New Policies Suppress Pro-Palestinian Speech
Radhika Sainath writes that the rewriting of policies to restrict protests over Gaza will have dire consequences for campus speech.
Category: Columns
Meet the First Tenured Professor to Be Fired for Pro-Palestine Speech
Maura Finkelstein was terminated by Muhlenberg College for an Instagram repost.
The US and all nations must respect the UN resolution against Israeli occupation
The UN’s resolution this week has dramatically changed the legal context of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory
The Genocide in Gaza and its Consequences for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – by Etienne Balibar
This text is Etienne Balibar’s memorandum for the conference that will take place in Johannesburg during September 18th–20th of 2024, organized by the New South Institute as part of the series “African Global Dialogue” with the title “Narrative Conditions Towards Peace in the Middle East”.
The Guardian view on Israel’s booby-trap war: illegal and unacceptable
Benjamin Netanyahu’s hold on power depends on his nation being at war. The region is paying a high price
The Organizers Are Jewish. The Cause Is Palestinian. This College Won’t Be Hosting.
On the surface, this is a small story: A college canceled an event planned by a magazine. But it seems to be a story about something bigger: fear. Rather, it’s a story about many fears — including the fear of antisemitism, the fear of being accused of antisemitism, and the fear of controversy generally — and how they can combine to turn an institution designed to facilitate open discussion into something that makes open discussion impossible.
Devastation From Gaza to the West Bank
While much of the world’s attention has been concentrated on Gaza since October 7, 2023, the same Israeli policy imperatives in Gaza have been followed in the West Bank. While the level of carnage has been of a lesser degree until now, the methods and policies are the same. It has been estimated that since October 7, over 700 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed. Furthermore, the Israeli settlers have intensified their attacks on Palestinian farmers and the rate at which they are taking over their land by force, all the while benefiting from the impunity that Israel has been enjoying and the relative silence of the world.
MESA Board Joint Letter With CAF condemning the decimation of the education sector in Gaza
Various organizations have been documenting the Israeli military’s killing of Palestinian scholars and university professors. As a precise accounting is obstructed by the ongoing attacks and insecurity, we provide below only a partial list of the names and, where possible, academic affiliations of those scholars who have been killed. These individuals represent a very small percentage of those who have been integral to higher education and intellectual life in the Gaza Strip and have been catastrophically affected by death and suffering: the hundreds of faculty and staff and thousands of students and their families who have been killed in military assaults, bombings, or through prolonged exposure to starvation and disease since 7 October 2023.
Testing the boundaries for ethnic cleansing in the West Bank
The current operation in the West Bank is meant to test the boundaries of what Israel will be allowed to get away with. It is setting the stage for the forced ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.
Jewish Faculty Response to Columbia University Task Force Report on Anti-Semitism
“We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in response to the Antisemitism Task Force’s second report, which documents a number of disturbing incidents and student experiences. We join the report’s authors in abhorring all instances of harassment, intimidation, and violence against students for being Jewish, and agree that at Columbia, “[n]o one should feel excluded, marginalized, disrespected, or unheard.” We are writing to demonstrate how the report undermines these fundamental values by subjecting the incidents described to analysis and framing that misrepresent their meaning and implications. We are troubled by the way the widely publicized report contributes to a hostile narrative about Columbia, which is used to justify interference in the institution’s governance and operations.”