BY: Nisreen Eadeh/Staff Writer The Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has issued a list of twenty ways to prevent and respond to hate incidents against Arab Americans in schools. The report also applies to Muslim and Sikh students, who are often targeted for their religious head coverings. The DOJ released … Continued
Mondoweiss Editors
The following press release was sent to us by Scientists for Palestine:
From July 26th to 28th Palestinian physicists and the international group “Scientists for Palestine,” are organizing the first ever “Palestinian Advanced Physics School” at the Arab American University in Jenin. At the school, advanced Palestinian master students in physics from several Palestinian universities (Al Quds University, Birzeit University, An Najah University, the Arab American University in Jenin (AAUJ), and the Islamic University in Gaza) will listen to lectures and engage in scientific discussion with internationally leading physicists in topics at the frontiers of physics research. Lecturers at the school will include Philip Argyres, professor of theoretical particle physics at the University of Cincinnati in the United States; John Ellis, the Clerk Maxwell Professor of Theoretical Physics at King’s College London and visiting scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland (home of the Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012); and Giorgio Paolucci, Scientific Director of SESAME (a synchrotron light-source laboratory in Jordan established by a group of Middle Eastern countries including Palestine and scheduled to begin operation in 2017). The school is organized by physicists from the universities of Amsterdam, AAUJ, Birzeit, Cambridge, CERN, Cincinnati, and Southampton.
Professor Stephen Hawking, University of Cambridge, member of the International Advisory Board for the “Palestinian Advanced Physics School”, expressed his support for the school:
I am very glad to see the first Palestinian Advanced Physics School being organised in Jenin. The school provides an opportunity for Palestinian master students to learn more about the mysteries of the universe, and perhaps some of the students will become inspired and help unravelling them in the future. Physics does not respect borders and international collaborations are the engines of rapid scientific progress. I am delighted to see that physics education and research in Palestine continues to grow and strengthen its international connections. I wish the students the best of luck!
Physics has a strong tradition in Palestine. For example, the bi-annual “Palestinian Conference on Modern Trends in Mathematics and Physics”, organized by Palestinian academics since 2008, bring together scientists, engineers, and mathematicians not only from Palestine but also from around the world. This year the conference will be held at AAUJ, immediately following the “Palestinian Advanced Physics School”.
Flyer for the Palestinian Advanced Physics School
However, physics higher education and research in Palestine faces many challenges, including some common to many countries, such as lack of funding and heavy teaching loads for professors, as well as unique challenges from the ongoing occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, including restrictions on mobility of students and academics, international isolation, raids and forced closures of Palestinian universities and other scientific institutions, and indictment or imprisonment without trial of individual academics.
Nevertheless, interest in physics education and research in Palestine continues to grow rapidly not only within Palestine but also throughout the international scientific community. In December 2015, Palestine signed an International Cooperation Agreement with CERN, signaling Palestine’s increasing involvement in cutting-edge scientific research at one of the best laboratories in the world.
The organization of the school has benefited tremendously from the contribution of a Palestinian based organizing committee. Adli Saleh, associate Professor at the Arab American University expressed his optimism for the years to come:
“The Palestinian people, while they continue to yearn for freedom from the heavy weight of the occupation, place a very high value on education, particularly in the areas of science and technology to realize their full potential. Despite the difficult challenges Palestinians faced over the past several decades, they made great contributions throughout the region and the world. Enrollment in university education is over 10% higher than the average for the Arab region, and half the students are women, a ratio among the highest in the world”.
Wafaa Khater, Birzeit University Physics Department chair, also stressed how the school could help students to be successful in academia:
“Being one of a few female faculty members in physics in Palestine, I am so happy to see such large number of excellent female students participating in ‘the Palestinian Advanced Physics School’. I am hopeful that they will be able to pursue a career in physics either in academia or research. And this school is an excellent opportunity for all participating students to meet scientists from the international community and learn from them. This opens up new windows for our students to continue their higher education in prestigious universities and research centers around the globe.”
To help meet the rapidly-increasing demand for high-level scientific education and collaboration in Palestine, physicists from around the world created “Scientists for Palestine,” an international group whose goals are to promote and support science in Palestine and to help integrate Palestine into the international scientific community. The group’s first action was to establish the Palestinian Advanced Physics School as an annual event, with plans for many further schools, conferences, workshops, and other scientific activities in Palestine in the coming years. In the words of John Ellis, “these are promising times for physicists in Palestine, I’m excited to participate in this School, and we welcome support from other members of the international physics community.”
Source: mondoweiss.net
By BEN RAWLENCE
New York Times
THE WAY TO THE SPRING
Life and Death in Palestine
By Ben Ehrenreich
Illustrated. 428 pp. Penguin Press. $28.
“It is perhaps unavoidable and surely unfortunate that any book about the region between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea requires introduction, and some small degree of defensiveness on the part of the author.” So writes Ben Ehrenreich, a journalist and novelist, in the (avoidable) introduction to his love letter to Palestine, “The Way to the Spring.”
I say avoidable because, as Ehrenreich acknowledges on the same page, the current debate about Israel-Palestine is virulently partisan. His exposition of the politics of storytelling (“choosing certain stories and not others means taking a side”) and the task of the writer (“to battle untruth”) is eloquent, though I fear more likely to deter than move those who have already made up their minds on the issue. His cause would be better served by letting his stories do the talking, for they are both heartbreaking and eye-opening.
The book begins with Bassem Tamimi, whom Ehrenreich met in 2011. Bassem is a resident of the village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank, which had been holding weekly demonstrations against the Israeli occupation — protesting the grabbing of the village spring (its water supply) and the arrest and detention of villagers, as well as the death of one of them, a 13-year-old boy. The intimacy of Ehrenreich’s reporting domesticates the violence and injustice, thus rendering it more shocking: A fragment of a tear gas grenade and broken lawn furniture mingle beneath a fruiting mulberry tree in the garden. Children proudly show where an Israeli bullet scarred one of the rooms. Bassem’s wife, Nariman, reads Dan Brown in Arabic translation outside, at night, watching the brake lights of cars at the checkpoint down the hill.
The people of Nabi Saleh are among the few who still regularly protest and resist the occupation, and Ehrenreich accompanies them on marches, getting tear-gassed more times than I can count. But this is not the story he has come for, not the only one he is interested in. He spends enough time among the family of Bassem and others to realize that “the people of Nabi Saleh were crafting a narrative of their own struggle.” They needed “to see themselves a certain way.” And this is the heart of the book: the stories people tell themselves to survive.
Next we meet Hani Amer, whose farm lay on the route of the infamous wall. After a long struggle, Amer won the right to have his house and some of his land preserved but enclosed like a bubble with the wall divided into two loops. The Israeli Army built a gate that they opened for 15 minutes every 24 hours. Nonetheless, within the space, he has planted olive, fig, apple, peach and plum trees, vegetables of all kinds. “Instead of seeing the wall,” he says, “I try to see the garden.”
The narrative doesn’t linger for long with any one character. Like an overeager tour guide, Ehrenreich has too much to show us and too much to say. He pulls us back to Ramallah to see the incremental theft that is the process of a new settlement going up. Then to the refurbished muqata’a, the official residence of the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to illustrate how the building works as a “palimpsest of 80 years of colonial and now neocolonial rule,” designed to create the impression of a state without the substance. Most disturbing is “planet Hebron,” where the list of abuses considered normal includes soldiers firing tear gas at schoolchildren to mark the beginning and end of each day of school.
We meet a new cast of characters in Hebron, and another in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Kheir, including the unforgettable vegetarian pastoralist Eid Suleiman al-Hathalin, who makes model bulldozers out of scrap and whose ambition is to have one of them exhibited at the Caterpillar company’s museum in Peoria, Ill. In between are set-piece “interludes” examining the mechanics of the occupation — the “humiliation machine” of the checkpoint at Qalandia, the apartment blocks of Rawabi, near Ramallah, not, as the promotional materials and newspaper reports would have you believe, a “city of hope,” but in fact a tangle of financial interests tying Palestinian elites to Israeli developers and Qatari financiers.
Ehrenreich’s vivid, lyrical, sometimes snarling prose overwhelms the attempt at formal structure, however. The reportage motors forward, propelled by Ehrenreich’s wonder at the outrageous curiosities of the occupation. In Umm al-Kheir the Israeli Army dispatches a platoon to confiscate a portable toilet and demolish a bread oven. In Hebron, a settler scales a wall and snares himself in barbed wire to request that his Palestinian neighbor remove a Palestinian flag. “The citizens of each city are trained from infancy to unsee the other city and its residents,” Ehrenreich writes, citing a work of science fiction.
The book is not a polemic, Ehrenreich says in the introduction. This is argument by way of anecdote. The French writer Jean Genet also wrote a passionate homage to Palestine (“Prisoner of Love”) and also pondered the question of how the battle for truth is waged: “It’s not enough just to write a few anecdotes,” he warned. “What one has to do is create and develop an image or a profusion of images.” In those terms, Ehrenreich’s haunting, poignant and memorable stories add up to a weighty contribution to the Palestinian side of the scales of history.
Source: www.nytimes.com
By Andrea Blum
Press and Guide
Olympic boxer Sadam Ali is one of 10 prominent Arab Americans being immortalized in a permanent exhibit at the Arab American National Museum. Photo courtesy of AANM
A world-renowned engineer, a comic book icon and an Olympic boxer are among the 10 prominent Arab Americans being immortalized in a permanent exhibit at the Arab American National Museum.
The innovators are being recognized for their ambition, talent and vision with spots in the “Making an Impact” exhibit, which pays tribute to Arab Americans who have made lasting impacts in their field and forged enduring legacies by influencing people on a global scale.
To close its 10th anniversary year, the museum welcomed the 10 new members to the permanent display.
A highly interactive gallery that tells the story of hundreds of Arab Americans and organizations, “Making an Impact” opened in 2005 and since has inducted everyone from activists, physicians and politicians to athletes, entertainers and labor leaders.
Within the exhibit, visitors can see multimedia displays as well as a plethora of artifacts signifying each member’s achievements.
Palestinian American comedian and actress Maysoon Zayid visited the museum May 7 as she officially became a part of the “Making an Impact” exhibit. Her visit included a night of two comedy performances in the museum’s Aliya Hassan Auditorium, where more than 200 guests enjoyed an evening of laughter.
The 2016 inductees also feature Egyptian American engineer Rana El Kaliouby, Palestinian American comedian and politician Dean Obeidallah, Egyptian American designer Karim Rashid, Syrian American hip-hop artist Omar Offendum, Jordanian American poet Suheir Hammad, Lebanese American DC Entertainment chief creative officer Geoff Johns, Yemini American boxer Sadam Ali, Syrian American National Hockey League All-Star Brandon Saad and Sudanese American activist Dr. Nawal Nour.
“It’s important to recognize the significant contributions Arab Americans have made throughout the past century that have resonated across so many different industries,” AANM Director Devon Akmon said. “Many of the recent ‘Making an Impact’ inductees are young and still very active. Being inducted at this point in their lives speaks volumes to the hard work and innovativeness of these individuals. There is so much potential and endless possibilities for what the future holds.”
Since 2005, the “Making an Impact” exhibit has spotlighted world-renowned surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey, consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader, White House journalist Helen Thomas, Indy Car racing legend Bobby Rahal, celebrated woodworker Sam Maloof, multiplatinum recording artist Paula Abdul and Professional Football Hall of Famer Bill George among others.
The exhibit is free to view with museum admission. The Arab American National Museum is at 13624 Michigan Ave., Dearborn.
The 2016 Making an Impact inductees are:
Sadam Ali (sports)
At age 8, Yemeni American Sadam Ali was inspired to start boxing by Yemeni British boxer “Prince” Naseem Hamed. When he was 17, Ali won the featherweight division of the 2006 National Golden Gloves Championship and a year later won the lightweight division. He represented Team USA at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. As a professional in the welterweight division, Ali remained undefeated for the first six years of his career.
Suheir Hammad (creative arts)
Born in Amman, Jordan, as a Palestinian refugee, Suheir Hammad’s poetry and writing often focus on the struggles of fitting in as an immigrant and as a woman in a sexist society. She has won several accolades over the years, including a Tony Award for Special Theatrical Event as a writer and performer for “Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry Jam” on Broadway. Her poem “First Writing Since” gave voice to Arab Americans following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2009, she received the George Ellenbogen Poetry Award from the Arab American Book Awards for her poem “Breaking Points.”
Geoff Johns (creative arts)
Growing up in Grosse Pointe, Johns’ interest in comics began when he found a stash of them in his grandmother’s attic. He wrote dozens of books for iconic characters including Superman, The Flash and Aquaman. As chief creative officer of DC Entertainment, Johns created the first Arab American superhero, Simon Baz. Introduced as a Dearborn native, the character became a new Green Lantern in 2012. Johns has since expanded DC’s reach into film and television. In 2012, AANM’s Russell J. Ebeid Library & Resource Center established a graphic novel collection in his honor.
Rana El Kaliouby (science)
Rana El Kaliouby pioneered emotion-recognition technology with her app Affectiva. Her interest started while working on her doctorate at Cambridge University. Away from her family and friends in Egypt, El Kaliouby wished her computer could better convey her emotional state. Her technology accurately reads minute changes in facial expressions that convey emotions. El Kaliouby worked as a research scientist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is a member of the Women in Engineering Hall of Fame.
Dr. Nawal Nour (activism)
Born to a Sudanese father and an American mother, Dr. Nawal Nour created the African Women’s Health Practice at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The Harvard-affiliated facility provides services to immigrant women affected by female genital cutting — a harmful practice Nour dedicated her obstetrics career to ending. In 2003, she received a MacArthur “genius grant” in recognition of her work.
Dean Obeidallah (entertainment)
Born in New Jersey to a Palestinian father and an Italian mother, Dean Obeidallah created a career as a comedian and political satirist. Obeidallah was featured in the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour and co-founded the annual New York Arab American Comedy Festival with fellow “Making an Impact” inductee Maysoon Zayid. In 2013, he co-directed and co-produced the award-winning documentary “The Muslims are Coming!” with comedian and filmmaker Negin Farsad.
Omar Offendum (entertainment)
Hip-hop artist, poet, designer and activist Omar Offendum’s music frequently speaks to events in the Arab World, including several songs that went viral during the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. His collaborators include hip-hop artists The Phillistines, Mr. Tibbz and The Narcicyst. Born in Saudi Arabia to Syrian parents, Offendum has raised money for various humanitarian relief organizations through his performances.
Karim Rashid (creative arts)
“Time” magazine once called Karim Rashid “the Poet of Plastic” and “the most famous industrial designer in all the Americas.” Born in Cairo and raised in Canada before moving to the U.S., Rashid has designed for many products and brands, including luxury goods, furniture, lighting and even a New York City manhole cover. His work is in museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Brandon Saad (sports)
Brandon Saad is one of the few Arab Americans to play in the National Hockey League. He grew up playing hockey in Pittsburgh and after high school he quickly advanced through the amateur ranks. At 18, he was drafted to play with the Chicago Blackhawks in 2011. As a Blackhawk, Saad won two Stanley Cups in 2013 and 2015. He started playing for the Columbus Blue Jackets during the 2015-16 season and made his first NHL All-Star Game appearance.
Maysoon Zayid (entertainment)
Maysoon Zayid once described herself as “a Palestinian Muslim virgin with cerebral palsy from New Jersey, who is an actress, comedian and activist.” Zayid’s acting career began on the long-running soap opera “As the World Turns.” She appeared in Adam Sandler’s “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” and in 2003, she co-founded the New York Arab American Comedy Festival with Dean Obeidallah.
Source: www.pressandguide.com
BY: Habeeb Salloum/Contributing writer “Islam may have disappeared after 1249 but an Arabic dialect is still spoken by the mass of population… The staunchly Catholic Maltese are concerned to play down the Arab nature of this dialect, which since the 18th century has been written in the Latin script and called ‘Maltese’. Its origin is … Continued
Middle East Institute Syrian citizen-journalists, bloggers, and media activists are playing a critical role covering one of the world’s most dangerous conflicts. They do so in the face of significant challenges – from fear for their safety, to overcoming international indifference to the story of an unending conflict. Women journalists face even greater challenges and yet many … Continued
Moroccan World News
A multi-part documentary where three musical friends travel 10 Moroccan cities in 15 days exploring the country”s historical musical influences will air on PBS’ KLRU on Sunday July 10.
For the first part of the documentary, Noumaine Lahlou, a Moroccan superstar singer, songwriter and producer; Hassan Hakmoun, a master Gnawa musician; and Laurent Le Gall, a film director and producer, travel from Casablanca to Tangier and then to Chefchaouen exploring Morocco”s traditions with music.
”The history of Morocco”s music continues to weave thread into the fabric of today”s melodies,” it says.
The team will meet several Moroccan artistic personalities including Noumane Lahlou himself, award-winning musician Abdelouhab Doukkali, singer kaouTar Berani, and rap artist Don Bigg.
Each reveals their personal influences for the music they produce, ranging from its emotional strength, Amazigh influences, themes in education and even historic musical scales.
The documentary is part of a travel and music television series, Music Voyager, that ”explores the most musically exciting cities in the world,” according to the Tantra film company”s website who produced the series.
Source: www.menafn.com
BY: Clara Ana Ruplinger/Contributing Writer At the National Press Club on Wednesday, Arab Center, Washington D.C. hosted a panel discussion on the impact of the presidential elections on U.S. Middle East Policy. Four prominent scholars spoke on this issue: Ellen Laipson, Distinguished Fellow and President Emeritus of the Stimson Center; Aaron David Miller, Vice … Continued
Facial-recognition engineer Rana El Kaliouby, comic book icon Geoff Johns and Olympian Sadam Ali among 10 newly featured Every generation produces special individuals whose character, talent, vision, ambition and determination make them far from ordinary. For them, it’s about making a difference and leaving an enduring legacy. The Arab American National Museum (AANM) pays tribute … Continued
BY: Tamara Wong Azaiez/Contributing Writer In this hilarious video Samantha Bee traveled to Dearborn, MI to speak with Muslims who had the audacity to do nothing wrong. Samantha Bee’s video is a representation of the stereotypes and prejudicial thinking used by politicians and other groups to demonize American Muslims. Dearborn, Michigan is home to a … Continued
Michael Hodges
The Detroit News
When Dearborn’s Arab American National Museum opened in May 2005, it didn’t exactly look like a sure bet.
Start with the difficulties inherent in launching such a museum four years after 9/11, in an era of unprecedented hostility.
Add to that a minuscule budget, limited staff, and the challenge in representing people from 22 separate, and sometimes contentious, Arab states, and a skeptic might reasonably doubt the institution’s odds for long-term survival.
But the tiny museum, with a 2015 budget of $1.9 million — mostly raised from earned income, grants and donations — just wrapped up its 10th-anniversary year, and steps into the next decade punching way above its weight class.
“They’ve done incredible work,” said Juanita Moore, president and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit. “I’m not sure the Detroit community understands what a significant presence they have not just in this area, but nationally as well.”
AANM has become a key cultural player in Metro Detroit, won coveted recognition from the Smithsonian Institution, and — perhaps most significant, given its mission — succeeded in attracting half its 2015 attendance of 52,189 from outside the Arab community.
Founding director Anan Ameri, who retired in 2013, counts that as the institution’s biggest win.
“Our success comes when a non-Arab walks in and says, ‘Oh, this is just like my story.’ ”
The museum, which grew out of a cultural arts program at ACCESS, the Arab-American social services agency in Dearborn, was one year into fundraising for its handsome Michigan Avenue building when the jets pierced the World Trade Center towers in 2001.
“Of course 9/11 made things worse,” Ameri said, “but there’s a silver lining in any disaster.
“In this case, it created more interest, I think, in Arab-Americans. There’s more curiosity now among people who are not biased — and there are a lot of them.”
Ironically, said Matthew Jaber Stiffler, AANM research and content manager, “Instead of being a setback, 9/11 galvanized the community.
“They realized there’s so much misinformation out there, we need a place that can serve as a beacon of knowledge.”
And while Arab-Americans often feel like targets, said museum Director Devon Akmon, “We’re not alone. Latinos also face pressures, sometimes worse than ours.”
Still, noted Ismael Ahmed, who helped found ACCESS, “The museum cannot win the battle for fairness and equality and an end to stereotyping by itself.”
Bridging communities
So the museum has consistently reached for programming that bridges communities.
Exhibitions like the current “What We Carried,” a photography show on what Iraqi and Syrian refugees chose to take with them when they fled, emphasize poignant family experience nearly everyone can understand.
Locally, the museum’s culinary walking tours of Dearborn restaurants and groceries are always fully booked, while its Concert of Colors, which kicks off July 14, is a longstanding summer high point attended last year by 50,000 at venues all across town.
That same multi-ethnic musical spirit continues once a month with the museum’s Global Fridays performances.
“Locally they’ve been great bridge builders,” said Moore, whose museum will host the kickoff performance of this year’s Concert of Colors.
“They’ve reached out to all sorts of different communities,” Moore added, “and have been unconventional and groundbreaking in the way they’ve looked at their mission.
“It’s served them and their community very well.”
The museum has garnered unusual national attention. AANM won accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums in record time and was chosen by the Smithsonian Institution to be an affiliate museum, a much-coveted honor.
Just how selective is that program?
“Let me put it this way,” said Harold Closter, who directs the affiliate program.
“There are over 18,000 museums in the United States. Only 210 are Smithsonian affiliates,” with whom the institution shares artifacts, exhibits and educational programming.
“From our perspective,” said Brett Egan, president of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland, which advises museums on best practices, “it’s the leading institution in the country representing the voice, traditions and aspirations of the Arab-American community.”
Egan ranks their community engagement programs in “the top tier of similar projects nationally. They’re a leading force not only in their field, but in putting artistic practice at center of the movement to create more vibrant communities.”
Touring nationally
Two AANM-curated shows, “Patriots & Peacemakers: Arab Americans in Service to Our Country” and the more recent “Little Syria,” are on national tours.
The latter, about a one-time Syrian community in Lower Manhattan near the site of the Twin Towers, will open at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration on Oct. 1.
The museum is in talks to take “Patriots & Peacemakers” to the Pentagon next year.
“By taking these stories and placing them in venues that are predominantly non-Arab,” said Akmon, “they get a whole new audience. And at the end of the day, that’s why we exist — to bring people together, and find those points of intersection that make us American.”
Source: www.detroitnews.com
Murtaza Hussain
The Intercept
LAST MONTH, A GROUP OF STUDENTS at University of California at Irvine gathered to protest a screening of the film “Beneath the Helmet,” a documentary about the lives of recruits in the Israeli Defense Forces. Upset about the screening of a film they viewed as propaganda for a foreign military, the students were also protesting the presence of several IDF representatives who here holding a panel discussion at the screening.
That student protest has since become the subject of an intense controversy. The school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine is now facing the possibility of being banned from the campus. In addition, a legal representative for some of the students involved in the protest, Tarek Shawky, told The Intercept that the students were informed by the university that their cases have been referred to the district attorney for criminal investigation.
The day after the event, the school’s chancellor released a statement accusing student protestors of “crossing the line of civility.” In his statement, posted on the school website, Chancellor Howard Gillman said that “while this university will protect freedom of speech, that right is not absolute,” adding that the school would examine possible legal and administrative charges against the protestors. News reports cited claims that attendees at the film had been intimidated and blocked from exiting the event.
The protestors at the event represented a wide range of student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Black Student Union. Students who spoke with The Intercept denied that anyone had intimidated attendees at the event or blocked access. “We held our protest in a way that reflected university guidelines, we didn’t use amplified sound and we didn’t restrict anyone’s freedom of access to the event,” says Daniel Carnie, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace who took part in the protest.
Contacted for comment, a media relations representative at UC Irvine said that it was normal practice for cases like this to be referred to the District Attorney. “It is routine for UC Irvine Police Department, when called upon to investigate an incident on campus, to forward the investigation to the District Attorney’s office,” said Cathy Lawhon. “It’s then up to the DA’s office to determine if any charges are warranted.” Lawhon added that the school investigation into banning Students for Justice in Palestine was proceeding separately.
Reached for comment, the Orange County District Attorney stated that they have yet to receive a referral on the case from the school.
The incident is only the latest in which officials at UC Irvine and other major universities around the country have taken harsh measures against pro-Palestinian activists. “There is a really ugly history of targeting student groups advocating for Palestinian issues,” says Liz Jackson, a staff attorney with Palestine Legal, a group which provides legal advice and advocacy to individuals in the U.S. advocating for Palestinian rights. “It suppresses the really important debates about U.S. foreign policy that young people need to be having. Instead of being able to engage freely and voice opinions that challenge the status quo, one side of the debate is just being crushed.”
A REPORT ISSUED LAST YEAR by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights documented 152 incidents of free-speech suppression on U.S. campuses in 2014. These incidents have included acts of censorship, threats of legal action and even accusations of support for terrorism. Citing the threat posed to the First Amendment by such acts, the report added that they were “undermin[ing] the traditional role of universities in promoting the free expression of unpopular ideas and encouraging challenges to the orthodoxies prevalent in official political discourse.”
Threats, punishment and intimidation are all being routinely used to stifle dissenting viewpoints on Israel-Palestine, says Omar Shakir a fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a co-author of the report. “University officials are erecting bureaucratic actions to make it harder to hold certain events, imposing administrative sanctions and even firing and denying tenure to professors for their views on Israel-Palestine, efforts that collectively represent a grave threat to the First Amendment.”
For instance, Native American Studies Professor Steven Salaita lost his tenured faculty position at the University of Illinois in 2014 after being accused of incivility in his online comments on Israel-Palestine. After a public legal battle, last year the school settled a lawsuit filed by Salaita for financial compensation.
In the case of UC Irvine, Shakir adds that the university’s charge of “incivility” on the part of protestors is a particularly egregious attempt to stifle protected speech. “Accusations of incivility have always been used by those in power to justify attempts to suppress changes to the status quo,” Shakir says. “The term itself, ‘civility’ represents coded language that in the past has been used to try and suppress groups deemed ‘uncivilized,’ like Native-Americans and African-Americans in the United States. It has no place being used as a basis to silence student activists today.”
Those views were partly echoed by Ari Cohn, a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a campus free-speech organization. “If allegations that protestors at UC Irvine disrupted the event are substantiated that would not be protected speech, as it would impinge on the speech of others attending the event.” Cohn added, however, that “civility in itself cannot be mandated by schools. Incivility plays a fundamental role in much of the social activism on campuses.”
THREATS TO SPEECH, have come not only from university administrations but from law enforcement as well. In 2010, Osama Shabaik was among a group of eleven students at UC Irvine who were arrested after protesting an appearance by then-Israeli ambassador Michael Oren at the school. Oren’s speaking event came roughly a year after Operation Cast Lead, a three-week Israeli military campaign against the Gaza Strip that killed hundreds of civilians. Intent on making a point about the inappropriate nature of Oren’s appearance following the attack, Shabaik and others organized a protest to disrupt the event.
In an incident that was captured on video, Shabaik and several other students repeatedly stood up in the crowd to interrupt Oren’s speech, chanting slogans against Israeli military abuses during Cast Lead. The students were detained and ejected from the event, something Shabaik says they had expected. But what came next was stunning. The school administration referred the students to the police, filing misdemeanor criminal charges against them for disrupting the event. The charges carried a maximum of one year in prison for each of those who protested.
The following year the case went to court, where Shabaik and nine other students were convicted and sentenced to three years probation.
“The administration was definitely sending a message and implicitly threatening our futures by having us charged as criminals for protesting,” reflects Shabaik today. “A lot of those who were charged were students planning to go on to medical school or law school, and they were worried that having a criminal record would prevent that from happening.”
Shabaik has since gone on to graduate from Harvard Law School, but is concerned about how his criminal record could affect his future employment prospects. Looking back at the incident, he believes it helped inaugurate a high-level campaign to silence dissent on Israel-Palestine in the United States, that has since extended to state legislatures.
Earlier this month, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order that would force public institutions in New York to divest funds from groups supporting the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The executive order has been criticized as a form of political blacklisting. Shabaik believes Cuomo’s proposal echoes his own experience, where powerful institutions and public figures have sought to quash dissent on this issue.
“Its important to understand duality of responses when it comes to free speech. The whole essence of free speech is to challenge power and push back against government repression,” says Shabaik. “The move to stop debate on this issue is now leading to crackdowns at state-funded colleges and universities and even at the state legislature level. People are facing serious threats to their future for speaking out against the status quo.”
IN RECENT YEARS, a movement has built, mostly on the political right, which charges that free speech is being endangered on American college campuses. The most prominent voices on this issue have been conservative activists like Breitbart journalist Milo Yiannopoulos and Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro. But liberal writers such as Jonathan Chait have also relentlessly fixated on the idea that “political correctness” is stifling free expression among a new generation of students.
Most of these protestations have focused on a specific type of speech: the right to “offend” by speaking against perceived left-wing orthodoxies on race, feminism and cultural issues. The charges of speech suppression in such cases have generally not been leveled at university administrators or law enforcement, but rather at students who view such speech as offensive. This differs markedly from the Israel-Palestine controversies, where state-funded bureaucracies and government officials have been involved with stifling speech on an issue directly related to American foreign policy.
“Its important to distinguish between the idea that certain views are not popular on campuses, something that may be worthy of discussion separately, and the phenomenon of public institutions and officials taking direct action to restrict speech about vital aspects of government policy,” says Shakir of the Center for Constitutional Rights. “The core of the First Amendment defends the right to free speech on campuses, and we should all be concerned when McCarthey-esque tactics are being used by those in positions of power to silence debate on issues of global importance.”
Source: theintercept.com
374 Results (Page 21 of 32)
Notifications
Loading ...