Palestine and the American University feat. Dana El Kurd

on what's being done to stop it. So you may or may not have heard about the attacks on universities in academia, but given the general onslaught of disastrous news, even for those of you who have noted something is happening in higher education may not be keeping up with the details. So let me give you a brief summary.

A number of universities, including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and UCLA, have been investigated for campus anti semitism related to pro Palestine protests on those campuses over the past two years. From there, the Trump administration has escalated by slashing federal funding that those universities receive and forcing those universities to settle with the administration not only monetarily, but also by

implementing changes to how their universities are run. So, for example, Columbia University agreed to pay the Trump administration two hundred and twenty million dollars punish seventy students involved in the protests in a variety of ways, including by expelling them, and they agreed to monitor and report their programs for

unlawful DEI goals. That's a quote. One of the ways Columbia has agreed to monitor, as the Intercept reported in April, is by appointing a vice provost in charge of monitoring the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Department, in

particular for quote balanced curricula. The faculty in that department will no longer run that department, and as the Middle East Studies Association, in a statement back in March, noted this, placing the department under administrative receivership is a quote fundamental

abrogation of the autonomy of university governance. This comes at a time when the Trump administration has also attacked the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, All of these are federal funding sources for the majority of research that happens at universities

across disciplines the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities. The Trumpet administration has also attacked foreign students and the processes by which they are able to get visas study in the United States, which is just another way to get at a major revenue source for many universities. But why is the Trump administration doing all this? Here is Vice President JD. Vance speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in twenty twenty one.

control how we live them. So much of what drives truth and knowledge as we understand it in this country is fundamentally determined by, supported by, and reinforced by the universities in this country.

private sector, in tech, in health, and weapons manufacturing. Universities are a main engine of economic growth. In fact, universities are part and parcel of American global power. They are a major source of that power for the United States, whether in the students and scholars they attract, whether for their research that they produce that various arms of the American government can use, or whether for the legitimization that

universities provide for certain frameworks like the frame market, liberalism, etc. Etc. So, Really, universities largely generate power for the powers that be. But sometimes universities are also sites of power that can challenge orthodoxies. With greater inclusion of scholars and students from a variety of backgrounds, we get a diversity of thought, and because of how universities are supposed to run in theory, as

governed by faculty and as sites of free inquiry. If that means sometimes occasionally knowledge is produced that can challenge power too. That sometimes occasional knowledge production is too much for the jd vances of today's politics, though, so they're cracking down. The number two reason why universities are sites of power is because they offer a promise of social mobility. And that's generally true too. Even the most modest regional public school in America still offer some of the highest

quality of education you can get around the world. But that shot at upward social mobility that you can get with the university education is definitely getting harder and costlier and less accessible. There's this book by Mark Busque I highly recommend reading titled How the University Works. In it, the author details how as universities became more corporatized, tuition increased, university workers were disempowered, and the value of a degree plummeted.

And this process started way before Trump. Clifford Ando, professor of Classics and history at the University of Chicago, wrote for Compact magazine recently on what's happening at the University of Chicago right now For those who may be unaware. At the University of Chicago, the university is stopping PhD admissions, it's increasing enrollment numbers, it's slashing budgets, it's even proposing

to teach some courses using chat. Gpt Ando argues that this current dismantling of University of Chicago that we're witnessing is again not Trump related, but can be traced to this corporatization of the university, where universities prioritized money making technologies and investments and as he writes, quote, fundamentally corroded

policymaking at universities. So to get a high quality education today, at a university that isn't trying to trap you as cheap labor or doesn't just use overworked adjuncts to teach courses to avoid paying faculty they're worth, you need to either come from money, or you need to be highly highly exceptional, or you need to accrue exorbitant amounts of debt. And yet, and yet, marginalized people still made advances in

this system. We saw, for example, more African American presidents of universities, more women, We saw diversifying scholarship courses, pathways for students, as universities became more inclusive. That's what diversity, equity and inclusion efforts did. Imperfect as they were, and even though the university as an institution continues to exploit labor, continues to exploit their own students, often doesn't deliver enough on the promise of social mobility. Even delivering a little

was too much for the Jdvans's of the world. They don't want upward social mobility for some Americans, and they don't want those challenges to power even at the margins, so they're cracking down. The attacks on Harvard, Brown, George Washington, UCLA, the list goes on, is predicated on attacking DEI diversity,

equity and inclusion. Conservatives alleged that universities taking a person's background into consideration in admissions or in hiring, or in scholarships, etc. All of that violates anti discrimination laws, and our conservative Supreme Court, in its recent ruling in the cases of Students for Fair Admissions versus University of North Carolina and Students for Vera Admissions versus Harvard, agreed they overturned the two thousand and three Grutta versus Bullinger case that had

allowed higher education institutions to consider race and admissions. And all of this comes at a time after decades of the university as an institution eroded itself. But I would say attacking DEI wasn't effective enough, especially after the Black Lives Matter movement. Saying DEI is bad is a harder sell for an American public fifty one percent of which say they support Black Lives Matter, and this was according

to a twenty twenty three study by the Pew Research Center. Now, fifty one percent isn't overwhelming, but it's not nothing either. So conservatives to attack the university have had to exploit

the weaknesses that already exist within the academy. That has meant exploiting the way the university as institution has become sensitive to money and endowments and donors, and that has meant exploiting the way the university has not actually been a site of free inquiry or expression for particular people and particular topics. And by exploiting and expanding that gap, they are now trying to take those freedoms away from everybody.

This is where Palestine comes in. The truth is a tax on student protesters for Palestine, a tax on scholars who work on Palestine or speak on Paliste. That all started before Trump, and that has become the blueprint for attacking universities and academic freedom. Generally, they're using the pro Palestine protests, pro Palestine programming, or just any knowledge production

about Palestine as an excuse to allege anti Semitism. Enter into these investigations and demand the universities do what they want. After the Hamas October seventh attacks, we saw student protesters detained like Mahmud Trilt Columbia and Remisa auster G at Tufts and many more. We have seen diplomas withheld, like what Virginia Commonwealth University attempted to do to many students,

including students sitty in Haded. We have seen professors put on leave or fired like what Muhlenberg College did to Moura Finkelstein. The list goes on and on, but again,

a lot of this pattern started before Trump. In a November twenty twenty three poll conducted by political scientists Mark Lynch and Shibley Telhem called the Middle East Scholar Barometer, the results show that sixty six percent of faculty members who study the Middle East quote self censor when speaking about the Middle East in an academic or professional setting, and that number goes up to seventy seven point four

percent when talking about Israel Palestine. On the Israeli Palstinin issue in particular, almost fifty two percent of scholars have concerns about pressure from external advocacy groups, and of those who said they self censor, a full eighty three percent said the issue they most feel the need to censor

themselves about is anything related to criticism of Israel. This is a crazy number if you consider that of the same group, only one point six percent of respondents said they censored criticism of US policy, and a full ninety eight percent of assistant professors, untenured professors who work on the Middle East quote field and new need to self censor when speaking about the Palestinian Israeli issue in an

academic or professional capacity. Part of this story, the censorship story, is the large scale adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance

Alliance definition of antisemitism. Back during his first term, President Trump's Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism directed government bodies to take the IRA definition into consideration when enforcing Title six, which is a part of the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The Biden administration didn't overturn any of

that either. They implemented that executive order themselves throughout their tenure. And this definition is one definition of anti semitism that

critics say conflates criticism of Israel with anti semitism. In fact, the main drafter of the IRA definition, ken Stearn, has expressed concerns that this definition is being used as a quote blunt instrument to label anyone an anti semi and it's for that reason that Human Rights Watch and one hundred and four other organizations signed a letter urging the

UN not to use this IRA definition. As a result, there are, of course, a number of competing definitions of anti Semitism, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti Semitism, that has a more nuanced understanding of one criticism of

Israel becomes anti semitism. As their website notes, the Jerusalem Declaration is a product of an initiative that originated in Jerusalem and includes in their numbers international scholars working in anti Semitism studies and related fields, including Jewish Holocaust, Israel Palestine and Middle Ast studies. But of course the IRA definition is the one that the Trump administration wants to follow and the one that universities are adopting. Maybe it

goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway. It's not because this administration that engages with the far right and propagates conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement, It's not like they actually care about anti Semitism. It's just a tool.

As Jewish organizations working to combat anti Semitism, such as the Nexus Project explicitly point out, it's a way to quote weaponize anti semitism by attacking free speech DEI foreign students, and in this environment, we can understand why there's so much fear to speak up and so much self censorship. You can be falsely accused of anti semitism for bringing up Palestine as a topic of discussion, for trying to study what's happening, for trying to produce any sort of

knowledge on what's going on. I also really want to underscore that this self censorship and fear that already existed in a space in academia is a worsening trend today, but it definitely existed before October seventh two. Take it from me as someone who studies Palestine in American academia. Palestinian scholars have long been on attack in the American academy. But after October seventh, and before Trump, this of course got worse. External actors and donors got involved in campus governance.

As we saw in Harvard and many other places, university administrations cracked down on students, professors, everyone, often preemptively doing the work of the right wing because they thought that taking away freedoms from some groups wouldn't come back to bite them. And this is how Palestine is now one of the cudgels that Trump is using to attack universities

and the academy. And it's an effective cudgel because some liberals in universities and outside universities can also be persuaded to attack scholarship on Palestine and students who speak on Palestine. But those exceptions to academic freedom that have long existed in the academy are now being used to attack everyone. A quick note here to outline what academic freedom for

a faculty member actually means. As the American Association of University Professors the AAUP on their website academic freedom has these main elements. Number one, the freedom to discuss relevant matters in the classroom. Number two, the freedom to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression, and to publish the results of such work. Number three intramural speech freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when addressing matters of

institutional policy or action. And number four extramural speech freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as citizens. So faculty members are allowed to speak on matters as citizens. Being a faculty member and being a member of the university community does not take away their right to be citizens.

That last one is worth emphasizing. To maintain universities as sites of free inquiry and knowledge production, there has to be academic freedom, and that freedom includes teaching, research, intramul speech, and extramural speech. You can't censor people you don't like or don't agree with think your institution and your university will continue to function. You certainly can't do that and think the right wing won't sniff it out and use

it against you. So what's to be done? Things are happening, People are fighting back, and just like Palestine has been the Canarian the coal mine for so many things, including the assault on American academia. Palestine may be one of those crucial issues that helps academics and students and faculty

to organize in this moment. For example, because of the arrests of pro Palestine students and their attempted deportation, the American Association of University Professors, alongside the Middle East Studies Association and the Night First Amendment Institute, sued the Trump administration over this policy of arresting and threatening deportation for

lawful speech on Palestine. The AAUP is also now ap plaintive in a number of cases challenging the Trump administration on the tax on DEI, attempting to abolish the Department of Education cuts, and federal funding of research except an attacks on students and faculty after October seventh, which set off this whole barrage of attacks on university since then have galvanized people to demand their university administrations uphold academic freedom.

In twenty twenty four, nearly forty chapters of the AAUP were founded or re established across the US, Even professors who don't teach or study the Middle East or Palestine are starting to speak out about the dangers of these moments and these trends. I think people are starting to realize that American universities will have to uphold their ideals of faculty governance, free inquiry, free thought for everyone, or they really will cease to exist. That's all I have

for you today. I'll be back soon to talk more about the latest developments in Palestine. Stay strong, everybody. Thanks for listening.