Free speech on Palestine, targeted once again

Two new pieces on the war on free speech on American college campuses.

I’ve got two recent pieces, one for The Intercept and the other for +972 Magazine, on a similar topic: the unrelenting assault on students who speak out for Palestinian rights on campus.

An alarming case is unfolding in California, where a right-wing attorney is using California’s Public Records Act to sue UCLA to try and obtain the names of 65 presenters at the 2018 Students for Justice in Palestine conference. In the lead-up to the conference, students organized to ensure the presenters’ names stayed anonymous. UCLA administrators listened. Now thanks to the lawsuit, their anonymity is under threat. They fear online harassment, denial of jobs, and being banned by Israeli authorities from entering Israel-Palestine. The case is set to be decided after oral arguments in the Los Angeles County Superior Court take place on March 11, though both sides expect an appeal, whatever the judge’s decision. Read the entire piece here.

On the other side of the country, in New York, Fordham University has once again banned students from organizing a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the school. Fordham’s decision is the most extreme manifestation of what Palestine Legal, an organization dedicated to protecting the civil liberties of Palestine activists, calls the “Palestine exception to free speech” in the United States. Read the entire piece here.