I remember when I was a college student in the early 2000s studying history and international relations, primarily focusing on the Middle East. There were several universities in my area, and I made it a point to go to neighboring universities when there were visiting lectures and book talks so as to supplement my own course work. One thing I noticed, though, was that fairly often, if the speaker was deemed to be critical of Israel, the talk would get postponed or canceled, or, failing that, sometimes altered to add another speaker considered more favorable to Israel. Usually, the explanation for this would be that pro-Israel students felt unsafe or unheard having to hear criticisms of Israel (even when these were non mandatory evening lectures that no one had to attend). I found this bizarre at the time, confused as to how some bespectacled professor with elbow patches on his corduroy jacket might make anyone feel unsafe. But I now realize I was witnessing an early phase of what came to be known as wokeness, specifically the idea that words can be violent by nature, and that the subjective feelings of privileged college students is more important than the pursuit of truth.
It was around this time that pro Israel students at Columbia, supported by some well-funded NGOs, decided to press this theme by producing a documentary about how 'unsafe' Columbia was for pro-Israel students, particularly because the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures employed many professors considered to be 'anti-Israel' (it also employed many extremely pro-Israel professors, but that was hardly the point). The noted scholar Rashid Khalidi, then (as now) a professor at Columbia, responded with what is still the best retort to the wokeness phenomenon, noting, 'We want all our students to feel comfortable in the classroom, but we can't achieve any learning if we insist on maintaining the comfort level of a kindergarten.' It is a widely unappreciated fact that this basic rhetorical framing we now called wokeness was really pioneered by pro-Israel students around this time.
Mercifully, this campaign at Columbia didn't really result in any professional consequences for the accused professors; the university did commission a big report, but it mostly concluded that the claims had been wildly overblown. But this movement was just getting started: similar groups did succeed in inserting themselves into tenure battles at other colleges, which led to several professors being fired or denied tenure over perceived lack of fealty to Israel. This happened so often that the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote a report decrying the 'Palestine exception' to freedom of speech. Of course, the real purpose of all this was not just to harass professors and students for saying the wrong things, but to create a chilling effect that would discourage any thoughtful discussion of this topic.
In my case, I would say it had the opposite effect: I entered university as a student with no particular axe to grind about this topic, but seeing the censorious nature of pro-Israel student groups, often supporting by outside interests, left a bad impression. My general view is that people who rely on censorship to make their argument are unable or unwilling to defend their views on the merits.
This was all well before the recent battles in Israel and Gaza of the past year. But the degree of censorship demanded by pro-Israel groups has only accelerated as they've continued to lose the war of ideas. We now have NGOs dedicated to slandering students who protest Israel in order to undermine their employment prospects, donors threatening to revolt if universities don't censor more constitutionally protected speech, and pro Israel groups inventing stories about how unsafe they feel in order to demand more censorship.
Ted- if you're genuinely unsure where the censorship is coming from you should look into this more, perhaps by speaking to someone like Greenwald, as another commenter suggested, reading the CCR report, etc- it might make for a good documentary project.
Eric, thank you very much for this thoughtful post. Very fascinating. I'll look into the CCR report. And I'm pretty sure your account pre-dates any evidence of wokeness Greg Lukianoff has noted. In my world of film, people on both side of this issue have been punished for speaking out. I read about it and hear stories from friends. I couldn't agree more with this line: "My general view is that people who rely on censorship to make their argument are unable or unwilling to defend their views on the merits."
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I think it's true that there is significant repression of open discussion of this topic all around, and we unfortunately live in a world where trying to get one's ideological adversaries punished in some way is just how many people argue. That said, I think the pro-Israel movement relies on censorship to a degree that outpaces anything else in present American political life. I know of no other political movement that has effectively succeeded in demanding public employees sign loyalty oaths to their cause (see Greenwald's report on this Texas law that many other states have adopted: https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/); nor succeeded in getting so many scholars fired, students expelled, etc. Muhlenberg College recently fired a tenured professor for retweeting something critical of Israel (https://theintercept.com/2024/09/26/tenured-professor-fired-palestine-israel-zionism/); a grad student at Cornell is currently facing deportation for participating in pro-Palestine events, without any due process (https://www.newsweek.com/cornell-student-forced-leave-us-pro-palestinian-activism-1960399). They join a long list of professors and students who have faced consequences for activism deemed critical of Israel (see the report for other examples: https://palestinelegal.org/the-palestine-exception). There are also numerous organizations, most notably once called Canary Mission, which specialize in circulating dossiers of students who participate in demonstrations, accusing them of terrorism, and actively trying to destroy their lives in various ways.
"Martyrs" is a strong term; I would not say that these students and professors are martyrs per se. But I would push back on the thesis of your article, which seems to downplay the degree to which there is in fact a campaign of repression targeting people critical of Israel. To be more specific, anyone who has an interest in promoting freedom of speech ought to be speaking out against this censorship, whether or not they agree with pro-Palestine protesters.
Fortunately, some of this censorship campaign has failed: the Texas law and similar efforts have been struck down by courts for example. But the limited success of this campaign can have a dramatic effect in browbeating people into silence. And of course, as I noted above, the very fact that pro-Israel groups rely on such tactics reads to me like an admission that they are losing the argument on the merits.
We've moved into Mr Dumpty territory, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less........"the question is which is to be master-- that's all". And Alice thought things were curious there.
You should debate Glenn Greenwald on his show. I respect him a lot as a free speech advocate, but he is always insisting that pro-Palestinians are censored the most. He also claims that people with opposing views don't want to debate him.
That could be fun. I too respect Greenwald for the same reasons, but I haven't kept up with him recently. It might depend on context. I think universities have made their preferences clear, but the entertainment industry might be more complicated. I've heard of people on both sides of the Middle East conflict getting censored and it's hard to know which side is getting it worse.
Maybe the fourth wave will be when the janitors, led by those in Hamilton Hall of Columbia University, finally clean up this collegiate mess.
Hears hoping. I have far more faith in those janitors than the students, faculty or admins
I remember when I was a college student in the early 2000s studying history and international relations, primarily focusing on the Middle East. There were several universities in my area, and I made it a point to go to neighboring universities when there were visiting lectures and book talks so as to supplement my own course work. One thing I noticed, though, was that fairly often, if the speaker was deemed to be critical of Israel, the talk would get postponed or canceled, or, failing that, sometimes altered to add another speaker considered more favorable to Israel. Usually, the explanation for this would be that pro-Israel students felt unsafe or unheard having to hear criticisms of Israel (even when these were non mandatory evening lectures that no one had to attend). I found this bizarre at the time, confused as to how some bespectacled professor with elbow patches on his corduroy jacket might make anyone feel unsafe. But I now realize I was witnessing an early phase of what came to be known as wokeness, specifically the idea that words can be violent by nature, and that the subjective feelings of privileged college students is more important than the pursuit of truth.
It was around this time that pro Israel students at Columbia, supported by some well-funded NGOs, decided to press this theme by producing a documentary about how 'unsafe' Columbia was for pro-Israel students, particularly because the department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures employed many professors considered to be 'anti-Israel' (it also employed many extremely pro-Israel professors, but that was hardly the point). The noted scholar Rashid Khalidi, then (as now) a professor at Columbia, responded with what is still the best retort to the wokeness phenomenon, noting, 'We want all our students to feel comfortable in the classroom, but we can't achieve any learning if we insist on maintaining the comfort level of a kindergarten.' It is a widely unappreciated fact that this basic rhetorical framing we now called wokeness was really pioneered by pro-Israel students around this time.
Mercifully, this campaign at Columbia didn't really result in any professional consequences for the accused professors; the university did commission a big report, but it mostly concluded that the claims had been wildly overblown. But this movement was just getting started: similar groups did succeed in inserting themselves into tenure battles at other colleges, which led to several professors being fired or denied tenure over perceived lack of fealty to Israel. This happened so often that the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote a report decrying the 'Palestine exception' to freedom of speech. Of course, the real purpose of all this was not just to harass professors and students for saying the wrong things, but to create a chilling effect that would discourage any thoughtful discussion of this topic.
In my case, I would say it had the opposite effect: I entered university as a student with no particular axe to grind about this topic, but seeing the censorious nature of pro-Israel student groups, often supporting by outside interests, left a bad impression. My general view is that people who rely on censorship to make their argument are unable or unwilling to defend their views on the merits.
This was all well before the recent battles in Israel and Gaza of the past year. But the degree of censorship demanded by pro-Israel groups has only accelerated as they've continued to lose the war of ideas. We now have NGOs dedicated to slandering students who protest Israel in order to undermine their employment prospects, donors threatening to revolt if universities don't censor more constitutionally protected speech, and pro Israel groups inventing stories about how unsafe they feel in order to demand more censorship.
Ted- if you're genuinely unsure where the censorship is coming from you should look into this more, perhaps by speaking to someone like Greenwald, as another commenter suggested, reading the CCR report, etc- it might make for a good documentary project.
Eric, thank you very much for this thoughtful post. Very fascinating. I'll look into the CCR report. And I'm pretty sure your account pre-dates any evidence of wokeness Greg Lukianoff has noted. In my world of film, people on both side of this issue have been punished for speaking out. I read about it and hear stories from friends. I couldn't agree more with this line: "My general view is that people who rely on censorship to make their argument are unable or unwilling to defend their views on the merits."
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. I think it's true that there is significant repression of open discussion of this topic all around, and we unfortunately live in a world where trying to get one's ideological adversaries punished in some way is just how many people argue. That said, I think the pro-Israel movement relies on censorship to a degree that outpaces anything else in present American political life. I know of no other political movement that has effectively succeeded in demanding public employees sign loyalty oaths to their cause (see Greenwald's report on this Texas law that many other states have adopted: https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/); nor succeeded in getting so many scholars fired, students expelled, etc. Muhlenberg College recently fired a tenured professor for retweeting something critical of Israel (https://theintercept.com/2024/09/26/tenured-professor-fired-palestine-israel-zionism/); a grad student at Cornell is currently facing deportation for participating in pro-Palestine events, without any due process (https://www.newsweek.com/cornell-student-forced-leave-us-pro-palestinian-activism-1960399). They join a long list of professors and students who have faced consequences for activism deemed critical of Israel (see the report for other examples: https://palestinelegal.org/the-palestine-exception). There are also numerous organizations, most notably once called Canary Mission, which specialize in circulating dossiers of students who participate in demonstrations, accusing them of terrorism, and actively trying to destroy their lives in various ways.
"Martyrs" is a strong term; I would not say that these students and professors are martyrs per se. But I would push back on the thesis of your article, which seems to downplay the degree to which there is in fact a campaign of repression targeting people critical of Israel. To be more specific, anyone who has an interest in promoting freedom of speech ought to be speaking out against this censorship, whether or not they agree with pro-Palestine protesters.
Fortunately, some of this censorship campaign has failed: the Texas law and similar efforts have been struck down by courts for example. But the limited success of this campaign can have a dramatic effect in browbeating people into silence. And of course, as I noted above, the very fact that pro-Israel groups rely on such tactics reads to me like an admission that they are losing the argument on the merits.
Of course I believe they would say that.
touche!
We've moved into Mr Dumpty territory, "When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less........"the question is which is to be master-- that's all". And Alice thought things were curious there.
yeah, we're in really bad shape if we're in Dumpty territory!
You should debate Glenn Greenwald on his show. I respect him a lot as a free speech advocate, but he is always insisting that pro-Palestinians are censored the most. He also claims that people with opposing views don't want to debate him.
That could be fun. I too respect Greenwald for the same reasons, but I haven't kept up with him recently. It might depend on context. I think universities have made their preferences clear, but the entertainment industry might be more complicated. I've heard of people on both sides of the Middle East conflict getting censored and it's hard to know which side is getting it worse.
Thanks Ted.
An especially difficult matter, good to hear your thoughts
Thanks, Dan