#House Committee on Education and the Workforce

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik had a sharp response to the news that University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill was stepping down from her position over the weekend: “One down. Two to go.”

It was Stefanik’s line of questioning at a hearing last week before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce that attracted the most attention from the roughly five hours of testimony. A series of exchanges went viral when Magill and other university presidents at Harvard and MIT failed to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews as explicitly against campus rules on harassment and bullying. The answers from such high-profile leaders in higher education sparked bipartisan backlash and condemnation, which led to Magill’s departure and increasing pressure to oust both Harvard’s President Claudine Gay and MIT President Sally Kornbluth.

Stefanik, a Harvard graduate herself, has been leading the charge since the hearing to highlight and investigate campus antisemitism, and her efforts have attracted supporters from across the aisle as well as former President Donald Trump.

In a new statement Monday, Stefanik again called out MIT and Harvard, saying, “The leadership at these universities is totally unfit and untenable.”

“As clear evidence of the vastness of the moral rot at every level of these schools, this earthquake has revealed that Harvard and MIT are totally unable to grasp this grave question of moral clarity at this historic moment as the world is watching in horror and disgust,” Stefanik said in the statement. “It is pathetic and abhorrent.”

Stefanik announced late last week the committee was launching an investigation into Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania. While the investigation became public before news of Magill’s resignation broke, the New York congresswoman’s statements since then have made clear she’s not finished with the issue.

“This forced resignation of the President of Penn is the bare minimum of what is required,” Stefanik said in a statement over the weekend. “These universities can anticipate a robust and comprehensive Congressional investigation of all facets of their institutions’ negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, and overall leadership and governance.”

Former Penn board chair Scott Bok also resigned Saturday.

Trump praised Stefanik as “very smart” over the weekend.

“I guess they’re all gonna be losing their jobs within the next day or two, but one down, two to go,” Trump said in a speech hosted by the New York Young Republican Club late Saturday night – repeating Stefanik’s line hours after she put her statement out.

Stefanik has a polarizing reputation on Capitol Hill as a staunch supporter of Trump. But the congresswoman has managed to amass Democratic support for pushing for the ouster of university presidents. She co-wrote a letter dated Friday with Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz of Florida demanding those presidents’ removal. The letter was also signed by Democrats Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey and Joe Courtney of Connecticut.

“I am proud to lead a bipartisan letter with @RepMoskowitz and 72 of our colleagues to the members of the Governing Boards of @Harvard, @MIT, and @Penn demanding that their presidents be removed after this week’s @EdWorkforceCmte hearing,” Stefanik tweeted Friday.

Gay has since apologized for her remarks, in an interview with The Harvard Crimson on Thursday.

“I got caught up in what had become at that point, an extended, combative exchange about policies and procedures,” Gay told the student newspaper. “What I should have had the presence of mind to do in that moment was return to my guiding truth, which is that calls for violence against our Jewish community — threats to our Jewish students — have no place at Harvard, and will never go unchallenged.”

“I am sorry,” she said. “Words matter.”

The Executive Committee of the MIT Corporation, MIT’s governing board, issued a statement last week saying President Sally Kornbluth has their “full and unreserved support.”

Stefanik, who was first elected in 2014, replaced then-Rep. Liz Cheney as GOP conference chairwoman in May 2021. While she voted against one of Trump signature legislative victories – his 2017 tax plan – she attracted significant attention for her impassioned defense of Trump around the former president’s first impeachment investigation in 2019.

While she’s been one of the most visible messengers for the House GOP Conference, she was not one of the many Republicans to throw themselves in for nomination to be the next House Speaker, after Kevin McCarthy was ousted earlier this fall.

Since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the Department of Education has opened an unprecedented number of investigations into alleged incidents of hate on college campuses.

Both Harvard and Penn, along with 11 other colleges and five K-12 school districts, have come under investigation since that time. The Department of Education has told CNN that the situation is becoming untenable for the Office for Civil Rights, and that it doesn’t have the investigative staff to match the influx of cases, shining a light on where the investigation Stefanik announced last week may be able to fill in those gaps.

[psychologeek]

"Is murder okay?"

Psychologeek, digital art. 2023.

Drawing, because I don't have words.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Arthur Delaney at HuffPost:

U.S. House Republicans sent a subpoena Wednesday to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, for information about how his state responded to a massive fraud scheme by a nonprofit operating a pandemic relief program. Federal prosecutors have charged dozens of people affiliated with a Minnesota nonprofit that stole $250 million worth of aid intended to feed children.

“You are well aware of the multi-million-dollar fraud that has occurred under your tenure as Governor,” House Education and Workforce Committee chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) said in a Wednesday letter accompanying the subpoena to Walz. The subpoena requests any emails between Walz and the Minnesota agencies administering the aid that Foxx said would show “the extent of your responsibilities and actions addressing the massive fraud that resulted in the abuse of taxpayer dollars intended for hungry children.” Foxx had requested information about the fraud scheme from the Minnesota Department of Education in November 2023 and in June. In August, Walz became Kamala Harris’ running mate ― and a much juicier target for Republican oversight. “This was an appalling abuse of a federal COVID-era program,” a spokeswoman for Walz said in an email on Wednesday. “The state department of education worked diligently to stop the fraud and we’re grateful to the FBI for working with the department of education to arrest and charge the individuals involved.”

House Republicans doing waste of time subpoenas, this time towards Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

See Also:

The Guardian: Republican-led House panel subpoenas Tim Walz over $250m Covid relief fraud

[bsof-maarav]

"[L]ate last month Rutgers required its RAs, whose job is to supervise students living in on-campus housing, to participate in a “bystander intervention” course aimed at training them to identify antisemitism, xenophobia, and Islamophobia. Several of the RAs, however, abruptly left the session after a Jewish speaker explained that Hamas’s antisemitism and desire to destroy the world’s only Jewish state precipitated the Oct. 7 massacre, which resulted in the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.

The paper added that the RAs took issue with the program’s citing a definition of antisemitism offered by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). After walking out, they reportedly contacted Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which proceeded to author, on the RAs’ behalf, a series of Instagram posts denouncing the antisemitism trainings as racist and upholding white supremacy.

"The mandated training program organized by the Office of Residence Life requires RAs to learn about DEI, restorative justice, community engagement, and more — all of these are inspired by Indigenous practices meant to unpack systems of white supremacy,” SJP said. “On the contrary, this specific session worked to perpetuate Zionism, racism, and white supremacy.”

SJP’s post included comments from the RAs who involved them in the controversy. One of them, who claimed to be Jewish, said, “I am tired of the word antisemitism being used to talk over genocide, I am tired of antisemitism being inflated.” The RA added, “I fear that when the Nazis and radicals come once again for the Jews that no one will believe us … it will be your fault.”

Another who took issue with the Israeli nationality of one of the course’s presenters said, “One of the facilitators even identified as ‘Israeli’ and made mention of this multiple times. He justified his authority on the topic by citing his 12 plus years spent in ’48 Palestine, going so far as to call ‘Israel’ [sic] a ‘beautiful land.'”

A milieu of extreme anti-Zionism at the school has resulted in at least one death threat against the life of a Jewish student since Oct. 7. In November, a local news outlet reported, freshman Matthew Skorny, 19, called for the murder of a fraternity member he identified as an Israeli, saying on the popular social media forum YikYak, “To all the pro-Palestinian ralliers [sic] … Go kill him.”

Similar incidents at Rutgers have occured frequently. In the past few years, the school’s AEPi fraternity house has been vandalized three times. In one incident, in April 2022, on the last day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, a caravan of participants from a SJP rally drove there, shouting antisemitic slurs and spitting in the direction of fraternity members. Four days later, before Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel, the house was egged during a 24-hour reading of the names of Holocaust victims.

In March, the US House Committee on Education and the Workforce launched an investigation of Rutgers’ handling of antisemitism, responding to complaints that it has, for years, allowed an open season of hate against Jewish students."

[eretzyisrael]

by Richard Goldberg

Anti-Semitism is spreading in K–12 school districts. Even in primary and secondary education, Jews are often viewed as privileged whites and oppressors, with Israel branded as an egregious example of “settler colonialism” and oppression of “indigenous people.” “Liberated ethnic studies” curricula, like the one mandated by California, have created a distinct variant of critical theory aimed at Jews for being Zionist colonial oppressors.

Teachers’ unions are the leading purveyors of this approach. Two years ago, the United Educators of San Francisco adopted a resolution calling for a boycott of Israel. The Chicago Teachers Union instigated pro-Hamas demonstrations in the Windy City after October 7. The union persuaded Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson (a former CTU lobbyist) to condemn Israel in the city council, and it organized a student and faculty “walkout” to show solidarity with Hamas—a city-authorized event that left Jewish students and teachers feeling intimidated. In suburban Seattle, kids as young as seven were recently encouraged to condemn Israel and join in anti-Semitic chants. Oakland Unified School District faces a federal investigation after 30 Jewish families removed their kids from school due to rampant anti-Semitism. And at a high school in New York City, hundreds of students hunted down a female teacher they saw on social media holding a sign supporting Israel.

Marxist ideology is the primary culprit influencing this mind-set, but not the only one. Qatar, a tiny Persian Gulf country that supports Hamas, is funding anti-Semitic “scholarship” not only in American universities but also in K–12 schools. Qatar Foundation International gave $1 million to the New York City Department of Education between 2019 and 2022 for a program featuring a map of the Middle East that erases the Jewish state. The same story played out at a public charter school in Irving, Texas. What other districts in the country might be taking money directly or indirectly from a chief Hamas sponsor? Brown University’s Choices Program, used by more than 1 million high school students nationwide, exhibits a clear anti-Israel bias. According to Brown, the Qataris “purchased and distributed a selection of existing Choices curriculum units to 75 teachers whose districts didn’t have funding to buy them.”

Tools to fight back, however, are available. Governors and state legislatures can begin by blocking “ethnic studies” from the K–12 curriculum and by imposing new teacher-certification requirements. To curb foreign meddling, states should ban school funding or in-kind donations from entities connected with countries that harbor U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. School districts and state boards of education should use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism to root out conduct meeting its standard. Several groups sued the Santa Ana, California, school district in state court for failing to notify parents before approving ethnic studies courses that contain anti-Jewish bias and for harassing Jewish parents at school board meetings.

At the federal level, parents could file formal complaints with the Department of Education for discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Such complaints are increasingly common against colleges and universities, but any school that receives federal funding must comply with Title VI. The House Committee on Education and the Workforce should consider holding a hearing on anti-Semitism in K–12 schools, putting the national spotlight on anti-Jewish administrators and school board leaders.

Local, state, and federal officials have played meaningful roles in fighting back against critical race theory in the classroom. They need to fight equally hard to stop anti-Semitism masquerading as Middle East or ethnic studies.

[odinsblog]

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

—Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

BY ISHA BANERJEE AND APURVA CHAKRAVARTHY 

#EndJewHatred hosted a protest in support of Business School assistant professor Shai Davidai on Wednesday, calling on University President Minouche Shafik to resign for allegedly not doing enough to protect Jewish students.

The protest came hours after Shafik testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in a hearing titled “Columbia in Crisis: Columbia University’s Response to Antisemitism.”

The protesters gathered at 5:30 p.m. at 116th Street and Broadway with Davidai and members of #EndJewHatred, a movement “centering on Jewish liberation from all forms of oppression and discrimination.” The protest drew over 200 Columbia and non-Columbia affiliates.

Davidai decided to host the protest with #EndJewHatred after it “became clear to us that the University is not going to allow us to organize a protest for the community,” he said in a speech at the protest.

He called for Shafik to “do the decent thing and step down” after repeatedly saying that Shafik had lied in her congressional testimony. He also stated that he would work with whomever came after Shafik to “make sure that the Jewish community, the Israeli community, and the non-Jewish community that believes that Hamas is bad will be safe.”

Gabi Schiller, one of the speakers at the protest, also condemned Shafik’s testimony, saying that she threw Davidai “under the bus.”

“Now we finally see the tip of the iceberg of this institutional rot of antisemitism thanks to these congressional hearings which Columbia President Shafik showed with absolute clarity that she is a moral failure to this institution,” Schiller said. “President Shafik, we will not allow Shai Davidai to be your sacrificial lamb.”

Photo by Judy Goldstein / Senior Staff Photographer

Protesters hold signs that read #EndJewHatred.

In regard to a recent petition to fire Davidai, which has garnered almost 9,000 signatures as of Thursday night, as well as other complaints posted on social media and sent to Columbia, Davidai said that he is not concerned for himself but rather for the Jewish and Israeli community. He emphasized that the protest was not about him but instead in support of the “Jewish fight” and “the decent American fight against terrorism.”

“Columbia thinks that it can take these complete lies, turn them into investigation, and silence me or fire me and then I go away. Like no, I don’t go away,” Davidai said. “You can fire me, but you can’t silence me.”

Davidai outlined the outcomes he hoped would result from the protest, implying the first to be the resignation of Shafik. He said he wants the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace to be expelled and removed from campus. Davidai also stated that “all these indoctrinators,” referring to certain professors and faculty advisors, needed to be “sanctioned.”

Davidai ended his list of demands by saying that every organization that has signed on to Columbia University Apartheid Divest should have 24 hours to denounce CUAD, and if they do not, they should be disbanded and removed from campus.

[soon-palestine]

JVL Introduction

The Presidents of three leading US universities were falsely accused of condoning anti-Semitism on their campuses in a highly partisan ambush in front of US congressional hearing in December. Now the Columbia President, Minouche Shafik, is being summoned and 23 of her Jewish faculty are urging her not to give in to attempts to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism and to defend academic freedom at her campus.

They strongly contest assertions that antisemitism is rife at Columbia. They accept that many students are unsettled by the intensity of debate around the Gaza catastrophe but being uncomfortable is far from being discriminated against or threatened.

They deplore the recent actions of the University’s management to use disciplinary processes to clamp down on protest and see this as an abandonment of Columbia’s record of confronting smears and slanders levelled against staff and students and committing to free inquiry and robust disagreement.

MC

This article was originally published by Columbia Spectator on Wed 10 Apr 2024. Read the original here. Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

by 23 Columbia and Barnard faculty, Columbia Spectator

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

Sincerely,Debbie Becher, Barnard College Helen Benedict, Columbia Journalism School Susan Bernofsky, School of the Arts Elizabeth Bernstein, Barnard College Nina Berman, Columbia Journalism School Amy Chazkel, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Yinon Cohen, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nora Gross, Barnard College Keith Gessen, Columbia Journalism School Jack Halberstam, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Sarah Haley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Michael Harris, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Jennifer S. Hirsch, Mailman School of Public Health Marianne Hirsch, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emerita) Joseph A. Howley, Faculty of Arts & Sciences David Lurie, Faculty of Arts & Sciences Nara Milanich, Barnard College D. Max Moerman, Barnard College Manijeh Moradian, Barnard College Sheldon Pollock, Faculty of Arts & Sciences (Emeritus) Bruce Robbins, Faculty of Arts & Sciences James Schamus, School of the Arts Alisa Solomon, Columbia Journalism School

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 6, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Aug 07, 2024

Today Vice President Kamala Harris named her choice for her vice presidential running mate: Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota. Walz grew up in rural Nebraska. He enlisted in the Army National Guard when he was 17 and served for 24 years, retiring in 2005 as a command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted soldier ever to serve in Congress, according to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.  

He went to college with the educational benefits afforded him by the Army, and graduated from Chadron (Nebraska) State College. From 1989 to 1990, he taught at a high school in China, then became a social studies teacher in Alliance, Nebraska, where he met fellow teacher Gwen Whipple, who became his wife. They moved to Minnesota, where they both continued teaching and had two children, Hope and Gus, through IVF. 

Walz became the faculty advisor for the school’s gay-straight alliance organization at the same time that he coached the high-school football team from a 0–27 record to a state championship. The advisor “really needed to be the football coach, who was the soldier and was straight and was married," Walz said in 2018. 

Walz ran for Congress in 2005 after some of his students were asked to leave a rally for George W. Bush because one of them had a sticker for Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Walz won and served in Congress for twelve years, sitting on the House Agriculture Committee, the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Voters elected Walz to the Minnesota state house in 2018, and in his second term they gave him a slim majority in the state legislature. With that support, Walz signed into law protections for abortion rights, supported gender-affirming care, and legalized the recreational use of marijuana. He signed into law gun safety legislation and protections for voting rights, and pushed for action to combat climate change and to promote renewable energy. 

Strong tax revenues and spending cuts gave the state a $17.6 billion surplus, and the Democrats under Walz used the money not to cut taxes, as Republicans wanted, but to invest in education, fund free breakfast and lunch for schoolchildren, make tuition free at the state’s public colleges for students whose families earned less than $80,000 a year, and invest in paid family and medical leave and health insurance coverage regardless of immigration status. 

While MAGA Republicans are already trying to define Walz as “far left,” his votes in Congress put him pretty squarely in the middle.  His work with Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan to expand technology production and infrastructure funding in the state was rewarded in 2023, when Minnesota knocked Texas out of the top five states for business. The CNBC rating looked at 86 indicators in 10 categories, including the workforce, infrastructure, health, and business friendliness. 

Walz checks a number of boxes for the 2024 election, most notably that he hails from near the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and comes across as a normal, nice guy. He favors unions, workers’ rights, and a $15 minimum wage. He is also the person who coined the phrase that took away the dangerous overtones of today’s MAGA Republicans by dubbing them “weird.” As a student of his said: “In politics he’s good at calling out B.S. without getting nasty or too down in the dirt…. It’s the kind of common sense he showed as a coach: practical and kinda goofy.”

Walz is also a symbol of an important resetting of the Democratic Party. He has been unapologetic about his popular programs. On Sunday, July 28, when CNN’s Jake Tapper listed some of Walz’s policies and asked if they made Walz vulnerable to Trump calling him a “big government liberal.” Walz joked that he was, indeed, a “monster.” 

“Kids are eating and having full bellies so they can go learn, and women are making their own health care decisions, and we’re a top five business state, and we also rank in the top three of happiness…. The fact of the matter is,” where Democratic policies are implemented, “quality of life is higher, the economies are better…educational attainment is better. So yeah, my kids are going to eat here, and you’re going to have a chance to go to college, and you’re going to have an opportunity to live where we're working on reducing carbon emissions. Oh, and by the way, you’re going to have personal incomes that are higher, and you’re going to have health insurance. So if that’s where they want to label me, I’m more than happy to take the label.” 

Right-wing reactionary politicians have claimed to represent ordinary Americans since the time of the passage of the Voting Rights Act—on August 6, 1965, exactly 59 years ago today—by insisting that a government that works for communities is a “socialist” plan to elevate undeserving women and racial, ethnic, and gender minorities at the expense of hardworking white men. 

Historically, though, rural America has quite often been the heart of the country’s progressive politics, and the Midwest has had a central place in that progressivism. Walz reintegrates that history with today’s Democratic Party. 

That reintegration has left the Republicans flatfooted. Trump and J.D. Vance expected to continue their posturing as champions of the common man, but on that front the credentials of a New York real estate developer who inherited millions of dollars and of a Yale-educated venture capitalist pale next to a Nebraska-born schoolteacher. Bryan Metzger, politics reporter at Business Insider, pointed out that J.D. Vance tried to hit Walz as a “San Francisco-style liberal,” but while Vance lived in San Francisco as a venture capitalist between 2013 and 2017, Walz went to San Francisco for the first time just last month. 

Head writer and producer of A Closer Look at Late Night with Seth Meyers Sal Gentile summed up Walz’s progressive politics and community vibe when he wrote on social media: “Tim Walz will expand free school lunches, raise the minimum wage, make it easier to unionize, fix your [carburetor], replace the old wiring in your basement, spray that wasp’s nest under the deck, install a new spring for your garage door and put a new chain on your lawnmower.” 

Vice President Harris had a very deep bench from which to choose a running mate, but her choice of Walz seems to have been widely popular. Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who are usually on opposite sides of the party, both praised the choice, prompting Ocasio-Cortez to post: “Dems in disconcerting levels of array.” 

Harris and Walz held their first rally together tonight in Philadelphia, where Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, who had been a top contender for the vice presidential slot, fired up the crowd. “Each of us has a responsibility to get off the sidelines, to get in the game, and to do our part,” he said. “Are you ready to do your part? Are you ready to form a more perfect union? Are you ready to build an America where no matter what you look like, where you come from, who you love, or who you pray to, that this will be a place for you? And are you ready to look the next president of the United States in the eye and say, ‘Hello, Madam President?’ I am too, so let’s get to work!”

Pennsylvania is a crucial state, and Shapiro issued a statement offering his “enthusiastic support” to the ticket. He pledged to work to unite Pennsylvanians behind my friends Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and defeat Donald Trump.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[darkmaga-retard]

5 people have been convicted and another 65 are charged in scheme that stole money intended to feed poor children.

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz was subpoenaed for records related to a $250 million alleged fraud scheme during the pandemic.

The massive fraud scheme involved funds being paid out to a nonprofit called "Feeding Our Future" that claimed to be set up to help feed poor children in Minnesota but instead apparently stole millions to enrich the plotters.

'The Committee today is proceeding with a subpoena to compel responses.'

House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) says that Walz, who is the governor of Minnesota, was unresponsive to a request for information about the alleged scam. Although some documents have been produced for the committee, Foxx says that they were not produced in a timely matter nor did they answer her questions about Walz's oversight of the program.

[elwenyere]

"Why does a university that flaunts its 'storied history' of successful student activism seek to contain and suppress student mobilization? Why is the same university that capitalizes on the legacy of Edward Said and enshrines The Wretched of the Earth into its Core Curriculum so scared to speak about decolonization in practice? It’s not just the House committee watching the administration’s every move—it’s the students, faculty, staff, and alumni who contribute to the rich legacy the University continuously lauds. It is these very student demonstrations and demonstrators that will one day be touted as examples of Columbia’s history of activism. Instead of 'saying the right things' to Congress, do the right things for students."

[beardedmrbean]

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Thursday downplayed the harassment of a Jewish student by anti-Israel protesters on the campus of UCLA and castigated the university for not doing more to protect the agitators. 

The “Squad” congresswoman shrugged off a viral video of the April incident, in which several masked protesters are seen physically blocking the student, who is wearing a Star of David necklace, as he tries to walk to his class on the UCLA campus. 

“Just for clarification, that video we just watched, we saw people moving around,” Omar said after the video was played during a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on antisemitic encampments on college campuses. 

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block, one of three university leaders testifying at the hearing, was the target of Omar’s odd line of questioning that followed. 

“Was it possible, do you think, for that student to be able to get into campus? Was that student actually being blocked from entering campus?” the Minnesota Democrat asked Block. 

“Well, that was in the middle of campus,” Block responded. “They’re not being blocked from being on campus, maybe being blocked from a pathway on campus.”

“He should be allowed to pass,” the chancellor asserted. “I mean, any part of campus is open to students, so blocking him was really inappropriate.”

The so-called Palestine Solidarity Encampment at UCLA was the site of a violent clash between the anti-Israel protesters and counterprotesters on April 30, which saw pepper spray, firecrackers and fists deployed by a group of individuals fed up with the disruptive, weeklong demonstration. 

Omar went on to argue during the hearing that UCLA administrators should have done more to protect the encampment.

“You could have prevented this by protecting the diverse groups of pro-Palestinian students that were peacefully gathered on campus to share meals set in solidarity against the brutal genocide,” Omar told Block. “You could have prevented this by protecting these students’ First Amendment right to assemble.”

“How did you fail the students at many critical points where you could have intervened?” the congresswoman asked the UCLA chancellor. 

“Thank you for the question, but I’m sorry, I reject the premise,” Block responded, before being interrupted by Omar. 

“Can I finish my statement?” he asked.

“No,” Omar shot back. “Are any of these [counterprotesters] in jail?”

Block explained that authorities were summoned “as quickly as possible” and that police were still in the process of identifying the people involved in the skirmish. 

The encampment was declared an unlawful assembly soon after the melee and police arrested more than 200 anti-Israel demonstrators.

“This encampment was against policy, this violated time, place, and manner,” Block noted. 

[palestinegenocide]

Resist Congressional efforts to silence free speech on Palestine

The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is aiming to silence support of Palestine. After targeting notable private universities it is now going after public institutions starting with Rutgers. The school must stand up to this intimidation.

[link]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

A House committee just passed a bill that would forcibly out trans students. It was introduced by Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), who previously advocated for Uganda’s gay death law, the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

The bill, H.R. 736, also known as the “PROTECT Kids Act,” would require elementary and middle schools to forcibly out trans kids to their parents if they ask to go by new pronouns or a new name or use the facilities associated with their gender. If schools failed to comply, they would risk losing all federal funding. “As a condition of receiving Federal funds, any elementary school… or school that consists of only middle grades… that receives Federal funds shall be required to obtain parental consent before— (1) changing a minor child’s gender markers, pronouns, or preferred name on any school form; or (2) allowing a child to change the child’s sex-based accommodations, including locker rooms or bathrooms.” The bill was introduced in February of last year and was referred to the Committee on Education and the Workforce. It was voted out of committee on a 22 to 12 vote this week and will now be going to the House floor for a possible vote. H.R. 736 was introduced by Walberg in the House and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) in the Senate.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI)’s federal anti-LGBTQ+ forced outing bill HR736 (aka the “PROTECT Kids Act”) would require elementary and middle schools across the US to enact student safety-endangering forced outing policies. The bill passed the Education and the Workforce Committee 22-12, and could be set for a full House vote.

The bill has NOTHING to do with “protecting kids”, but an excuse to harass LGBTQ+ students, especially if they do not have supporting parents.

[dragoneyes618]

A subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce heard emotional testimony last week from University of Californian college professors (and two others) about how Jew-hatred has affected their careers since the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The Committee heard from four witnesses: Mark Rienzi is the President and CEO of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. Brian Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University at UC San Diego. Melissa Emrey-Arras is the Director of the GAO’s Education, Workforce and Income Security Team in Washington, D.C. Professor Dafna Golden is a Geography professor at Mt. San Antonino College in Walnut, California.

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Dafna Golden, testified that it would be unbearable to continue to do her job due to the antisemitism that she has experienced.

“Like so many of my Jewish colleagues at colleges across the country, the general antisemitic, hostile environment turned to focus on me directly because I am a Jew,” Golden told the subcommittee. “Because I won’t hide or reject my connection as a Jew to the Jewish state and the Jewish people.”

Due to the “toxic atmosphere and severe impact on my mental health and my professional standing, and the refusal of my employer to protect me in my workplace, I have decided to transition out of academia as soon as possible,” the professor testified.

The hearing is the latest round of the committee’s investigation into Jew-hatred on college campuses and in K-12 education since Oct. 7.

Students and faculty have launched a flurry of formal discrimination complaints and lawsuits alleging that school administrations fostered a hostile environment against Jews, amid the proliferation of anti-Israel and antisemitic protests on campuses.

Brian Keating, who is also Jewish, described what that environment was like for younger professors and students on his campus.

“Faculty members call their colleagues ‘colonizers,’” Keating testified. “During a tour of a lab and workspace environment where Israelis and Jews are working and pursuing their studies, they are confronted by calls for elimination of the one Jewish homeland.”

One of the most shocking parts of the hearing was when Keating reported that John Hildebrand, an oceanographer at UC San Diego who serves as that university’s chair for the University of California Academic Senate, who met with Students for Justice in Palestine, but refused on five separate occasions to meet with any Jewish students, citing various excuses, like lack of time, even as some of these students were feeling physically threatened. He also refused to meet with any Jewish professors outside of very limited circumstances.

Keating also described the role that the United Auto Workers labor union has played in organizing strikes and anti-Israel protests.

Despite its name, the union now represents more than 100,000 academic workers across the country, including 48,000 faculty and student employees in UAW local 4811 representing the University of California system.

“They are effectively forced to be members of the United Auto Workers union as part of their contract and their collective bargaining agreement,” Keating said, of his graduate student teaching assistants.

“They organize rolling strikes, they call them ‘day of action’ or ‘complicity tours,’ where they would organize shutdowns of campus or attempt to shut down campus,” he said.

UAW 4811’s website is almost entirely devoted to anti-Israel protest-related grievances.

“UAW members have chosen to participate in the nonviolent Palestine Solidarity Encampments to call attention to UC’s financial ties to Israel’s war effort and urge UC to divest from companies and industries currently profiting off of the suffering in Gaza,” the site said.

An Orange County superior court judge ruled in early June that UAW 4811’s strike violated its collective bargaining agreement with the University of California and issued a restraining order against it.

Additionally, Keating related testimony compiled from Jewish UCSD students. One graduate said, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this. I can’t work at UCSD, I can barely live here – and I have learned, brutally and painfully, where my life ranks for the people I’m surrounded by every day.”

Another, a professor of anthropology, said: “In October, anthropology professors canceled classes in solidarity with Hamas and used departmental listservs to urge others to follow suit. A Jewish professor was publicly called a hypocrite for not attending a meeting on Passover. The Director of Undergraduate Studies presented a letter demanding faculty take a public stand against the Chancellor and Israel, which she had coerced students into signing. Professors have also pushed for BDS, the Chancellor’s resignation, and actions against Israel while suppressing opposing viewpoints. They aim to sever research and teaching partnerships with Israeli scholars despite these scholars protesting against their government.”

Keating reported that despite multiple official complaints to the Office of Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination and appeals to the DEI Officer, no actions have been taken. The university has also ignored requests for an advisory committee on antisemitism and testimony given to lawyers investigating an open Title VI case.

In her written testimony, Golden noted that the campus (her workplace) became increasingly hostile after she confronted a colleague about showing an antisemitic video – “The Occupation of the American Mind,” narrated by the notorious antisemite Roger Waters – in his classroom just weeks after Oct. 7. The film’s central thesis is that “leaders of major Jewish organizations” have conspired to use their power to control and thus “occupy” the minds of innocent Americans so that they would support Israel. Golden wrote, “The movie is basically a screen version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and serves no academic function.”

After her complaint, the movie was not screened campus-wide, but the professor continued to show this film in his classes on U.S. History, Mexican American History and Native American History.

In retaliation, the professor began a campaign of harassment against Golden, calling her a “violent Zionist” and a “former soldier in the IDF” (she was never in the IDF) in an email sent to his entire class. He told students “to stand up” to her. A Jewish student in one of the professor’s classes documented these actions, including a disturbing incident where the professor mimicked a Nazi salute in class.

Then “individuals associated with a notorious antisemitic organization on campus, Shut It Down 4 Palestine, vandalized the bulletin board outside my office by removing my Israeli flag and pro-Israel articles, and replacing them with anti-Israel propaganda, including a flyer with demands to ‘Renounce the Pro-Zionist,’ ‘Remove the Pro-Zionist library display,’ and ‘Declare support for Palestine,’” Golden wrote.

Additionally, Golden testified that she had installed “a perfectly normal, non-ideological, academic display at the school library on Israel’s changing borders from prior to the establishment of the state until the present time” which featured books such as Coexistence & Reconciliation in Israel and both the Israeli and Palestinian flags. But due to student complaints and “division in the community,” the library removed the display.

Golden’s RateMyProfessors.com profile was also bombarded with fake negative reviews. “Students making public comments at the open meeting of the Mt. SAC Board of Trustees demanded that I be fired and declared a boycott of my classes.”

Golden’s spring semester on-campus class was canceled due to low enrollment, limiting her teaching to online only. “My lack of on-campus presence has deteriorated crucial collaborative relationships, essential for the multi-disciplinary program I manage. My colleagues’ reactions during virtual meetings and their reluctance to engage with me professionally underscore the prevalent hostility. My attempts to engage with key faculty and administration, including the head of the Ethnic Studies department, the President of the Faculty Academic Senate and the President of Mt. SAC, have been ignored, leaving the pervasive anti-Semitism on campus unaddressed.”

A few days before the hearing, three Jewish students at the University of California, Los Angeles – two law students and an undergraduate – asked a federal court on Monday to force UCLA to protect their safety when they return to the public school’s campus on Aug. 15.

“UCLA allowed a group of extremist students and outside agitators to set up an encampment where they stopped Jewish students from accessing classes, the library and other critical parts of campus,” stated the Becket Fund, which is representing the students.

The public school “allowed and reinforced these zones, breaking the law and hurting its Jewish students,” Becket added, noting the students are “asking a federal court to prevent UCLA from ever allowing such exclusion of Jewish students again.”

“No student should have to fear for their safety or pass a religious test to walk freely at a public university,” said Mark Rienzi, president of Becket, who is representing the students along with the firm Clement & Murphy.

“UCLA’s behavior on this issue has been shameful, and the students need a court order to allow them to return to campus safely this fall,” Rienzi said.

The law students are Yitzchok Frankel – a father of four, who “faced antisemitic harassment simply for wearing a kippah and was forced to abandon his regular routes through campus because of the Jew Exclusion Zone” – and Eden Shemuelian, who had to walk around the encampment and hear its antisemitic chants, “severely” compromising her studies for final exams, per Becket.

An undergraduate history major, Joshua Ghayoum “was repeatedly blocked from accessing the library and other public spaces.” He also heard chants of “death to Jews” from the encampment, Becket said.

“It’s appalling that an elite American university would actively support and encourage masked mobs of antisemites,” Rienzi stated. “UCLA’s Jewish community needs to know that they’ll be safe on campus before the start of the fall semester.”

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The US House of Representatives has launched an investigation into 20 nonprofit organizations that are currently funding anti-Zionist student groups mounting pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses, an effort aimed at uncovering long suspected links to terrorist organizations and other hostile foreign entities.

As part of the inquiry, US Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and James Comer (R-KY) wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Tuesday, asking her to share any “suspicious activity reports” generated by the activities of Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, American Muslims for Palestine, Tides Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, and other groups.

Foxx and Comer chair the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, respectively.

“The committees are investigating the sources of funding and financing for groups who are organizing, leading, and participating in pro-Hamas, antisemitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American protests with illegal encampments on American college campuses,” Foxx and Comer wrote in their letter to Yellen. “This investigation relates to both malign influence on college campuses and to the national security implications of such influence on faculty and student organizations.”

The inquiry comes amid widespread suspicion that an eruption of anti-Zionist protests on college campuses, in which students illegally occupied sections of section and refused to leave unless their schools agreed to condemn and boycott Israel, was fueled by immense financial and logistical support from outside groups. Foxx and Comer said in their letter that the investigation’s findings will inform recommendations for new federal laws requiring increased transparency and reporting of foreign contributions to American colleges and universities.

On Tuesday, Foxx told the Washington Free Beacon, which first reported the investigation, that the protests were a symptom of a larger threat to national security.

“It’s no coincidence that the day after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack, antisemitic mobs began springing up at college campuses across the country,” Foxx said. “These protests have been coordinated and well organized, indicating that outside groups or influences may be at play. American education is under attack. It’s critical that Congress investigates how these groups — who are tearing apart our institutions — are being funded and advised before it’s too late.”

Foreign links to the anti-Zionist student movement have been the subject of numerous comprehensive studies.

Last week, the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) published a report showing a connection between the anti-Zionist group Shut It Down for Palestine (SID4P) — a group formed immediately after Hamas’ massacre on Oct. 7 — and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). NCRI explained that SID4P, which organized numerous traffic-obstructing demonstrations after Oct. 7, is an umbrella group for several other organizations which compose the “Singham Network,” a consortium of far-left groups funded by Neville Roy Singham and Jodie Evans. The report describes Singham and Evans as a “power couple within the global far-left movement” whose affiliation with the CCP has been copiously documented.

“The Singham Network exploits regulatory loopholes in the US nonprofit system to facilitate the flow of an enormous sum of US dollars to organizations and movements that actively stoke social unrest at the grassroots level,” the report said. “Alternative media outlets associated with the Singham Network have played a central role in online mobilization and cross-platform social amplification for SID4P.”

In 2022, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) revealed that one of the founders of Students for Justice in Palestine, Hatem Bazian, is also a co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, an advocacy group which, NAS said, “retains ties to terrorist groups operating in the Palestinian Territories.”

NAS added that the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic Cultural Boycott of Israel — which has been influential is steering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel in academia — is “structurally linked” to Palestinian terrorist organizations through the Council of National and Islamic Forces in Palestine — a member of the Palestinian BDS National Committee which comprises Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front-General Command, Palestinian Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“On the one hand, BDS is designed to secure political legitimacy vis-á-vis Israel, with boycotts and divestment offering Palestinian activists and terrorists new domains to assert their cause,” NAS senior fellow Ian Oxnevad wrote. “On the other hand, BDS, along with the formation of multiple NGOs and nonprofit organizations, offers the Palestinians new avenues by which to access funding in a post-9/11 international financial system designed to curtail funding for terrorism.”