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As students and faculty in the U.S. return to campuses for the fall semester, there are innumerable reasons to continue demonstrating against institutional complicity with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The need for those protests is as urgent as it’s ever been.
University and college administrations, however, are not only signaling plans to treat pro-Palestinian speech with intellectual dishonesty, they’re making clear they plan to use their specious logic to inflict evermore repressive intolerance.
New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.
The corporatized industry of American higher education is hardly a site of social justice and liberatory knowledge production. There is, however, something particularly ghoulish in NYU’s actions here.
School communities are returning to a new academic year after a summer in which Palestinians have seen no shred of respite from Israel’s U.S.-backed eliminationism: constant bombing and forced displacement, a campaign of targeted starvation, purposeful destruction of water supplies, and denial of basic medical care. Instead of fighting against U.S. material support for these conditions, however, university administrators like those at NYU have spent that same summer prefiguring ways to demonize anti-genocide protesters as bigots.
Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”
The university’s NDAH rules are intended to reflect the school’s legal obligations, including to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination and harassment based on a student’s race, color, national origin, religious identity, shared ancestry, or ethnicity.
“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.”
“Dangerous” Title VI Precedent
The entire premise of the guidance — that “Zionist” must be functioning as a “code word — is a flaw egregious enough to reject the entire document outright.
The language here is of utmost importance. The text does not say that “Zionist” can and has been used by antisemites as a code word, which is no doubt true. Instead, it takes it as a given that, when used critically, “Zionist” simply is a code word.
The ironies of the approach abound. On campuses and off, anti-Zionists have been vocally trying to ensure that “Zionist” does not get used as a stand-in for “Jewish.” Yet it is Zionists themselves who most often insist on the conflation, claiming that Israel as an ethnostate speaks for, acts on behalf of, and represents all Jews.
According to NYU’s guidance, then, Zionist and Zionism are either antisemitic dog whistles when invoked critically or a protected category akin to a race, ethnicity, or religious identity. Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism — including the beliefs of many anti-Zionist Jews like myself who reject the conflation of our identity and heritage with an ethnostate project — is foreclosed, and the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism, which has existed as long as Zionism itself, is all but erased.
Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism is foreclosed.
“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the NYU guidance says. And this is of course true.
“` However, Zionism is not an essential component of Jewish identity. There are conservative Christians who view the condemnation of homosexuality as integral to their Christian beliefs, but efforts by Republicans to legally protect such views have been rightly criticized by the liberal mainstream.
NYU’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine expressed concern about the new conduct guidance that extends protections to Zionism. They argued that it equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people and sets a dangerous precedent by suggesting that any nationalist political ideology integrated into racial or ethnic identity should be protected.
The guidance blurs the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, listing both clear antisemitic actions and reasonable political opposition together. Excluding Zionists from certain group activities is only discriminatory if Zionism is considered a protected category rather than a political ideology.
The faculty group warned that such guidance could legitimize far-right and ethno-nationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from discrimination. This policy could specifically target those advocating for Palestinian liberation during a genocidal conflict, leading to exceptional repression of pro-Palestinian speech.
The new conduct guide at NYU has faced criticism for potentially repressing pro-Palestinian speech and protest on campus. By enshrining Zionism as an identity in need of protection, the policy is seen as supporting genocidal violence in Palestine rather than protecting a political ideology.
The conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been a common tactic on campuses, often using the IHRA definition of antisemitism. However, over 100 Israeli and international civil society organizations have urged the UN to reject this definition for its conflation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
NYU’s conduct guide goes even further by specifically protecting Zionism as a category. This move follows federal litigation by pro-Israel Jewish students against NYU, claiming the university did not intervene in an unsafe environment for them. The university and the plaintiffs have come to an agreement, which was announced in July. The university has agreed to compensate the students with an undisclosed sum of money. Additionally, a new administrative position of Title VI coordinator will be created to ensure compliance with Title VI, particularly in addressing allegations of discrimination and harassment based on all protected traits.
This settlement is part of a trend of similar litigations faced by universities like Columbia, Harvard, and UCLA. There has been increasing political and economic pressure on universities, with claims of antisemitism being used to silence anti-Israel speech and expression.
Following the release of the NYU settlement, the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network expressed their commitment to working with NYU administrators to develop best practices and support their implementation.
Despite the ongoing crisis in Gaza and the West Bank with U.S. support, universities are focusing on preventing student-led protests rather than meeting demands for institutional divestment. There has been a push for stricter anti-protest regulations and unfounded claims that Palestinian solidarity jeopardizes the safety of Jewish students.
It is crucial for universities to dispel misconceptions and not validate unfounded fears. Educators should strive to debunk myths that expressing support for Palestinian freedom poses a threat to Jewish safety or is discriminatory towards an ethnostate built on violence and oppression.
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