WSAHINGTON (Middle East Eye) – As issues of academic freedom and censorship continue to dominate conversations in universities across the U.S., academics say that many of these issues - as well as the methods of censorship - can be linked back to speech over Palestine.
Dima Khalidi, executive director of Palestine Legal, said that academics have for decades been working to put the issue of Palestinian rights at the forefront of their universities, often leading to attempts by pro-Zionist and Zionist groups to censor their voices.
“It is clear that there’s a Palestine exception to our free-speech rights, but it’s not the only one. And I think it’s a sign of our quickly eroding constitutional rights,” Khalidi said during a webinar hosted by the Washington-based think tank, the Arab Center.
Sites like Canary Mission and Campus Watch have been introduced over the past 20 years, acting as blacklists where students, activists, and academics with pro-Palestinian views or those who criticize the Zionist regime are placed and leveled with accusations of anti-Semitism and supporting terrorism.
Middle East Eye previously spoke to several students who have had to brave smear campaigns because of their pro-Palestinian activism. According to The Intercept, blacklists like Canary Mission have become even more frightening because they are used by law enforcement in the Israeli-occupied territories and the U.S.
“While Campus Watch was one of the first groups to create a blacklist against professors who criticize Israel, we’ve seen that inspire, likely, newer right-wing groups like Professor Watchlist, which is a project of Turning Point USA that supposedly exposes professors who discriminate ‘against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom’,” Khalidi said.
This year alone, there have been several attempts to censor academics and other individuals critical of the occupying regime on U.S. campuses.
In January, former Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth was denied a fellowship position at Harvard University. Roth told Middle East Eye at the time that the reason for his denial likely had to do with his criticism of the Zionist regime.
Roth was eventually given the fellowship at Harvard after a wave of outrage. But Laila El-Haddad, who is originally from Gaza and attended the Harvard Kennedy School in 2002, told MEE at the time that the incident was just one of many showing bias towards the regime and was also a troubling precedent for Palestinian academics who speak out against the regime.
Then this past summer, Zionist groups and the occupying regime called on Princeton University to ban a book discussing the regime’s intentional maiming of Palestinians. The issue also led to outrage, and an open letter against the move has received around 400 signatures so far.