CLC STATEMENT TO UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS: ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND PALESTINE
The last few weeks have seen escalated attacks on academic freedom. Across the country, students and faculty expressing solidarity with Palestinian people or criticizing acts of the Israeli government have faced expulsion, firing and disciplinary procedures by their universities; events have been canceled, organizations have been suspended, and speech on department websites and inter-university email lists have been surveilled and censored. We write to unequivocally condemn these attacks on legitimate academic discourse and to demand that university leaders reinstate with full privileges any organization or individual targeted in these attacks.
We write this open letter to university administrators from the Critical (Legal) Collective (CLC). The CLC was formed in response to the ongoing campaign to morally discredit and legally ban Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other academic frameworks that foreground the centrality of race and racism in the United States and across the globe. This well-funded campaign has involved strategic assaults on university autonomy and faculty independence thereby compromising students’ right to education and spaces for dissent. Ongoing attacks targeting Palestinian solidarity speech resonate deeply with us. The same principles of academic freedom that we are defending against the attacks on CRT are equally relevant here.
Here we focus on university policies and actions concerning speech and community education related to ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza. Attacks targeting expressions of support for Palestinian people appear most acute when such speech situates the last month’s violence in the history of structural inequality and injustice that Palestinians have experienced under Israeli occupation. Efforts to discredit and silence speech attending to histories of structural violence are antithetical to, and undermine, the university’s core mandate to teach, research, and pursue truth for the common good.
Censorial actions arising from within and outside of universities also resonate with attacks targeting CRT. A central tenet of academic freedom is to create and protect an intellectual environment in which students and faculty can study, discuss, and debate histories of racial, ethnic, or religious oppression. Such knowledge is integral to robust intellectual discourse and to empower and support ongoing struggles against racial injustice. These include the race and ethnicity-based human rights atrocities that Palestinians continue to suffer. We support academic freedom because it is a value we cherish and respect in its own right. But also because it is crucial for understanding and resisting racial injustice.
Recent weeks reflect how students and scholars without the security of tenure are most vulnerable when universities fail to safeguard academic freedom. In this moment, Palestinian and Arab students and faculty specifically, as well as Muslim and Jewish members of our academic communities, are especially vulnerable. As scholars of race and racial injustice we have been especially alarmed and distressed by the cynical and strategic weaponization of the tragic history of anti-Semitism to discredit speech that is critical of the Israeli government’s policies and military actions. We are a multi-racial and inter-faith group of scholars and we condemn all anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism. We also condemn the careless invocation of anti-Semitism to silence and punish the exercise of the freedom of speech, association, and expression. Universities must reject such rhetoric, which undermines institutional commitments to robust discourse and our collective safety by propagating the false premise that one cannot demand peace and dignity for all Palestinians and all Jewish people. The bad faith of those who strategically wield accusations of anti-Semitism is belied by their attacks on Jewish students and scholars who have called for a ceasefire and an end to occupation. Recall, that in the United States, Jewish people have been historically targeted with anti-Semitic rhetoric when they stand in solidarity with Black Americans and other groups who demand their basic civil rights.
We write to affirm our commitment to academic freedom and our support for those who are exercising it to call out racist atrocities and demand peace and safety for all of our communities. We condemn policies and actions that have been deployed to punish and silence freedom of inquiry and expression. We call on university administrators to stand firm with us in protecting this cherished value, and to immediately reinstate the full privileges of any individual or entity targeted in these attacks.