On April 17, college students at Columbia College in New York Metropolis arrange a Gaza solidarity encampment on campus to name for divestment from Israel and an entire ceasefire within the Gaza Strip, the place the US-backed Israeli army has now slaughtered some 35,000 Palestinians in lower than seven months.
Columbia referred to as the cops – because it apparently constitutes extra of a disturbance of the peace today to protest in opposition to genocide than to help it. Greater than 100 college students had been arrested, which has solely spawned additional protest as related encampments have sprung up on faculty campuses nationwide.
Columbia’s president Nemat Minouche Shafik got here below fireplace from quite a few college members following the crackdown, though some professors have most popular to proudly promote their disdain for something approaching primary morality. Columbia linguist John McWhorter, for instance, just lately took to the opinion pages of The New York Occasions to complain about his music humanities class being interrupted by the sounds of a pro-Palestinian crowd with a penchant for “lusty chanting” and “drumbeats” – altogether a “relentless assault” by protesters that “is beyond what any people should be expected to bear up under”.
But when drumbeats propel your panties into such an enormous bunch, think about how annoying it could be if your home was blown up and your loved ones together with it.
Certainly, even earlier than the onset of all-out genocide, the Palestinians of Gaza had way back surpassed “what any people should be expected to bear up under”. In the meantime, McWhorter’s ode to injustice is little doubt music to the ears of these in search of to criminalise Palestine solidarity and free speech in a single fell swoop.
One pioneer on this entrance is maniacal right-wing Texas governor Greg Abbott, who on April 24 unleashed Texas state troopers on pro-Palestinian protesters at The College of Texas in Austin. The Dallas Morning Information reported that college students on the demonstration “said the events were peaceful until law enforcement officers entered the campus with riot gear, some on horseback and others carrying zip ties and pepper spray”. Dozens had been arrested.
That very same day, Abbott reposted a video of his handiwork on X with the caption “Pro Hamas idiots at UT Austin discover what happens why [sic] you try to pull a Columbia in Texas”. Including his personal commentary to the submit, the governor reiterated that “these protesters belong in jail” and that “students joining in hate-filled, antisemitic protests at any public college or university in Texas should be expelled”.
After all, the nice previous anti-Semitism cost is a useful solution to summarily discredit anti-Zionist activists with out having to speak about why it’s that Israel is systematically wiping out Palestinians. A month previous to the UT Austin episode, in an govt order dated March 27, Abbott denounced “antisemitic phrases such as ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’”, directing all Texas greater training establishments to “review and update free speech policies” and to “ensure… that groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Students for Justice in Palestine are disciplined for violating these policies”.
By coincidence, that is the exact same Abbott who in 2019 made an enormous present of getting “just signed a law protecting free speech on college campuses”. The invoice in query, which allegedly protected First Modification rights and designated widespread out of doors areas on faculty campuses as “public forums”, was in actuality meant to safeguard the best to right-wing free speech alone – without end feared to be below assault by scholar our bodies that are usually much less conservative than the Abbotts of the US would really like them to be.
And but relating to the best to train freedom of speech in opposition to an Israeli-inflicted genocide, it’s not simply the Abbotts who’re cracking down. Throughout the nation, a whole lot of scholars have been arrested, suspended and expelled, whereas Palestine solidarity activists have been subjected to all method of harassment and intimidation. The Nation journal provides a compilation of stories from faculty college students nationwide on the repression of protests at their respective establishments, from Yale to Cornell to the College of California, Berkeley.
Sadly for his or her administrations, these college students have already linked the dots. In his report, Richard Solomon of the Massachusetts Institute of Expertise (MIT) describes how MIT laboratories have obtained “millions of dollars in funding from the Israeli Ministry of Defense to conduct research in ballistics targeting, surveillance, cyberwarfare, and drone technology”. The college moreover “hosts events to connect students and faculty to weapon manufacturers… who supply the Israeli military with its drones, D9 bulldozers, fighter jets, and artillery”.
In different phrases, US universities like MIT occur to be instantly complicit within the slaughter of Palestinians. All of the extra cause, then, to silence dialogue of the matter – notably at a time when the Joe Biden administration faces ever-increasing worldwide backlash over its insistence on sending gobs of cash and weaponry to Israel.
Within the meantime, there are many commentators standing by to distract from the literal genocide taking place in Gaza by claiming that pro-Palestine protesters are in truth advocating for the genocide of Jews. However on the finish of the day, the deliberate propagation of genocidal lies doesn’t actually qualify as “free speech”, in any respect.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially mirror Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.