Analysis Identifies Higher Education Institutions’ Coordinated Tactics to Stifle Palestine-Related Research and Teaching Across the US and Canada
CONTACT: MESA Task Force on Civil and Human Rights, [email protected]
Washington, DC — Today, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) released a major new report, Lessons in Repression: Silencing Campus Workers on Palestine Since October 7, 2023, that shows how higher education institutions converged with government and outside actors to retaliate against employees speaking out for Palestinian rights. With startling intensity, university administrators punished employees regardless of rank, position, or profile, after campuses became lively with anti-genocide demonstrations and Palestine advocacy among students, staff, and faculty. The report dissects the multitude of tactics they deployed to stifle academic freedom and free speech, and the pretexts they used to try to cloak their political motivations.
Based on analysis of nearly 200 incidents of retaliation, and interviews with 31 targeted employees, the report gives deep insight into the range of tactics that university administrators and others deployed to try to shut down teaching and speech, how employees responded, and what can be done to continue to stand up for academic freedom.
The report, a product of MESA’s Academic Freedom Initiative (AFI), finds that all categories of academic workers are at risk (30% involved non-tenure track faculty or instructors, and 36% were tenured).
"The report shows clearly how the issue of Palestine has been used by university leaders, trustees, donors, and politicians alike as a thin edge of a wedge to consolidate authoritarian power for themselves. If people not involved with Middle East studies think they’re immune to these attacks, this report should disabuse them of that notion," said Ussama Makdisi, president of the Middle East Studies Association and Professor of History and Chancellor’s Professor at the University of California Berkeley.
Two-thirds of cases recorded were people of color, who are disproportionately targeted. But most retaliation is not for classroom speech.
Among the most striking findings is how universities use the facade of anti-discrimination investigations to pursue politically motivated retaliation. The report conveys employees’ accounts of being subject to drawn out investigations often conducted by hostile investigators; the investigations were themselves a form of punishment. Employees talk of being harassed, stigmatized, and subject to public excoriation for doing nothing more than opposing Israel’s genocide and supporting Palestinian rights.
Accusations of antisemitism were used pretextually to discipline and punish employees. The report shows in granular detail the weaponization of Civil Rights law in action: universities weren’t really interested in fighting antisemitism, but were engaged in a political performance for government and other outside audiences," said Darryl Li, MESA’s Task Force on Civil and Human Rights co-chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
You can read the full report and findings here. You can also read the executive summary here or follow the link https://afi.mesana.org/resource/lessons-in-repression/.
"University administrators and political actors outside the university have been put on the back foot, surprised by the strength of their employees’ insistence that campus be a place for questioning the status quo,” said Lori Allen, AFI director of research and the report’s lead author. “Administrators cloaked their actions with justifications that fit within the professed moral universe of higher education, where punishment for political viewpoint is inconsistent with the commitment to free inquiry. This report reveals what was underneath.”
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Academic Freedom Initiative · A project of the Middle East Studies Association · afi.mesana.org