The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US

Summary

Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights report that a growing US movement for Palestinian human rights, centred on colleges and universities, has been met by a network of Israel advocacy organizations, public relations firms and think tanks that pressure universities, government actors and other institutions to censor or punish advocacy for Palestinian rights rather than engage it on its merits (The Palestine Exception to Free Speech: A Movement Under Attack in the US, PDF p.4). Palestine Legal responded to 152 incidents of censorship, punishment or other burdening of advocacy in 2014 and 140 in the first six months of 2015, 89 percent and 80 percent of them respectively targeting students and scholars (PDF p.5). Part 1 (PDF p.1-37) gives the front matter, Executive Summary, Methodology, the movement survey (Section I), the Actors account and the first six and a half tactic sections (Section II.B.1-7c, ending mid-account on PDF p.37). Part 2 (PDF p.38-64) completes B.7(c), gives B.8 Legislation and B.9 Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions, Section III The Legal Imperative to Protect Dissent, Section IV Recommendations, and the Notes through note 301 (PDF p.47-64).

What the file is

• A 124 PDF page report, dated September 2015 (PDF p.2), titled on the cover (PDF p.1, read in the original; the text copy is blank there) THE PALESTINE EXCEPTION TO FREE SPEECH / A Movement Under Attack in the US, a joint Palestine Legal and Center for Constitutional Rights publication. About 88,385 words in the supplied text copy, with === PDF p.N === markers; printed pagination matches PDF pagination in this range (PDF p.4 is printed p.4).
• Authors (PDF p.2): Liz Jackson, Dima Khalidi, Maria LaHood, Radhika Sainath and Omar Shakir “researched and wrote this Report”; Baher Azmy, Leah Todd and Rahul Saksena contributed writing and editing. Design by Design Action Collective; cover photo Wellesley Students for Justice in Palestine. Licensed CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; support from the Bertha Foundation (PDF p.2).
• Structure (contents, PDF p.3): Executive Summary p.4; Methodology p.8; I. The Emergence of a Broad US Movement for Palestinian Human Rights p.9; II. Chilling and Censoring of Palestine Advocacy in the United States p.13 (A. Actors p.14; B. Tactics p.17-42); III. The Legal Imperative to Protect Dissent p.43; IV. Recommendations p.45; Notes p.47; Appendix: Campus Incidents p.67; Appendix Notes p.99.
• Text quality: the text copy is clean and legible in this range, including the two tactic charts (PDF p.14-15, bars without printed values; totals and campus/non-campus splits are printed) and the by-state map (PDF p.17, numbers without state labels in the text copy). Wording recorded as printed where it differs from the expected form is listed under Open questions.

Section by section

• Front matter and Acknowledgments (PDF p.1-3): cover, authorship and credits as above; Palestine Legal is described as founded in 2012 to protect the civil and constitutional rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom, a fiscally sponsored project of the Tides Center; the Center for Constitutional Rights as founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South (PDF p.2). Contents as above (PDF p.3).

• Executive Summary (PDF p.4-7): the thesis and incident counts as in the Summary above. High-level Israeli government figures led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and wealthy benefactors Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban have reportedly participated in strategic meetings to oppose Palestine activism, particularly BDS campaigns (PDF p.4). The nine tactics are each summarised with an example: false accusations of antisemitism and support for terrorism (the anonymously run Canary Mission website in 2015 calling campus Muslim Student Association chapters a “virtual terror factory”, PDF p.5); official denunciation (UC president Janet Napolitano on the student “ethics pledge” campaign, and her predecessor Mark Yudof’s comparison, PDF p.5); bureaucratic barriers (CUNY College of Staten Island, PDF p.5-6); cancellations and alterations (Missouri History Museum, spring 2015, and UC Hastings, 2012, PDF p.6); administrative sanctions (Loyola University Chicago SJP suspended while Hillel was not, and Northeastern’s suspension and reinstatement, PDF p.6); threats to academic freedom (Steven Salaita dismissed by UIUC, Rabab Abdulhadi investigated by SFSU, AMCHA’s blacklist of more than 200 Middle East Studies professors, PDF p.6); lawsuits and legal threats (at least six Department of Education Title VI complaints, each ultimately dismissed, and the 2011 Olympia Food Co-op suit, PDF p.6); legislation (eleven measures in 2014 and at least sixteen in the first half of 2015, a federal trade bill with an anti-BDS provision, and Illinois as the first state to sign an anti-BDS measure into law, PDF p.7); and criminal investigations and prosecutions (Northeastern students questioned at home in spring 2014, and guilty verdicts against ten UC Irvine and Riverside students for disrupting a public meeting, PDF p.7). The summary closes: “Our constitutional tradition cannot tolerate an exception to the First Amendment simply because Palestinian human rights advocacy makes powerful listeners uncomfortable.” (PDF p.7)

• Methodology (PDF p.8): the Report rests on Palestine Legal’s confidential “intakes” from individuals and groups reporting suppression or retaliation, or requesting assistance in anticipation of it; “incidents” are actions to censor, punish or otherwise burden advocacy for Palestinian rights, by public and private actors, classified into the nine tactic subcategories though incidents often fall into several. Only publicly reported or permitted incidents are detailed; incidents before Palestine Legal’s 2012 founding are included; the Appendix is a nonexhaustive catalogue of campus incidents only. Cases were selected on documentation, representativeness and willingness to come forward, from activists’ accounts and mainstream and alternative media reports.

• I. The Emergence of a Broad US Movement for Palestinian Human Rights (PDF p.9-12): US policymakers have largely favoured Israel — unparalleled military aid, routine UN Security Council vetoes, shielding from scrutiny — with Congress’s unprecedented invitation to Netanyahu to address it during his 2015 reelection campaign over President Barack Obama’s opposition, media coverage that typically tilts in Israel’s favour and the pro-Israel lobby’s clout keeping US public opinion favourable to Israel and negative toward Palestinians; dissenters such as Jimmy Carter, on Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, and Richard Falk endured backlash (PDF p.9). Human rights documentation of Israeli violations — around 5,500 Palestinians in Israeli prisons, hundreds detained without charge or trial including at least 164 children, denial of freedom of movement, settlement construction, military and settler violence, second-class status of Palestinian citizens of Israel — fed grassroots growth (PDF p.10). The movement coalesced around the 2005 Palestinian civil society BDS call, with divestment wins named for the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Bill Gates Foundation, student resolutions, and losses for SodaStream and Veolia (PDF p.10). Campus growth centres on Students for Justice in Palestine and allied groups allied with immigrants’ rights, feminism, LGBTQIA, racial justice, socialism and environmentalism organising, and partnered with Occupy and Black Lives Matter; an informal national SJP structure serves more than a hundred autonomous SJPs (PDF p.10). Academics boycott and organise, thousands pledging to boycott UIUC over Salaita and the American Studies Association maintaining its boycott resolution (PDF p.11). Hundreds of community groups work locally, among them Adalah-NY against settlement builder Lev Leviev, and Block the Boat, which stopped Israeli ships unloading in Oakland and Los Angeles in summer 2014 (PDF p.11). US activists in Palestine have been killed: Rachel Corrie in Gaza in 2003 and Furkan Doğan on the Flotilla to Gaza in 2010, with, the Report says, no thorough Israeli investigations and no US investigation or demand for justice (PDF p.11). National organisations named include Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Say No, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Open Hillel, the American Friends Service Committee, American Muslims for Palestine and the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (PDF p.11). Activities surveyed (PDF p.12): educational and cultural programming; BDS campaigns (student governments of at least twenty-five universities had passed divestment resolutions; at least nine student bodies voted to divest in 2014-15 alone); peaceful protests against pro-Israel speakers; mock checkpoints, evictions and apartheid walls; and fundraisers, including for the US Boat to Gaza.

• II. Introduction and A. Actors (PDF p.13-17): the 2014 and first-half-2015 counts are restated, with the nine categories (PDF p.13). Suppression deters: students feared false accusations of antisemitism or supporting Hamas would hinder jobs or travel, and Palestinian-American, Arab-American and Muslim students face heightened treatment in a post-9/11 climate; the Report does not address pro-Israel advocacy that does not seek to suppress differing viewpoints (PDF p.14). A.1 names the Israel advocacy network — among them the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Zionist Organization of America, the AMCHA Initiative, Hillel International, Shurat HaDin, StandWithUs, the Anti-Defamation League, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, the American Jewish Committee, CAMERA, Divestment Watch, the Israel on Campus Coalition, Campus Watch, the David Project and the David Horowitz Freedom Center — and distinguishes their strategies: Hillel International bars affiliates hosting BDS-supportive speakers; the Brandeis Center, AMCHA and ZOA file Title VI complaints; AMCHA and the David Project campaign against individuals; StandWithUs reportedly works closely with the Israeli government and keeps dossiers; Shurat HaDin acknowledges working with Israeli intelligence and law enforcement and has threatened or sued BDS adopters (PDF p.14-15). The “delegitimization” framing is traced to the Reut Institute’s 2010 paper characterising BDS as a “delegitimization challenge” and an “existential threat” and recommending sabotaging and attacking “catalysts”; the Israel Action Network was launched in October 2010 as a $6millioncampaign;theJewishAgencyforIsraeldeclaredin2013aplaneventuallycommitting$300 million; an Adelson-Saban summit in June 2015 reportedly raised “at least $20 million”; and Netanyahu reportedly convened ministers in February 2014 to discuss lawsuits against pro-BDS organisations, action against boycotting financial institutions and encouraging anti-boycott legislation abroad, requiring “activat[ing] the pro-Israel lobby in the US” (PDF p.15-16). Two charts give incidents by tactic: 2014 total 152 (campus related 136, non-campus 16) and 2015 (January 1-June 30) total 140 (campus 112, non-campus 28) (PDF p.14-15). A.2: universities, as “ground zero”, cancel programs, sanction students, fire professors and scrutinise departments under donor, community and media pressure, treating Palestine speech differently — viewpoint-based restriction that at public institutions violates the First Amendment; other institutions likewise close forums (PDF p.16). A.3: federal and local executive actors — police, the Departments of State and Education, the FBI, DHS, prosecutors — have engaged in targeted surveillance, investigations, raids and prosecutions on the basis of Palestine advocacy, and lawmakers have passed speech-impinging legislation, sometimes with Israel advocacy and Israeli official input (PDF p.17).

• B.1 False and Inflammatory Accusations of Antisemitism and Support for Terrorism (PDF p.17-22): public vilification as antisemitic or pro-terrorism is “the primary tool in the arsenal of Israel advocacy organizations” (PDF p.18). (a) Monitoring and surveillance: social-media monitoring, dossiers and infiltration — the Reut Institute’s January 2015 “hackathon” and June 2015 strategy of “out-name-shame the delegitimizers” using “all available firepower—financial, social, legal, etc.”; Canary Mission’s spring 2015 dossiers; Campus Watch dossiers; DePaul students videotaped by an Israeli consular entourage during a divestment referendum; a student spying for AMCHA at UC Santa Cruz on a university delegation; a Jew Hatred on Campus reporter publishing SJP meeting notes at UCLA (PDF p.17-18). A by-state map totals 292 incidents for January 1, 2014-June 30, 2015, not reflecting 13 nationwide incidents (PDF p.17). (b) Equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism: 76 of 152 incidents in 2014 (50 percent) and 83 of 140 in the first half of 2015 (59 percent) involved such accusations (PDF p.18). Cases: the University of Toledo divestment hearing closed in violation of Ohio’s Open Meetings Act, SJP seated separately, the vote blocked, then the resolution passing overwhelmingly; Northeastern’s student government blocking a divestment referendum vote as itself creating an antisemitic climate (PDF p.18-19); AMCHA’s demand to cancel UC Riverside’s student-led “Palestinian Voices” course and its 2012 campaign against UCLA Professor David Shorter, whose Academic Freedom Committee vindication followed hate mail, death threats and lost consulting contracts (PDF p.19); promotion of the “State Department definition” including the “three Ds” — “demonizing Israel”, “applying a double standard to Israel”, “delegitimizing Israel” — urged on UC, Stanford, Northwestern and Northeastern in spring 2015, adopted by no university at publication but incorporated in UC Santa Barbara and UCLA student-government resolutions (PDF p.19); California House Resolution No. 35 (2012) defining antisemitism to include BDS campaigns and speech claiming “Israel is a racist, apartheid, or Nazi state” (PDF p.19-20); swastika graffiti at UC Davis and Stanford attributed without evidence to divestment and BDS activity, the Stanford perpetrator later identified by police as a teenager with no known campus or Israel/Palestine connections (PDF p.20); accusations also reaching Jewish Voice for Peace, Open Hillel and J Street, and the ADL’s “top ten anti-Israel groups” list (PDF p.20). (c) False accusations of support for terrorism: 20 of 152 incidents in 2014 (13 percent) and 41 of 140 in the first half of 2015 (29 percent) (PDF p.20); the Report states no links between terrorism and student activism for Palestinian rights have been substantiated (PDF p.21). HamasOnCampus.org’s claim that “SJP was created to be Hamas on Campus and work in tandem with the Muslim Brotherhood proxy, the Muslim Students Association (MSA)”, Canary Mission’s “semi-terrorist group” (JVP) and “virtual terror factory” (MSA) claims, AMCHA’s Tammi Rossman-Benjamin’s 2013 description of SJP and MSA students’ “ties to terrorist organizations”, and the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s “#JewHatred” posters distributed to fifty campuses are given (PDF p.21). UC Santa Cruz “hate/bias reports” over a mock checkpoint and the UC Davis treatment of Azka Fayyaz’s satirical Facebook comment, with hate messages including “wipe out these vermin now”, follow (PDF p.21). Rutgers blocked a US Boat to Gaza fundraiser’s donation in fall 2010 after Hillel and ADL material-support accusations, and SFSU audited Abdulhadi before clearing her (PDF p.21-22).

• B.2 Official Denunciations (PDF p.22-24): 250 university leaders opposed the ASA boycott, according to Legal Insurrection; CUNY John Jay President Jeremy Travis connected SJP’s Gaza and Ferguson die-in with the rise in antisemitism in Europe; University of South Florida counsel compared a BDS referendum to asking students “to support the KKK”; Yudof compared a walkout from an Israeli soldier’s event to nooses, swastikas and LGBTQIA centre vandalism (PDF p.22-23). Administrators cloak disfavour in “balance”, “dialogue” and “civility”: Napolitano’s spring 2014 “civil discourse” statement on UCLA SJP’s ethics-pledge campaign; Stanford’s trustees refusing even to evaluate divestment because they “focused on the questions of divisiveness”; Loyola’s required “intergroup dialogue training” for SJP and Northeastern’s required “civility statement” (PDF p.23). The British group Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods is quoted: dialogue “is used to bully others into acquiescence with the powerful” (PDF p.23).

• B.3 Bureaucratic Barriers (PDF p.24-26): ostensibly neutral mechanisms — lengthy group-application reviews, obstructed event approvals, objections to the SJP name or the word “apartheid”, security fees, repeated meetings, script and flyer demands, status threats, demands for private internal notes; 59 of 136 campus-related incidents in 2014 and 33 of 112 in the first half of 2015 involved bureaucratic barriers (PDF p.24). Cases: a Northeast dean asking students whether one could “be pro-Palestine and not also be an antisemite”; Brooklyn College’s 2012 Barghouti-Butler BDS event under funding threats, with two checkpoints and a metal detector, and Professor Corey Robin on the “bureaucratic maze of regulations”; Barnard’s 2014 removal without notice of SJP’s Israeli Apartheid Week banner and the ensuing ban on main-hall banners, with Shezza Abboushi Dallal’s account; CUNY Hunter’s 2015 bar on a “Thinking about Going on Birthright Israel?” flyer and forced rewrite of a checkpoint street-theatre script; CUNY Staten Island’s delays, short-notice meetings and flyer pre-authorisation since 2013; Purdue’s 2012 demands for evidence that checkpoints violated human rights, full scripts and participants’ names and phone numbers before a mock checkpoint, after which the group did not repeat it (PDF p.24-26).

• B.4 Administrative Sanctions (PDF p.26-27): Loyola University Chicago charged SJP with six violations after the Birthright Israel tabling line-up, cleared five, found a demonstration-policy violation, and imposed probation without funding, dialogue training and a threat of further sanctions, while Hillel’s unregistered tabling drew only a rules-review meeting (PDF p.26-27). Montclair State’s student government fined SJP five percent of its fall budget, ordered it to cease all “political propaganda” and “focus [its] events on the Palestinian culture”, and denied response or appeal; FIRE’s intervention overturned it (PDF p.27). Northeastern put SJP on probation in April 2013 over an unregistered walkout — having not punished an Israel-aligned group for the same failure in 2010 — and suspended it in spring 2014 over mock eviction flyers, sustaining two charges against two students while, SJP said, dormitory flyering rules are “flouted, if not flatly ignored, by other student groups” (PDF p.27). Florida Atlantic subjected five students to a four-month process for a roughly two-minute interruption of an Israeli colonel’s speech, settling on leadership bans, career-long probation and ADL-designed diversity training for three (PDF p.27).

• B.5 Cancellations and Alterations of Academic and Cultural Events (PDF p.28-30): the Missouri History Museum’s March 2015 demand to remove Palestine from “From Ferguson to Ayotzinapa to Palestine”, the organisers’ refusal and move, and public-records documents showing JCRC complaints and museum suggestions to JCRC and ADL of an alternative event (PDF p.28); Hillel International’s March 2015 legal threat against Swarthmore Hillel over its Open Hillel civil-rights-veterans event, after which the students disassociated and renamed the group (PDF p.28); Pitzer College’s aesthetics-committee denial of SJP’s wall replica, reversed after outcry and a Palestine Legal warning (PDF p.29); Evanston Public Library’s August 2014 cancellation of Ali Abunimah’s book talk for lack of a pro-Israel speaker to provide “balance”, reversed a week later to an overflow crowd (PDF p.29); Northeastern’s day-of cancellation of Dr. Abu Sitta’s talk (PDF p.29); UC Hastings’s March 2011 removal of its name and brand from “Litigating Palestine”, its dean’s cancelled address and the Cummings Foundation’s withdrawn funding, under “one-sided” complaints and a threatened Title VI complaint (PDF p.29); the Oakland Museum of Children’s Art’s September 2011 cancellation of Palestinian children’s Operation Cast Lead artwork after pressure, its chairman saying the museum “couldn’t handle the divisive issue” (PDF p.29); the New York City LGBT Center’s March 2011 cancellation and nearly two-year ban on Palestine-related activism, lifted after the Sarah Schulman uproar (PDF p.29-30); and two California murals altered under JCRC and ADL pressure — HOMEY’s “Solidarity: Breaking Down Barriers” in 2007 and the 2006 SFSU Edward Said mural, from which Hanthala and the key were eliminated after JCRC compared the key to KKK robes (PDF p.30).

• B.6 Threats to Academic Freedom (PDF p.30-34): campaigns to have universities investigate, punish, censor, deny tenure to or dismiss academics, with monitoring of course materials, classes and extramural speech (PDF p.30). Salaita’s case is given in full: accepted October 2013, resigned elsewhere, courses scheduled, office and email assigned, then terminated by a chancellor’s email two weeks before the semester, administrators citing his tweets’ lack of “civility”, FOIA documents showing donor threats, AAUP censure, sixteen departments’ “no confidence” votes, a boycott endorsed by more than 5,000 academics, and an August 2015 federal ruling denying UIUC’s motion to dismiss because the tweets “implicate every ‘central concern’ of the First Amendment” (PDF p.31-32). Abdulhadi: SFSU found AMCHA’s allegations lacked merit, AMCHA complained to the State Controller, and SFSU audited five years of her travel expenses (PDF p.32). The Brandeis Center and AMCHA’s 2014 reports on federally funded Middle East Studies centres, focused on UCLA, demanded defunding or intrusive oversight (PDF p.32); the ZOA’s May 2015 demand to Columbia’s Middle East Institute for speaker names, readings and films for “Citizenship and Nationality in Israel/Palestine”, objecting that there is “no country called ‘Palestine.’”, failed to stop the workshop (PDF p.32). Earlier cases: Joseph Massad at Columbia from 2004, spied upon and disrupted, the investigation finding the allegations meritless, tenure eventually granted (PDF p.32-33); Nadia Abu El-Haj at Barnard from 2007, tenure eventually granted after a settlement-based petition campaign (PDF p.33); Rashid Khalidi barred by Chancellor Joel Klein from a New York City teacher training program in 2005, Columbia withdrawing from the program in protest (PDF p.33); Terri Ginsberg forced to resign a North Carolina State film-series curatorship and denied a tenure-track position, her claims dismissed on summary judgment, more than 150 applications by 2012 without an interview (PDF p.33); Norman Finkelstein denied tenure by DePaul in 2007 after Alan Dershowitz’s “national crusade”, despite departmental and committee endorsement, on “civility” grounds, and without a US academic appointment since (PDF p.33-34); Kristofer Petersen-Overton, an adjunct professor and CUNY doctoral student in political science, fired by Brooklyn College in 2010 after New York State Assembly member Dov Hikind complained that his syllabus criticized Israel in an unbalanced manner and accused him of promoting suicide bombings in his curriculum, then reinstated after he received a wave of support from colleagues (see Appendix entry, CUNY Brooklyn College) (PDF p.34); and William Robinson charged with misconduct at UC Santa Barbara in 2009 over assigned materials, the case dismissed in June 2009 as “in accord with the principles of academic freedom”, StandWithUs calling the complaint a test case (PDF p.34).

• B.7 Lawsuits and Legal Threats (PDF p.34-37, unfinished in this part): prolonged legal battles drain emotional, financial and organising resources (PDF p.34). (a) Anti-BDS legal attacks: Israel advocacy organizations employ legal threats and suits to target BDS campaigns as a way to halt the movement’s progress (PDF p.34). Legal Insurrection’s IRS complaint against the ASA and Shurat HaDin’s December 2014 IRS complaint against the Presbyterian Church (USA); Shurat HaDin’s early 2014 threat to sue the ASA, answered by the Report’s position that the boycott targets institutions and corporations for ties to state policy or complicity in human rights violations, speech US courts have consistently held protected (PDF p.34-35); the American Center for Law and Justice’s threat against the ASA and its conference hotel, the ASA answering “This allegation is false. … We welcome Israeli academics to attend” (PDF p.35); the 2011 copyright suit against Adalah-NY’s “Don’t Stop Boycottin’” flash mob (PDF p.35); and the Olympia Food Co-op suit by five members supported by StandWithUs and the Israeli government against sixteen board members — dismissed under Washington’s anti-SLAPP law, affirmed on appeal, remanded in May 2015 after the state supreme court found the anti-SLAPP statute unconstitutional — with Israeli consul general Akiva Tor’s pre-suit Olympia meeting and Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon’s statement that “we are using this organization, StandWithUs, to amplify our power” (PDF p.35). Chilling effects: GreenStar co-op’s May 2015 refusal of a binding boycott vote and Shurat HaDin’s June 2015 warning to the Park Slope Food Coop of “severe criminal and civil liability” (PDF p.36). (b) Other legal claims: Shurat HaDin’s 2011 flotilla boat-seizure suit (dismissed), its satellite-provider suit, and its $5 million suit against President Carter over Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid; Rachel Neuwirth’s libel suit against Richard Silverstein and Joel Beinin, resolved for the defendants in 2011 (PDF p.36). (c) Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 complaints: at least six filed by the ZOA, Brandeis Center and AMCHA or their leaders against UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley, Rutgers, Barnard and Brooklyn College; none sustained — the Department of Education dismissed the UC cases in 2013, Rutgers in 2014 and Barnard in 2012, and Brooklyn College reportedly settled during investigation in 2014 (PDF p.36-37). The UC Santa Cruz determination found the events “expression on matters of public concern directed to the University community”, and the UC Berkeley determination added that “in the university environment, exposure to such robust and discordant expressions, even when personally offensive and hurtful, is a circumstance that a reasonable student in higher education may experience” (PDF p.37). Threats continue — the ZOA to Northeastern in July 2013 and to DePaul in 2015 — and Brandeis Center director Kenneth Marcus is quoted on the strategy: “These cases—even when rejected—expose administrators to bad publicity. … No university wants to be accused of creating an abusive environment.” (PDF p.37) The section continues beyond PDF p.37 with the UCLA ethics-pledge account.

• B.7(c) Title VI backdrop, conclusion (PDF p.38): the UCLA ethics-pledge, Columbia/Barnard banner and Northeastern suspension incidents each arose against a backdrop of a previous Title VI threat or investigation in the same university system; at UCLA complaints sought SJP’s sanction for alleged Title VI violations and the chancellor condemned the pledge as “intimidation”; Barnard removed Columbia SJP’s “Stand for Justice, Stand for Palestine” banner and revised its banner policy; Northeastern suspended SJP a year after a ZOA Title VI threat (PDF p.38).

• B.8 Legislation (PDF p.38-39): Israel advocacy organisations leveraged legislative influence to condemn or punish boycott advocacy; at least eleven measures were introduced in 2014 and at least sixteen in the first half of 2015 (PDF p.38). All 2014 funding-cut measures responding to the ASA boycott failed, including New York legislation championed by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, while nonbinding condemnations passed in Florida, South Carolina, Maryland and Pennsylvania (PDF p.38). In 2015 Representatives Peter Roskam and Juan Vargas, backed by American Israel Public Affairs Committee, carried an anti-BDS trade amendment that President Obama signed on June 29, 2015, the State Department reiterating that it opposes and does not legitimize settlements; Illinois enacted a blacklist-and-pension-divestment law in July 2015, amended after Palestine Legal, CCR and the ACLU of Illinois argued an earlier version unconstitutionally punished contractors for political speech, but still raising, the Report says, “serious constitutional questions about the government’s use of financial levers to punish or discourage speech”; similar or condemnatory measures followed in New Jersey, New York, Indiana, Tennessee and Pennsylvania (PDF p.38-39). South Carolina’s facially neutral anti-boycott law was described by its sponsor Representative Alan Clemmons as targeting BDS: “South Carolina has now become the first of what will undoubtedly be many states to enact legislation that confronts BDS” (PDF p.39). California’s 2012 resolution and July 2015 concurrent resolution invoked the State Department definition, the latter amended to protect speech “critical or supportive of the policies of any country” after advocates objected, with AMCHA still urging UC to “enforce” it; Los Angeles City Council’s 2014 resolution condemning the UCLA ethics-pledge campaign and urging law-enforcement referral was never voted on after outcry and a Palestine Legal/CCR letter (PDF p.39).

• B.9 Criminal Investigations and Prosecutions (PDF p.39-42): the Irvine 11 prosecution — eleven UC students charged in February 2011 with misdemeanor conspiring to disrupt and disrupting a public meeting after reading statements and walking out of Ambassador Michael Oren’s February 2010 UC Irvine speech; the judge reprimanded the Orange County DA for “tainting the jury pool by labeling the student defendants as anti-Semitic, declaring them guilty and other ‘ethically irresponsible’ statements”, found illegal felony subpoenas used for attorney-client communications and removed the main investigator and deputies, yet ten students were convicted on September 23, 2011 and sentenced to three years’ probation, fifty-six hours of community service and fines, their vagueness appeal denied in March 2014 (PDF p.39-40). Northeastern police questioned students over mock eviction flyers in February 2014; federal surveillance and FBI contacts are reported, including one following a website’s false terrorism accusation (PDF p.40). The Midwest 23: FBI grand jury subpoenas on twenty-three Minneapolis and Chicago activists in September 2010, home raids, warrants seeking material-support evidence regarding Hezbollah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the FARC, an affidavit built, the Report says, primarily on out-of-context speech and jokes and an undercover agent’s repeated attempts to induce a $1,000 donation; all refused to testify and no indictments had issued, the investigation said to remain ongoing (PDF p.40-41). Rasmea Odeh: arrested by DHS for failing to disclose on her naturalization form a 1970 Israeli military court conviction she maintains she did not commit and confessed to only under severe torture; convicted in November 2014 after the judge barred reference to that torture, she spent nearly a month in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, and in March 2015 was sentenced to eighteen months, denaturalization and deportation, under appeal (PDF p.41). Material support cases surveyed: the Los Angeles Eight, arrested in 1987, whose evidence was “lawful First Amendment activities, including distributing newspapers, participating in demonstrations and organizing humanitarian aid fundraisers”, the case dismissed by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2007 as “an embarrassment to the rule of law” after two decades; Sami Al-Arian, charged in 2003 on a case relying, the Report says, almost entirely on his speeches, writings and wiretapped conversations, acquitted of the most serious charges, his remaining charges dismissed in June 2014 after five years of house arrest and his deportation to Turkey in February 2015; and the Holy Land Foundation five, convicted at a second trial on anonymous Shin Bet testimony that zakat committees they funded were “under the influence of” Hamas, receiving sentences of up to sixty-five years although, the Report says, the government furnished no evidence the funds supported violent acts and USAID had funded the same committees, the Supreme Court refusing review in October 2012 (PDF p.41-42). Material-support threats against the 2011 Freedom Flotilla and Rutgers’ US Boat to Gaza fundraiser, the State Department’s June 24, 2011 flotilla warning, and US-Israeli intelligence sharing and Israeli assistance in prosecutions, including anonymous Israeli intelligence testimony, close the section (PDF p.42).

• III. The Legal Imperative to Protect Dissent (PDF p.43-44): nearly every incident involves protected speech, association or expressive activity; boycotts “to bring about political, social and economic change” involve speech, association and petition covered by the First Amendment (PDF p.43). Speech does not lose protection because it is deemed offensive, hurtful or uncivil — flag burning, cross burning, “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11” funeral signs and a “Fuck the Draft” jacket are all protected — and Israel/Palestine speech “occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection”, especially at universities, where the First Amendment “does not tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom” (PDF p.43). Viewpoint discrimination is “presumed to be unconstitutional”, including in time, place and manner regulation (PDF p.44). Judge Harry Leinenweber’s Salaita ruling is quoted at length: UIUC’s attempt to separate the profanity and incivility of Salaita’s tweets from their views was “unavailing”, and “it would be nearly impossible to separate the tone of tweets on this issue with the content and views they express” (PDF p.44). Institutions that accede to pressure to limit speech on Israeli policies ignore, the Report concludes, established First Amendment law.

• IV. Recommendations (PDF p.45-46): to administrators — uphold open debate and academic freedom, do not investigate solely for lawful criticism of Israeli policies, investigate fairly with due process, do not punish or disproportionately burden Palestinian-rights expression, do not impose “security fees” for “controversial” events, review regulations for unlawful burden or viewpoint-discriminatory application, and include affected students including SJP chapters in campus-climate discussions (PDF p.45). To Congress and state and city legislatures — reject viewpoint-targeting legislation, oppose measures penalizing boycotts and socially responsible investment, reform material support laws to safeguard nonviolent advocacy, literature distribution and philanthropy, and hold hearings on the chilling of Palestinian-rights speech (PDF p.45). To the State Department — revise its antisemitism definition to remove the language characterizing “delegitimizing,” “demonizing,” or applying a “double standard” to Israel as antisemitic (PDF p.45). To the DOE Office for Civil Rights — clarify that criticism of a government’s discriminatory or unlawful policies does not give rise to a Title VI hostile environment (PDF p.45). To law enforcement — cease surveillance, investigations and charges based solely on political viewpoint or protected expression (PDF p.46). To students, professors and activists — document and notify Palestine Legal, contact it in advance of events, and press decision makers to protect speech; to academic associations and student governments — publicly oppose suppression and support targeted members; to the public — share the Report and write decision makers and media when suppression occurs (PDF p.46).

• Notes, notes 1-301 (PDF p.47-64): the endnotes supply the evidentiary citations for Sections I, II and the opening of the legal-threats material, in order. Notes 1-5 give US aid to Israel (over $3billionannually,note1),eighty-threeUSSecurityCouncilvetoes,forty-twoonIsrael-Palestine(note2),theremovalofIsraelfromtheUNdraftchildren-in-conflictlistafter500Palestinianchildrenwerekilledandmorethan3,100injuredormaimedin2014(note3),Netanyah{u}^{\prime }s2015Congressinvitation(note4)andmedia-biasstudies(note5,concludedonPDFp.48).Notes6-51(PDFp.48-54)covertheIsraellobby,public-opinionpolls(Gallup62percent/16percent),backlashagainstCarter,Falk,DeanandObama,theanti-apartheidprecedent,ProtectiveEdgecasualties(morethan2,000killed,morethan10,000wounded,nearly100,000homesdamaged),thehuman-rightsdocumentationbehindSectionI,thePresbyterianandGatesdivestments,thefulldivestment-resolutionlist,BDSeffectsonSodaStream,Veolia,Agrexco,AhavaandG4S,coalitionandOccupy/BlackLivesMatterlinks,CorrieandDo\breve{g}anandtheabsenceofUSinvestigations,andthemovementorganisation{s}^{\prime }self-descriptions.Notes52-124(PDFp.54-57)coverstudent{s}^{\prime }jobandtravelfears,theactororganisationsandtheirfundinganddossiers,thedelegitimizationbuild-out(includingnote71^{\prime }scited\ast Forward\ast headline"SecretSheldonAdelsonSummitRaisesupto$50M”, against the body text’s “at least $20 million” on PDF p.15), the State Department definition’s EUMC origin (note 91: the definition “was formerly known as the European Union Monitoring Centre (EUMC)‘s working definition of antisemitism”, formulated to facilitate data collection, removed from the successor agency’s website in 2013; note 92 adds the definition “would violate the First Amendment if applied to restrict speech in the United States”), California HR 35’s text (note 101) and the B.1(c) and B.2 sources. Notes 125-301 (PDF p.58-64) cover civility and “divisiveness” talking points and the Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary (notes 125-134), bureaucratic-barrier interviews and campus due process under Goss v. Lopez (notes 135-151), the cancellation cases (notes 152-173), the Salaita complaint and the August 6, 2015 ruling (notes 174-187), the Abdulhadi, Middle East studies, Massad, Abu El-Haj, Khalidi, Ginsberg, Finkelstein and Robinson academic-freedom cases (notes 188-217), anti-BDS legal threats including NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886 (1982) (notes 218-229), the Olympia Co-op litigation, flotilla suits, the Carter suit and the Beinin and Neuwirth libel cases (notes 230-246), Title VI’s history — 42 U.S.C. §2000d, Kenneth Marcus’s 2004 OCR guidance applying Title VI to shared-ethnicity groups, reaffirmed in 2010, and Felber v. Yudof, 851 F. Supp. 2d 1182, 1188 (N.D. Cal. 2011), holding that “a very substantial portion of the conduct to which plaintiffs object represents pure political speech and expressive conduct” (notes 247-261), the full bill-number lists behind the 2014 and first-half-2015 legislation counts with the counting rule stated (notes 262-263), the state legislation sources (notes 264-289), and the Irvine 11, surveillance, Midwest 23 and Odeh sources through note 301 (notes 290-301). Note 302 begins on PDF p.65 and is left for part 3.

Key passages

• “In 2014, Palestine Legal … responded to 152 incidents of censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy for Palestinian rights and received 68 additional requests for legal assistance in anticipation of such actions.” (PDF p.5)
• “Our constitutional tradition cannot tolerate an exception to the First Amendment simply because Palestinian human rights advocacy makes powerful listeners uncomfortable.” (PDF p.7)
• “The remedy for speech with which one disagrees is more speech, not enforced silence.” (PDF p.7)
• “If you can say that they’re a self-hating Jew or they’re anti-Semitic, it draws attention away from the issues we’re talking about, so suddenly we’re not discussing home demolitions, we’re having to defend ourselves and say, no, we don’t actually hate Jewish people—we’re just trying to draw attention to Palestine.” (PDF p.20, NYU SJP co-president as quoted)
• “I spent my 2014 sabbatical responding to [allegations of terrorism] and providing support and reassurance to my students whose learning environment was severely disrupted by the intensity and malevolence of AMCHA’s attempt to destroy our program” (PDF p.22, Rabab Abdulhadi as quoted)
• “dialogue may be worthwhile if there is any chance that it will be used to encourage insight and change, towards respecting Palestinian rights. Instead it is used to bully others into acquiescence with the powerful.” (PDF p.23, Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods as quoted)
• “These cases—even when rejected—expose administrators to bad publicity. … No university wants to be accused of creating an abusive environment.” (PDF p.37, Kenneth Marcus as quoted)
• “South Carolina has now become the first of what will undoubtedly be many states to enact legislation that confronts BDS.” (PDF p.39, Alan Clemmons as quoted)
• “an embarrassment to the rule of law” (PDF p.41, Board of Immigration Appeals on the LA 8 case, as quoted)
• “occupies the highest rung of the hierarchy of First Amendment values, and is entitled to special protection” (PDF p.43, on speech on matters of public concern, as quoted)

Evidence the work relies on

• Palestine Legal’s own intake documentation for January 2014-June 2015 — 152 incidents and 68 anticipatory requests in 2014, 140 incidents and 33 anticipatory requests in the first half of 2015 — with interviews of hundreds of students, academics and community activists (PDF p.8, p.13). Case selection and source practice are as described under Methodology above.
• The counts and percentages the Report computes from those intakes, each given in the text: 89 percent (2014) and 80 percent (first half of 2015) of incidents targeting students and scholars (PDF p.5); 50 percent (2014) and 59 percent (first half of 2015) involving antisemitism accusations (PDF p.18); 13 percent (2014) and 29 percent (first half of 2015) involving terrorism accusations (PDF p.20); 59 of 136 campus incidents in 2014 and 33 of 112 in the first half of 2015 involving bureaucratic barriers (PDF p.24); and the by-tactic and by-state charts (PDF p.14-15, p.17).
• Documents obtained by others as cited in the body in this range: Freedom of Information Act documents on UIUC donor threats in the Salaita case (PDF p.31, note 181) and public-records documents on the Missouri History Museum’s JCRC correspondence (PDF p.28, notes 152-154). The Notes through note 301 (PDF p.47-64) are accounted for in part 2 in the Section by section entry above; in-text markers in parts 1-2 run to note 336 (Section III).
• Statements and publications of the organisations criticised, quoted in the text: the Reut Institute’s 2010 “delegitimization” paper and June 2015 strategy document (PDF p.15, p.17-18), Canary Mission and HamasOnCampus.org web claims (PDF p.5, p.18, p.21), StandWithUs’s self-description (PDF p.14-15), Shurat HaDin’s self-description (PDF p.15) and Kenneth Marcus’s account of the Title VI strategy (PDF p.37).
• Department of Education determination letters as summarised: the 2013 UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley letters and the dismissals of the UC Irvine, Rutgers and Barnard complaints (PDF p.36-37).

Analysis

• Method (as presented in this part): an advocacy legal organisation’s case file, systematised. Palestine Legal’s confidential intakes supply the incident universe; the Report publishes only documented, representative or permitted cases, supplements activists’ accounts with mainstream and alternative media, and organises the material by tactic rather than by institution, with a campus Appendix cross-referenced throughout (“See Appendix entry for …”). Its central inference — that facially neutral explanations do not account for the pattern — is argued comparatively, by pairing cases in which Palestine advocacy was punished with near-identical conduct by other or Israel-aligned groups that was not (Loyola’s SJP and Hillel registrations, Northeastern’s 2010 and 2013 walkouts, MOCHA’s earlier war-artwork exhibits).
• Perspective and limits (as presented in this part): the Report is a joint publication of two organisations that represent the advocates whose cases it documents — CCR represents Salaita in the suit described on PDF p.31-32 — and it states its normative position openly, that the tactics it catalogues violate First Amendment and academic-freedom commitments. Its incident counts are counts of matters brought to Palestine Legal, and the Report itself says they understate the phenomenon because unreported incidents are excluded (PDF p.5); they are not a survey of all US campus speech disputes, and the organisations criticised are heard mainly through their own quoted statements and the determination letters that rejected their complaints. The legal characterisations (viewpoint discrimination, Title VI’s deliberate-indifference standard) are the Report’s own, attributed as such on the pages drawn from it.

People, organizations, places and events

Palestine Legal, Center for Constitutional Rights, Students for Justice in Palestine, BDS movement, Canary Mission, AMCHA Initiative, Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Shurat HaDin, StandWithUs, Zionist Organization of America, Anti-Defamation League, American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Reut Institute, American Studies Association, Jewish Voice for Peace, Steven Salaita, Rabab Abdulhadi, Joseph Massad, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Norman Finkelstein, Rashid Khalidi, Rachel Corrie, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Columbia University, Rasmea Odeh, Sami Al-Arian, Holy Land Foundation, Irvine 11, Los Angeles Eight, Freedom Flotilla, EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism, NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., Michael Oren

Concepts

BDS movement, Delegitimization, Antisemitism, Academic freedom, Academic boycott, Anti-boycott legislation, 3D Test of Anti-Semitism, Freedom of Expression

How it relates to other sources

• With Challenging Anti-Boycott Legislation in the US and Project Esther: Suppressing Palestinian Solidarity in the US: the same legal terrain seven and ten years on. This Report (2015) documents the campaign as Palestine Legal’s 2014-15 case file — eleven legislative measures in 2014 and at least sixteen in the first half of 2015, Illinois the first state anti-BDS law — where Kenney-Shawa’s later accounts count dozens of state laws since 2014 and a federal project to extend the strategy. The Report’s Title VI section is the earlier record of the complaint strategy Stern also criticises.
• With Written Testimony of Kenneth S. Stern (2017) and Written Testimony of Kenneth S. Stern (2025): agreement on the mechanism, from different positions. Stern, the definition’s lead drafter, testifies that the State Department definition was made for data collectors and its campus Title VI use chills speech; this Report documents groups urging that same definition’s adoption in 2015 and the “three Ds” resolutions at UC Santa Barbara and UCLA (PDF p.19), and quotes Kenneth Marcus describing rejected Title VI complaints as nonetheless effective (PDF p.37).
• With Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights: Barghouti traces the “delegitimization” charge to a Tel Aviv think tank’s warning; this Report names that institute (the Reut Institute), dates its paper to 2010, and documents the funding and organisational build-out that followed it — the Israel Action Network, the Jewish Agency plan and the 2015 Adelson-Saban summit (PDF p.15).
• With Written Testimony of Kenneth S. Stern (2017) on the definition’s origin: the Report’s note 91 (PDF p.56) states the State Department definition was formerly the EUMC working definition, formulated for data collection — the same origin Stern, its lead drafter, gives — and note 92 adds the Report’s position that applying it to restrict US speech would violate the First Amendment.
• What is new in this part: the wiki’s first systematic, counted account of suppression of US Palestine advocacy as a single campaign — actors, funding, tactics and case outcomes — rather than as single episodes, and the earliest Palestine Legal/CCR statement of the “Palestine exception” frame that later sources invoke.

Open questions

• Pull-quote spelling (PDF p.21): “[L]abeling critics of Israel antisemetic” — “antisemetic” stands as printed in the pull-quote, against “antisemitic” in the body text. Recorded as printed.
• Bureaucratic-barriers count sentence (PDF p.24): “In the first sixth months of 2015” stands as printed, against “first six months” elsewhere. Recorded as printed.
• The by-state map (PDF p.17) gives incident numbers without state labels in the text copy, and the by-tactic charts (PDF p.14-15) give bar heights without printed values; only the printed totals and campus/non-campus splits are recorded here. The map and charts were read in the original; their unlabelled values are not transcribed.
• Section B.7(c), unfinished at PDF p.37 in part 1, is completed on PDF p.38 in part 2; Sections B.8, B.9, III and IV and Notes 1-301 are now read. The Appendix (PDF p.67 onward) and Notes from note 302 remain for parts 3-5.
• The part 1 question whether the “State Department definition” (PDF p.19) is the same text as the EUMC Working Definition of Antisemitism is answered by the Report’s own note 91 (PDF p.56): the State Department definition “was formerly known as the European Union Monitoring Centre (EUMC)‘s working definition of antisemitism”. Stern’s separate account that the Department of State version is a slightly shorter, slightly broader version is held on the EUMC page.
• Adelson summit amount (PDF p.15 against PDF p.55): the body text says the June 2015 summit reportedly raised “at least $20million";note71citesthe\ast Forward\ast headline"SecretSheldonAdelsonSummitRaisesupto$50M for Strident Anti-BDS Push” (June 9, 2015), and note 218 cites the same headline. Both figures are recorded as printed, not reconciled.
• Carter lawsuit date (PDF p.48 against PDF p.62): note 9 dates Jordana Horn’s Jerusalem Post Carter-suit item March 2, 2011; note 244 dates a Horn item with the same headline February 3, 2011. Both are recorded as printed.
• Terri Ginsberg’s name (PDF p.61): note 203 captions the case “Ginsburg v. Bd. of Governors of the Univ. of N. Carolina” and its brief URL reads ginsbergvsncsu, while note 207 and the body text give “Terri Ginsberg”. Spellings recorded as printed.
• Berkeley Title VI lawyers’ names (PDF p.62-63): note 249 gives “Neil Sher and Joel Siegel”; note 253 gives “Joel H. Siegal and Neal M. Sher”, both said to serve on the Brandeis Center advisory board. Spellings recorded as printed.
• Flotilla suit case numbers (PDF p.62): note 240 gives the Bauer v. The Mavi Marmara complaint as No. 11-cv-4105 (S.D.N.Y. 2011); note 241 gives its Notice of Voluntary Dismissal under case no. 1:11-cv-04195-RJH. Both recorded as printed.
• Note slips recorded as printed in the reading notes for PDF p.48-64, not repeated here in full: “Marda Dunsk” for Dunsky (note 5, PDF p.48), “University of Michigan at Dearborn” (note 22, PDF p.50), the Boston University SJP URL repeating the UC Riverside URL (note 27, PDF p.51), “Devember 3, 2010” (note 50, PDF p.53), “avout/overview” in the Shurat HaDin URL (note 61, PDF p.54), “PublicrationId” in the Reut URL (note 66, PDF p.55), “natironal” in a Forward URL (note 98, PDF p.56), the missing closing quotation mark in the Stanford Daily title in note 107 (PDF p.57), “cormmunity” in a California Aggie URL (note 117, PDF p.57), “surreptitious” (note 191, PDF p.60), “Brad Holyman” (note 169, PDF p.59), and the unclosed parenthesis in note 132 (PDF p.58). Each was verified in the text copy before recording.

Coverage

PDF p.1-64 of 124, read in parts 1-2 of 5