an influential and world-renowned academic and university administrator – as a victim, and his students, who were protesting genocide, as anti-Jewish bigots.
There is no evidence that the flyer he describes and says was posted on bulletin boards around campus ever existed. Chemerinsky has responded to inquiries from The Electronic Intifada, but challenged to produce evidence backing up his claims, was unable to do so.
His lying and misconduct are all the more egregious as one of his aims appears to be to deflect attention and blame from his wife, fellow UC Berkeley law professor Catherine Fisk, who is under investigation after she used physical force against a student.
Professor uses force against student
What happened at the 9 April dinner is not the principal topic of this article. The focus, rather, is on the lies Chemerinsky – known on campus by the nickname Chem – is spinning around it. Nonetheless, starting with those events provides the context for Chemerinsky’s dishonesty.
On the one hand, it was held at the Chemerinsky-Fisk home, but on the other hand, it was an official event, paid for by the university (UC Berkeley produced invoices detailing about $20,000 in catering and other expenses billed to the university for the dinners, in response to a public records request from The Electronic Intifada).
Widely circulated video of the incident shows Chemerinsky and Fisk berating and using physical force against Palestinian American law student Malak Afaneh as she begins to speak.
Afaneh’s intervention was not part of the official program, but intended as a protest, albeit a mild one – a few comments given to fellow students seated at round tables in a garden for a catered dinner.
Holding a microphone, Afaneh manages to give a greeting in Arabic and in English – “peace and blessings upon you all” – and acknowledges that it was also the last night of Ramadan. Within seconds, Chemerinsky begins bellowing at her, “please leave, this is my house!”
Fisk then quickly approaches Afaneh from behind, lays her right hand on Afaneh’s shoulder and grabs the microphone with her left hand. Fisk then places her right arm around Afaneh’s neck. …
Link To The Electronic Intafada
Before anything else; as a professor and a Dean of Students who for decades has invited students to my home for dinner… $20,000!! What? What? Was this dude serving steak and lobster to the freshmen class or what? Some of these people reveal themselves just through those kinds of behaviors. I made spaghetti and meatballs with salad for large and small groups and no one complained. And I never turned in my receipt for $131.56 for a group of 14 students.
Got that off my chest. Phew!
This post is extremely important and needs to be read by 100’s of thousands if not millions of people.
Universities have become bastions of ‘limited free speech.’ I lost my position because of limited free speech and zero, ZERO, standards of human rights and legal protocols. I never would have imagined in my life to see universities firing faculty, deporting students and denying degrees because someone the person spoke their truth. We are in grave danger.
Grave danger. And anyone who believes that to be a histrionic statement had better wake up and smell the roses or they will soon wake up and smell the shit in their tent city ‘adjustment camp’ just outside of town