August 26, 2025 • 19 mins
Dana El Kurd outlines what is happening in higher education, how and why the Trump administration is attacking universities, and the role Palestine plays in all of this.
Sources:
Clifford Ando – The Crisis of the University Started Long Before Trump - https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-university-started-long-before-trump/
Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism - https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/
Ken Stern on IHRA definition - https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/nx-s1-5326047/kenneth-stern-antimsietim-executive-order-free-speech
2023 Pew Research Center Poll on Black Lives Matter - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/06/14/views-on-the-black-lives-matter-movement/
Marc Bousquet – How the University Works - https://nyupress.org/9780814799758/how-the-university-works/
PBS Reporting on Harvard University negotiations with Trump administration - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/harvard-nearing-settlement-with-trump-to-pay-500-million-and-regain-federal-funding
The Intercept’s reporting on Columbia University settlement with the Trump administration - https://theintercept.com/2025/04/16/columbia-middle-eastern-studies-trump-attacks/
Middle East Studies Association statement on Columbia University settlement - https://mesana.org/advocacy/letters-from-the-board/2025/03/28/joint-statement-regarding-columbia-university-and-the-department-of-education
Results of the Middle East Scholar Barometer - https://criticalissues.umd.edu/sites/criticalissues.umd.edu/files/November%202023%20MESB%20Results.pdf
Human Rights Watch statement on the IHRA definition - https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/04/human-rights-and-other-civil-society-groups-urge-united-nations-respect-human
Axios reporting on The Nexus Project and Trump’s use of antisemitism investigations - https://www.axios.com/2025/03/31/college-campus-antisemitism-trump-nexus-project
American Association of University Professors – Academic Freedom - https://www.aaup.org/issues-higher-education/academic-freedom/faqs-academic-freedom
2024 Announcement of 40 new AAUP chapters - https://www.aaup.org/academe/issues/winter-2025/warm-welcome-new-or-reestablished-aaup-chapters
Executive Order on Combatting Antisemitism - https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello everyone, I'm welcome to it can happen here. My
name is Daniel Kurd, and I'm a writer, analyst, and
researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate professor
of political science and a senior non resident Fellow at
the Arab Center Washington. I'm also occasional co host of
The Fire These Times. Today, I want to talk about
the attacks on American universities in American academia and what
(00:30):
role Palestine plays in all of this, and maybe end
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.
(00:52):
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
(01:16):
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,
(01:36):
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
(02:00):
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
(02:23):
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
(02:47):
the Trump administration doing all this? Here is Vice President JD.
Vance speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in
this country. Ladies and gentlemen. The universities do not pursue
knowledge and truth. They pursued deceit and lies. And it's
time to be honest about that fact. And we subsidize,
we support, and in our own ways all of us
reinforce the power of universities to control our lives and
(03:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So that's Vance before him and Trump won the election,
identifying that universities are sites of power. Therefore, he argues
very explicitly that conservatives must destroy these sites of power
or submit them to their will. Our universities truly sites
of power? The short answer is yes, for two reasons.
(03:51):
Number One, as Vance himself identifies, universities produce knowledge, and
that knowledge produce that universities drives in innovation in the
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
(04:14):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:00):
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.
(05:22):
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
(05:45):
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
(06:06):
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
(06:28):
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,
(06:52):
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
(07:14):
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,
(07:37):
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,
(08:01):
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
(08:23):
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
(08:45):
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,
(09:05):
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
(09:25):
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
(09:53):
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
(10:15):
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
(10:38):
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
(11:01):
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
(11:24):
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
(11:45):
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,
(12:09):
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
(12:29):
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,
(12:53):
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,
(13:14):
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
(13:35):
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
(13:58):
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,
(14:18):
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
(14:41):
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.
(15:01):
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
(15:22):
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
(15:46):
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
(16:06):
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.
(16:31):
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,
(16:54):
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
(17:16):
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
(17:38):
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
(18:01):
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
(18:22):
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
(18:43):
about the latest developments in Palestine. Stay strong, everybody. Thanks
for listening.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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find sources for It could Happen Here, listed directly in
episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Col Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello everyone, I'm welcome to it can happen here. My
name is Daniel Kurd, and I'm a writer, analyst, and
researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate professor
of political science and a senior non resident Fellow at
the Arab Center Washington. I'm also occasional co host of
The Fire These Times. Today, I want to talk about
the attacks on American universities in American academia and what
(00:30):
role Palestine plays in all of this, and maybe end
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.
(00:52):
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
(01:16):
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,
(01:36):
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
(02:00):
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
(02:23):
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
(02:47):
the Trump administration doing all this? Here is Vice President JD.
Vance speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in twenty
twenty one.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in
this country. Ladies and gentlemen. The universities do not pursue
knowledge and truth. They pursued deceit and lies. And it's
time to be honest about that fact. And we subsidize,
we support, and in our own ways all of us
reinforce the power of universities to control our lives and
(03:17):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
So that's Vance before him and Trump won the election,
identifying that universities are sites of power. Therefore, he argues
very explicitly that conservatives must destroy these sites of power
or submit them to their will. Our universities truly sites
of power? The short answer is yes, for two reasons.
(03:51):
Number One, as Vance himself identifies, universities produce knowledge, and
that knowledge produce that universities drives in innovation in the
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
(04:14):
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
(04:39):
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
(05:00):
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.
(05:22):
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
(05:45):
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
(06:06):
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
(06:28):
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,
(06:52):
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
(07:14):
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,
(07:37):
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,
(08:01):
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
(08:23):
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
(08:45):
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,
(09:05):
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
(09:25):
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
(09:53):
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
(10:15):
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
(10:38):
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
(11:01):
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
(11:24):
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
(11:45):
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,
(12:09):
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
(12:29):
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,
(12:53):
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,
(13:14):
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
(13:35):
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
(13:58):
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,
(14:18):
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
(14:41):
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.
(15:01):
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
(15:22):
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
(15:46):
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
(16:06):
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.
(16:31):
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,
(16:54):
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
(17:16):
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
(17:38):
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
(18:01):
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
(18:22):
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
(18:43):
about the latest developments in Palestine. Stay strong, everybody. Thanks
for listening.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
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It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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