The war on education, US same as Israel
UPenn faculty sue school over pro-Palestine activity
The Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine group is suing the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League institution, to stop it from sending documents related to pro-Palestine activity to the US Congress. The lawsuit says it challenges a “new form of McCarthyism, in which accusations of anti-Semitism are substituted for insinuations of Communist leanings which were the tool of oppression in the 1950s”.
The lawsuit also states that the US university is “privileging, protecting, and endorsing” pro-Israel speech over that of those who are pro-Palestinian. It says that anti-Semitism has previously been used “in egregious ontological error, to chill, punish, and end virtually all moral, political, legal, and other criticism of the nation-state Israel”.
Columbia University sued for suspending pro-Palestine student groups
The New York Civil Liberties Union and Palestine Legal – two legal rights groups in the United States – have filed a lawsuit against Columbia University “for the unlawful suspension of its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) for engaging in peaceful protest”.
“These student groups were peacefully speaking out on a critical global conflict, only to have Columbia ignore their own rules and suspend the groups. This is retaliatory and targeted, and it flies in the face of the free speech principles that universities should be defending,” NYCLU says in a statement.
In November, the Ivy League institution suspended the two student groups for allegedly violating school policies for “threatening rhetoric and intimidation”.
Tensions have surged at some US universities since October 7.
Hebrew University suspends prominent Palestinian professor
Hebrew University of Jerusalem has suspended Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian for denouncing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In a statement, the university said Shalhoub-Kevorkian’s suspension from teaching was a means to “preserve a safe climate on campus”.
“At the beginning of the war, the lecturer signed a petition calling Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide, and an occupying entity since 1948,” the university stated as the reason for her removal.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian is a Palestinian citizen of Israel. She is also a professor of law at Hebrew University and an expert on trauma, state crimes and criminology, surveillance and genocide studies.
