Some of us remember the killings at Jackson State and Kent State in 1970. We now remember that GOP calls for National Guard intervention on campuses is the variable that Trump manipulated to allow J6 to succeed. Fascist cosplay now increases because it’s now that the policing that Trump wanted in the 2020 Summer in Portland and DC could return. The GOP playbook wants the DNC in Chicago to replicate 1968, so the tired American Carnage discourse can invoke more security theater. Eyes on the prize. This is not your grandparents’ campus violence. The stakes are different and the truth is more complex.
Last December, the presidents of Penn and Harvard did not grovel sufficiently in trying to appease Republican inquisitors claiming that they were insufficiently sensitive to episodes of antisemitism. So with some crude prodding from large donors of the “Israel right or wrong” camp, Liz Magill and Claudine Gay were pushed out of their jobs by panicked trustees.
In the latest round of this self-abasement, other college presidents are hoping to out-grovel the earlier batch and outdo each other in sacrificing civil liberties. This never ends well.
At last week’s hearing before the same House Education subcommittee that destroyed Magill and Gay, Columbia’s beleaguered president, Nemat “Minouche” Shafik, who was born in Egypt, brought with her three senior Jewish colleagues for the grovel-fest. At one point, Rep. Rick Allen, a Republican from Georgia, asked Shafik whether she knew Genesis 12:3. She didn’t.
Allen explained: “It was the covenant that God made with Abraham, and that covenant was real clear: ‘If you bless Israel I will bless you, if you curse Israel I will curse you,’” he said. “Do you want Columbia University to be cursed by God?” Allen demanded.
Shafik meekly responded, “Definitely not.” Seriously? The right answer was “Congressman, we can discuss the difficult balance between unpopular, even outrageous views and civil liberties. But I am not here to be interrogated by you about the Bible.”
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At least one faculty member at Columbia has called for the National Guard to remove student protesters. At USC, commencement safety concern disinvites speakers.
Welcome to a new kind of tension that has gripped American colleges and universities in the most divisive year on campus since the dawn of the 1970s. The wave of protests that began with the first shots of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7 has morphed into an age of paranoia. It’s been marked by increasingly tougher penalties or confusing new rules for students still wanting to speak out against Israel’s invasion of Gaza, with some schools banning indoor protests or preventing students from posting political messages on their dormitory doors.
This week’s jarring news out of the University of Southern California that its Muslim valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, would not be allowed to give her upcoming commencement speech because of what the school called “safety concerns” — after some critics had singled out some of her X/Twitter posts over Palestine — gave the rest of America a window into what students and some of their professors have been saying for months: Free speech and political expression at U.S. universities is facing its greatest threat since the 1950s “Red Scare” and the heyday of McCarthyism.
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I write to protest in the strongest possible terms your decision to prohibit Asna Tabassum from giving her speech as the rightfully selected valedictorian. This is a matter of principle. As a university you are obligated to protect your students — including the valedictorian — and to guarantee academic freedom and the freedom of speech. By canceling the speech, you failed to adhere to all of these principles.
Not only did you take away a well-deserved accolade connected to Tabassum’s selection as the valedictorian, but your decision will mar her life and potential future career. Because you allowed a hate campaign to succeed, a campaign which falsely accused her of antisemitism, you legitimized and promoted these false and misleading claims. She will now be seen by some as an antisemite and anti-Israel activist, which could not be further from the truth.
Your decision not only marred the special moment for which she worked extremely hard over four years, but you also tainted the special moment of graduation for many students. The message you sent to these students is to be quiet in their future lives, to not be outspoken and criticize injustices.
This is the opposite of promoting democratic values, which is the worst you could have done in these fragile times, where we face a rapid development toward authoritarianism.
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I can say this with authority, since I know her well. I had her in my class on resistance to genocide, which includes several sections on the Holocaust, and I mentored her research. We stayed in touch even after the conclusion of our seminar, and I have written recommendation letters for her. I don’t know Tabassum as a political activist as she is now being labeled, but she is indeed one of the most empathetic persons I have met in my 15 years at USC.
She values everybody as equal. That is why she, as a Muslim woman, chose the minor in resistance to genocide in the first place, a minor which includes multiple classes on the Holocaust. She is a fierce fighter for human rights, which explains her sympathy for the Palestinian cause at this moment when Gaza is being devastated.
Still, even if she were a political activist, it would be utterly wrong to prohibit her speech. There is no justification for the damage you have done to her as an individual, the USC experience of many students and the academic reputation of our University.
There is a lot of frustration and anger among my students and also among many faculty members, with whom I have had contact over the last 48 hours. As the faculty petition and yesterday’s demonstration show, hundreds of faculty members and students are demanding a revision of your decision.
I most strongly join the demands that USC and its leadership profoundly apologize to Tabassum and reinstate her honor to deliver the valedictorian address at commencement.
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