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NYU withholds diploma of student who condemned Israel’s Gaza genocide

MEMO | May 16, 2025

In the latest example of escalating repression against Palestine solidarity activism on US campuses, New York University (NYU) has withheld the diploma of student speaker Logan Rozos after he used his commencement address to denounce Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and the US’s complicity.

Rozos, graduating from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualised Study, told his fellow students on Wednesday: “The only thing that is appropriate to say in this time and to a group this large is a recognition of the atrocities currently happening in Palestine.”

In his speech, Rozos condemned the genocide “supported politically and militarily by the United States, paid for by our tax dollars and livestreamed to our phones for the past 18 months.” He further stated: “I do not wish to speak only to my own politics today, but to speak for all people of conscience, and all people who feel the moral injury of this atrocity.”

Razos’s remarks were met with widespread applause from students. NYU swiftly responded by issuing a statement denouncing Rozos, accusing him of violating university rules and announcing it would withhold his diploma pending disciplinary action.

The university also removed Rozos’s student profile from its website, adding to concerns about institutional retaliation.

This incident comes amid a wider crackdown on free speech and pro-Palestinian activism at US universities. NYU, like many elite institutions, has adopted the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, which conflates political opposition to Zionism and Israel’s colonial violence with anti-Jewish hatred. Critics, including human rights scholars and Jewish groups, warn that such measures are being weaponised to suppress Palestinian advocacy and silence dissenting voices.

Rozos’s speech, and NYU’s reaction, follows a pattern of repression at the university. Over the past year, NYU administrators have called police to disperse peaceful encampments and arrested dozens of students and faculty protesting Israel’s war on Gaza. The university has also updated its conduct guidelines to classify phrases such as “Zionist” as discriminatory, explicitly erasing the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

In December 2024, NYU declared two tenured professors, Andrew Ross and Sonya Posmentier, “persona non grata” after they joined a sit-in demanding the university divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Months later, NYU cancelled a talk by Doctors Without Borders’ former president Dr Joanne Liu, deeming her slides on Gaza civilian casualties potentially “anti-Semitic.”

Human rights advocates and academic freedom organisations have condemned these actions, warning that universities like NYU are sacrificing core principles of free speech and academic independence under pressure from pro-Israel donors, political figures, and lobby groups.

Rozos’s speech, which framed Israel’s war on Gaza as a genocide livestreamed in real time, resonates with warnings from genocide scholars, legal experts and international bodies that Israel’s actions meet the legal definition of genocide. Despite this, Rozos now faces institutional reprisals for expressing what many human rights defenders see as an urgent moral truth.

May 16, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The National Security State Is Killing Free Speech

Governments and institutions are using lawfare to shut down independent voices

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 30, 2024

It is interesting to hear President Joe Biden claim that democracy is at stake in the upcoming national election when he and his Democratic Party colleagues have done so much to hinder the free discussion of issues that should be considered important by the electorate. Joe has operated by fiat in his opening of America’s southern border to mass invasion by illegal immigrants and has committed the US to participation in two wars without any declaration of war or credible justification for entering the conflicts in terms of the security of the United States. More to the point, in terms of how it affects every American, Biden and company have run electoral campaigns based on the premise that his opponents were being assisted by the interference of unfriendly governments in the process. In reality, if outside interference in one’s election is a real problem, it is a crime that is more true of Joe’s best friend Israel rather than anything coming from Russia, China or Iran.

But the one subject that is part and parcel of electoral corruption that is not being discussed sufficiently is the cooption of the national police and intelligence agencies to make them de facto operatives of the party in power, most recently the Democrats. After the 2016 election, the use of the so-called deep state to blacken Donald Trump through allegations that surfaced from federal law enforcement acting in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign and some in the media was exposed. Due to that revelation, the concept of a deep state that operates independently of elections or elected officials began to take shape in the minds of many observers of the Washington scene.

The Biden administration has taken the incestuous relationship with its law enforcement and intelligence agencies even farther. It sought to establish a “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security which would have been empowered to denounce the credibility of citizens who were complaining about what the government was doing based on the fiction that what was taking place was deliberate disruption of the government using false information. This even applied to the increasingly heavy hand employed by the Bidens over education, where parents who expressed disagreement with Critical Race Theory and other woke content taught in the schools as well as the aggressive gender bending, were conveniently labeled “domestic terrorists.” In short, anyone who disagrees with government policy has become a “domestic” problem and will be confronted with the full employment of government resources to criminalize or create disincentives to such behavior which some might recall used to be referred to as “free speech.”

Fortunately, people are beginning to take notice of what is going on to create a world where governments actively conspire to eliminate criticism of what they do. It is all reminiscent of the torment of top journalist Julian Assange by the British and US governments over the course of over twelve years, five of which were in a top security prison, for the crime of having revealed details of questionable or even illegal official behavior by US soldiers in Iraq.

Two interesting uses of federal police resources to silence dissenters have occurred recently in the United States, involving politically prominent individuals who are being surveilled and harassed for little more than their expressed contrary views on America’s wars. They are Scott Ritter, a former Marine and weapons inspector, and Tulsi Gabbard, a former congressman from Hawaii and a reserve lieutenant colonel in that state’s National Guard. What has been done to them by the Biden Administration using as its tool of choice the nation’s security services is bizarre and almost unimaginable for those who still believe that the United States is a functioning democracy whose citizens’ rights are protected by a written constitution and a judicial system that enforces the laws without regard for who is in power or the pleading of special interests.

Ritter has had two recent encounters with the FBI. On June 3rd he attempted to fly to Russia to speak at an international conference when he was stopped at the airport and had his passport taken under orders of the State Department. No explanation was given for the action and he was not given either a receipt or a warrant explaining the grounds for the seizure of the document. It has not since been returned. On August 7th, 41 FBI agents arrived unannounced and proceeded to search Ritter’s New York state home. They confiscated documents and electronic communications devices. Interestingly, they had in their possession a thick file that contained copies of many of his email and phone messages, indicating that he had been under surveillance for quite some time. It is independently known that the FBI, NSA and CIA have global surveillance capabilities that enable them to monitor phones and emails for anyone, or, indeed, for everyone, in real time, so one might assume that Ritter was only one of their many victims.

The Gabbard case is even more bewildering because, though an active critic of the Ukraine war, Tulsi is a former Democratic Party congressman and army officer who was and is eminently respectable. She is reportedly being stalked by Transportation Security Administration’s air marshals, part of the agency’s Quiet Skies covert operation targeting suspected threats to aircraft and airports. Those who are under Quiet Skies surveillance have a printed SSSS on their airline boarding tickets, requires one to be taken aside before boarding for additional screening. Gabbard believes that placing her on the TSA Quiet Skies target list was “clearly an act of political retaliation. It’s no accident that I was placed on the Quiet Skies list the day after I did a prime-time interview warning the American people about… why Kamala Harris would be bad for our country if elected as President.” Gabbard observed that, despite her having served in the US Army for 21 years, “now my government is surveilling me as a potential domestic terrorist… forcing me to be forever looking over my shoulder, wondering if and how I am being watched, what secret terror watch list I’m on, and having no transparency or due process.” A commenter on Twitter noted that “The only thing Tulsi Gabbard blew up was Kamala’s earlier presidential run. That’s why she’s on a list.”

A former TSA agent explained that because of being listed on Quiet Skies Gabbard would have multiple air marshals on “every flight, every leg,” and canine teams will “maneuver over to the [boarding] gate area… floating around to try to pick up a scent of something… When she travels by air there is one or more sky marshals traveling with her. In some cases, she is met by a team of agents with sniffer dogs when she deplanes.” Tulsi believes that she might be targeted by the White House due to her antiwar position but she has also now endorsed Donald Trump for president and the government is therefore using law enforcement as its weapon to intimidate and discredit her.

Europe is also on board the death to free speech bandwagon. Another recent arrest is that of Pavel Durov in France on charges of permitting the use of his internet service to carry out illegal actions like collusion with organized crime, drug dealing, fraud and distribution of child pornography. He was temporarily released on a 5 million Euro bail on August 28th but cannot leave France. Durov is the Russian-born founder of Telegram, the world’s largest encrypted messenger service with over one billion users. He is a multi-billionaire with a flamboyant lifestyle and also holds the citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates. And there is inevitably an Israeli angle relating to Telegram’s airing of graphic videos of Israeli atrocities taking place in Gaza. The French prosecutors will no doubt say it is about allowing “hate speech,” but Durov’s has had French citizenship and has been traveling in and out of the country for years. The arrest, which can mean twenty years in prison, has only taken place after Israel complained. For what it’s worth the Chief Rabbi of France Haim Korsia has justified Israeli killing of Palestinians in Gaza during a French television interview and then urged the Israeli government to “finish the job”. He was not arrested for endorsing a war crime nor was he even rebuked by Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron.

Likewise, the United States’ moves to ban Chinese owned TikTok is in large part because it also allows videos from Gaza and Israel’s complaints have aroused a normally dormant US Congress to ban the site. It is all about creating an internet that does not harbor content that Jews dislike, and that rule also applies to individual journalists. On August 14th British independent journalist Richard Medhurst was detained by police at London’s Heathrow Airport and questioned while in solitary confinement for 24 hours. He also had his phone and laptop confiscated over possible violation of section 12 of the UK’s Terrorism Act, which allows a person to be convicted and jailed for up to 14 years for what is a thought crime—“express[ing] an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed [terrorist] organization.” Medhurst was guilty only of being a regular and outspoken critic of Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians. Also in the UK, on August 29th, independent journalist Sarah Wilkinson had her home searched by 12 policemen from the counter-terrorism force who took her papers and electronic devices. They told her she was under arrest due to “content that she had posted online” that was highly critical of Israel genocide of the Gazans.

The moves against internet providers have no doubt alerted billionaire Elon Musk and others to the possibility that they might be under attack soon, in the case of Musk over his X (Twitter) site. Referring to Durov’s arrest, Musk has described the current attacks on information sites as “dangerous times.” Retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, a Ukrainian Jew by birth, who made waves as a key witness supporting the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, issued a thinly veiled warning after Durov’s arrest, praising the move to require censorship on internet information sources. Vindman attributed the development to “… a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano, has also been a recent victim of a possible attempt to silence him and the war critics appearing on his interview program by having an internet platform that he has used for years temporarily suspended. YouTube claimed the move was due to misinformation that surfaced in a session with internationally respected journalist Pepe Escobar, who takes a decisively antiwar stance. But nothing in the interview suggests that there was anything worthy of censure as deliberate disinformation. In reality, Napolitano’s willingness to provide a platform for many experts whose views are unwelcome in mainstream media outlets has led more such individuals to join his roster of guests, which the Biden administration appears to see as a threat.

The media broadly speaking have been the principal targets of illegal government pushback, but the effort to permit only acceptable speech is also advancing in other areas. Schools and colleges are hurrying to create protest-proof campuses for the upcoming academic year, but that all too often has only meant ending demonstrations critical of Israel and its policies. Pro-Israel demonstrators who openly support the genocide against the Palestinians will not be disturbed. New York University has, for example, declared that students and faculty who discriminate against or harass “Zionists” may be violating New York University’s hate speech policies and could be suspended or expelled. Groups supportive of Israel believe that use of the very word “Zionist” in a derogatory fashion serves as a cover for attacks on Jews or Israelis. Now, NYU, which like many universities became paralyzed by pro-Palestinian unrest during the last school year, appears to be the first college to take a position on the term’s use. “Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’ does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH [Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment] Policy” reads NYU’s new student community standards. In other words, if you call someone a “Zionist” you are still likely to be an antisemite! The NYU chapter of Jewish on Campus explained how the new policy “makes it abundantly clear: Zionism is a core component of Jewish identity.” Pro-Palestinian groups on campus, objected, observing how the new code of conduct “criminalizes Palestine solidarity.”

In another move to “protect” vulnerable Zionist students from the alleged surging college antisemitism, Hillel Foundation, the Jewish student support group that is active on numerous American campuses, has launched a campaign called “Operation Secure Our Campuses” at more than 50 US universities. Meetings have been arranged to coordinate with local college administrators, police and FBI to come up with at least ten steps that should be taken to eliminate pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the upcoming academic year. Pro-Israel manifestations will apparently not be affected by the new regulations.

And there’s more, coming this time from the Republicans. Five Senators, Joni Ernst, Kevin Cramer, John Thune, Roger Marshall and Marsha Blackburn signed off on a letter to Daniel Werfe, commissioner of the IRS, about an “insufficient and insulting” response to an “inquiry to review the legal compliance of nonprofit charities that support demonstrations opposing the Jewish state.” Two groups the senators noted as involved with anti-Israel protests were Students for Justice in Palestine and Alliance for Global Justice. “An entity’s tax-exempt status is a privilege, and it is your responsibility to ensure only those who abide by tax laws are granted this privilege,” the senators wrote. The letter concluded with the lawmakers requesting information on the number of post- October 7th organizations involved in pro-Palestinian protests and the identities of the groups that have actually lost their nonprofit status as a consequence. The senators are demanding that the IRS no longer offer special tax breaks to groups or organizations that are critical of Israel.

The fact is that IRS exemptions are usually granted after careful review of the credentials of organizations that fit into various definitions as being religious, educational, or charitable. One such status is called 501(c)(3) and it enables the organization to solicit donations that are in most cases tax deductible, a major incentive when seeking funding. Again, Jewish “charitable” foundations supporting the Israeli army, or the creation of illegal settlements, or even the genocide of Palestinians, will not be subjected to such scrutiny or loss of IRS special status. Groups critical of US foreign policy will, however, be increasingly targeted by the IRS and punished for staking out a political position that differs from that of the White House and Congress, particularly if it relates to Israel. It is just one more step in the death of free speech in America!

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

August 31, 2024 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

NYU Professor Fights Back Against the Academic Crybullies

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Mark Crispin Miller teaches a course on Mass Persuasian and Propaganda at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development for 20 years. He is now suing 20 department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the dean of his school demanding a review of Miller’s conduct. Today we talk to Miller about his course, his views, his libel suit, and the state of free speech in the era of increasing COVID tyranny.

Watch on Archive / BitChute / Minds / Odysee / YouTube or Download the mp4

SHOW NOTES:

MarkCrispinMiller.com

“Masks Don’t Work” by Denis Rancourt

Change.org petition: Under attack at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller needs your support for academic freedom

MCM’s libel lawsuit, complete (thus far)

Help Mark Crispin Miller sue for libel (GoFundMe)

Nope, Aristotle Did Not Say, “It Is the Mark of an Educated Mind to Entertain a Thought Without….”

Conspiracy Theory in America by Lance Dehaven-Smith

Masking ourselves to death: Part 1 of 3

The Gray Lady Winked

April 23, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Video | , | 4 Comments

Jewish Organization Behind Tech Censorship Funded Study Saying It’s A Figment Of Your Imagination

By Eric Striker | National Justice | February 4, 2021

A New York University study released this week claiming that Twitter and Facebook do not censor the “political right” has been widely mocked and lambasted as a symbol of the conflict of interests and lack of credibility in American academia.

The most Orwellian aspect of this story is that the paper was financed by tech billionaire Craig Newmark, who is Jewish and a leading member of the Anti-Defamation League’s Silicon Valley speech suppression lobby, the Center for Technology and Society (CTS).

The CTS specializes in two things, the first is to aid eager-to-be-used Jewish tech moguls in their quest to censor ideas they perceive threatening to Jewish interests (preserving domestic liberalism and Israel against populist challenges are their main priorities), and the second is to intimidate those who don’t want to play ball, like former free speech advocate Jack Dorsey, into doing their bidding.

CTS concentrates Jewish legal, political, technological, financial and media to shut down dissent. Besides Newmark, its advisory board includes formidable figures such as Shawn Henry, a former assistant director at the FBI, Steve Huffman, CEO of Reddit, Guy Rosen, product VP at Facebook, and Eli Pariser, the president and co-founder of Democratic Party activist powerhouses MoveOn.org and Avaaz.org.

The tyrants at CTS have so far achieved impressive results. The ADL was the major force behind the banning of Donald Trump, the destruction of Parler, and the long-term project to radically transform the internet from its original mission to be a public square of free debate into an American version of North Korea’s internet.

In cases like Gab, who the ADL has been unable to shut down, they are diligently working to get the Department of Justice to put its defiant CEO Andrew Torba in prison.

The ADL’s campaign of repression is so extreme that authors in Jewish newspapers, who broadly support what they’re doing, are asking them to cool off, “So it’s hardly surprising that Greenblatt has already declared ADL’s support for impeaching Trump a second time. That’s a position a lot of Americans—and, no doubt, the majority of American Jews—agree with, and not all of them are partisan Democrats like Greenblatt. But the question here is: What in the world is a group whose purpose is to monitor and advocate against anti-Semitism doing involving itself in the debate about impeachment?”

As for Newmark, his total lack of respect for ethics, facts and scholarship don’t end at manufacturing fake studies. The organization social media companies have tasked with supposedly fact checking “disinformation,” the Poynter Institute, is also Newmark’s pet project.

In other words, when Tucker Carlson’s producers received an ominous email warning them to stop spreading “disinformation” attached to an NYU study claiming to debunk them, the Jews behind the tech censorship campaign paid for a bogus study claiming tech censorship doesn’t exist that the fact-checking think-tank they also fund will deem “disinformation” to disagree with.

The debate over free speech in America is worthless until people work up the courage to talk about the ADL and the Jewish community’s complete lack of respect for fundamental American principals and the rights of non-Jews.

February 4, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Prof Faces ‘Cancellation’ For Teaching Students to Question Propaganda Amid COVID-19

© CC BY 3.0 / The Open Center
By Mohamed Elmaazi . Sputnik . 12.01.2021

Hostility to dissenting perspectives has become increasingly recorded over the past few years, but particularly since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus. One apparent victim of this shrinking space for differing views is a US professor who teaches a class on propaganda in New York City.

For years, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, has been teaching a course on propaganda, during which he encourages students to question dominant ways of thinking being pushed by media and via the government. However, Professor Miller has recently found his post at NYU to be under threat, despite having a secured tenured position, after he was accused of discouraging students from wearing masks, a charge he vigorously denies.

In a detailed interview, Professor Miller explains to Sputnik the background of his case as well as what it represents in an age where freedom of speech and academic independence appear to be under increasing attack amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sputnik: Explain your role as a professor at NYU and the kinds of courses that you teach.

Professor Mark Crispin Miller: I’ve been teaching media studies at NYU since 1997, after 20 years at [University of Pennsylvania from 1977 to 1983] and then Johns Hopkins [until 1997]. At NYU I’ve mainly taught a course on propaganda, and a course on film, as well as “The Culture Industries”, which looks into the pressures faced by people trying to do good work in journalism, entertainment and the arts.

The courses are all quite popular with students, whose reviews are, for the most part, very positive. This fact is highly relevant to my predicament at NYU right now.

Sputnik: You’ve recently found yourself in a difficult situation after a student filed a complaint against you. Could you describe what led to this current situation?

Professor Mark Crispin Miller: In late September, a student in my propaganda course was enraged by my encouraging the class to look into the scientific basis for the mask mandates—specifically, eight randomised, controlled studies, conducted among healthcare professional over the last 15 years or so, finding that masks and respirators are ineffective against transmission of respiratory viruses; and, on the other hand, the more recent studies finding otherwise. (I offered some suggestions as to how laypersons might assess such studies: by reading scientific reviews, and by noting the universities where the latter studies were conducted, to see if they have financial ties to Big Pharma and/or the Gates Foundation). I offered this as an example of how one must study propaganda—by looking into what a given propaganda drive blacks out or misreports, reviewing all the pertinent information, and deciding for oneself what’s true, or likely to be true.

The student who flipped out did not speak up in class, but, a few days later, took the Twitter, to demand that NYU fire me, over my “excessive amount of scepticism around health professionals”, and the “harm” that I was posing to the students’ health. (I’d made quite clear, in class, that I was not telling them not to wear masks—NYU has a strict rule, which I observe myself—but that this was an intellectual exercise, of the sort essential to the study of propaganda.) She also took screen shots of several posts on my website, News from Underground (markcrispinmiller.com), and presented them as all self-evidently false, asserting that they came from “conspiracy and far right websites”.

Sputnik: How has the university dealt with the complaint? What’s the current situation now in respect of your position at the university?

Professor Mark Crispin Miller: The student (by her own account) first tried to get some satisfaction from the Office of Equal Opportunity, demanding that they take some action. They told her, rightly, that they had no grounds for doing so; so she went public—whereupon the university, or at least my corner of it, quickly took her side, in three ways.

First, my department chair immediately tweeted his thanks for her complaint, and added: “We as a department have made this a priority, and are discussing next steps”. This was news to me, since I’m a long-time member of that department, but I was not included in whatever meeting led the chair to take that step.

The next day, the dean of the Steinhardt School (in which I teach), and the doctor who advises NYU on its COVID regulations, emailed my other students—without putting me on copy—to indicate that I had given them dangerous information, and to direct them to (what the dean and doctor called) “authoritative” studies finding that masks are effective barriers to SARS-COV-2, and sternly reminding them that they must wear masks on campus (as if I’d told them not to). Again, I too had urged the class to read those further studies; but I didn’t tell them what to think. (I’d also pointed out, in class, that the CDC—the source of those links to the “authoritative” studies—had, until early April, publicly repeated the consensus of the prior studies that I had encouraged the class to read).

@nyuniversity: an MCC tenured professor spent an entire class period telling students that wearing masks doesn’t prevent the spread of COVID-19, and that hydroxychloroquine trials were made to fail so more people would be given the vaccine and have their DNA changed. thread 1/

— Julia Jackson (@julia_jacks) September 21, 2020

​Finally, my chair then pressured me to cancel my propaganda course for next semester, urging that it would be better for the department if, instead, I’d teach two sections of my film course, because, he said, my film courses have high enrollments. The problem with that rationale is that my film and propaganda courses are the same size, with both of them ordinarily full up, and students wait-listed for both. Because of that, and since I’ve long taught the propaganda course at least twice a year (and think that it’s especially relevant right now), I didn’t want to do that; but I was told I had no choice, which, technically, was true.

This experience prompted me to put up a petition, in defence of academic freedom and free speech, simply urging NYU to respect my academic freedom; although I posted the petition not just on my own behalf, but in the name of all professors, journalists, scientists, doctors, activists and whistle-blowers who’ve been gagged, or punished for their dissidence on topics of all kinds, for decades, and especially this year. The petition quickly garnered many signatures from people all over the world (to date, it has been signed by over 27,000 people), including many eminent figures, including Seymour Hersh, James K. Galbraith, Sharyl Attkisson, Rashid Khalidi (Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Oliver Stone, and Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng; and it also drew a public statement of support from Ralph Nader.

Then the drive against me escalated.

Calling the petition “an attack on the department”, a large group of my colleagues sent a letter to the dean, demanding “an expedited review” of my “conduct”, on the grounds not only of my heresy on masks (claiming that I had discouraged their use, and “intimidated” students who wore them), but, primarily, because of my history of abusiveness and lunacy in the classroom (and beyond). They charged me with “explicit hate speech”, “attacks on students and others in our community”, “advocating for an unsafe learning environment”, “aggressions and microaggressions”, and other crimes. Although the letter is completely false on every point it makes, the dean—prompted by NYU’s lawyers—went right ahead and ordered that “review”, which is, as of today, ongoing (although it was supposed to end with last semester).

I sent my colleagues a point-by-point rebuttal, asking for a retraction and apology. They ignored that request, and my follow-up email; so I decided that I had no choice but to sue them for libel, as their letter makes quite clear that their intention is to nullify my academic freedom, presumably so as to get me fired (just as that student had demanded). There’s a GoFundMe page soliciting donations, to help me pay for this legal effort.

Sputnik: Have your other students been at all supportive of you?

Professor Mark Crispin Miller: Yes. In response to my colleagues’ letter, and the dean’s review, many students, current and former, as well as visitors to my classes over the years, have sent strong statements of support to the dean’s office, pointedly rebutting my colleagues’ preposterous charges. Over 50 such statements have so far come in, attesting to my tolerance, open-mindedness and—above all—effectiveness as a professor, and the importance of my propaganda classes in particular. That outpouring is the only upside to this dismal situation.

Sputnik: To what extent is your situation unique and to what extent does it represent a broader culture of censorship or intimidation within academic institutions?

Professor Mark Crispin Miller: As the petition makes clear, my plight is only one of countless others throughout academia—and not just there. Academic freedom and free speech have actually been under slow assault for decades, as many urgent subjects have long since been declared taboo as mere “conspiracy theory”, so that any professors or journalists (or, for that matter, entertainers) who dare look into them risk their careers. Since that mode of censorship began in 1967, another, more explicit kind emerged with the ferocious appropriation of “social justice” as a means of “cancelling” dissident expression on a range of other urgent subjects, so that anyone who questions certain pieties is charged with “hate speech”. And this year has seen a third line of attack, as the COVID crisis has entailed much of the sort of outright “war-is-peace”/”2+2=5” propaganda that Orwell satirised in Nineteen Eighty-Four, with bald lies on every aspect of the crisis pumped out by “authoritative” health officials, and the media, always in the name of “science”.

And so the truth on many subjects, and those trying to express it, or even study it, are under fierce assault on one or more of those three grounds; and I see myself as under fire on all three bases. My colleagues charge that I make “non-evidence-based” assertions in my classes (a striking accusation, in a letter whose every claim is based, demonstrably, on no evidence whatsoever); assert that I engage in “explicit hate speech” (which I’ve never done, in class or anywhere else); and cast me as a risk to public health, for urging students to look into the scientific basis for the mask mandates, then make up their own minds.

This assault, I think, makes my case an important flashpoint in the larger struggle—now a global struggle—for academic freedom and free speech, at a time when both are under existential threat. I therefore hope that people will continue to support me, as well as others in my situation, in any way they can.

January 12, 2021 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | 2 Comments

Israeli MKs, NGO Monitor Invent False Anti-Semitic Claims Against BDS

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | August 16, 2016

Israeli and American Jewish media have become willing facilitators of yet another fraud perpetrated by right-wing MKs and their NGO counterparts. The Knesset foreign affairs committee began the fraud by titling the hearing, “Singling Out Jewish Students by BDS on U.S. Campuses.” MK Anat Berko, who touts herself as a former IDF colonel and “expert” on Islamist terror, made flagrantly false claims that the BDS movement compiled lists of Jewish students along with their addresses. Berko is the solon who claimed Palestine doesn’t exist because there is no “P” in Arabic. Not to be outdone, MKs from Yesh Atid and Labor also chimed in supporting this hash of a hearing. The charges were formulated as if this were BDS’ first step toward a Final Solution of the Israel Problem. For those pro-Israelists without a sense of humor, the above sentence was meant entirely ironically.

Arutz 7, a settler website, ran this headline: Jews Persecuted Around the World. A video of some of the proceedings (in Hebrew) is here. NGO Monitor, a group whose leader was sued successfully for libel by an Israeli Palestinian non-profit group, even claimed that BDS’ anti-Semitic activism could be criminal in nature. Another NGO, Reservists to the Front, which was founded to combat Breaking the Silence, joined in claiming (without any evidence) that there were 941 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2015. 90 were committed on campuses. He added, for good measure:

Jewish students are the most persecuted minorities on U.S. campuses, bar none.

Former Shin Bet chief and current Likud MK testified not just to his histrionic view of BDS, but his abject racism:

“BDS is an anti-Semitic wave against Jews. To my sorrow, it exists in nations considered enlightened and campuses considered intellectual [sic]. The style of BDS activists bring an Olympic judo medal, but nothing respectable. A great portion of BDS activism springs from the frustration of recent years when the subject of Palestine has sunk from the international agenda.”

Dichter continued his delusional rant thanking the Reservists group for the fake claims they offered: “The things done against Jewish students are carried out with the intent of harming Israel.”

eviction-notice-456x580The former domestic security agency chief was alluding to a bit of guerilla theater in which Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP) placed “eviction notices” under the dormitory room doors of students at NYU. Jewish students who received the notices filed complaints with the administration that they were targeted because they were Jews. In reality, two dormitories received the flyers. One of them contained a Shabbat elevator for observant Jewish students. Both buildings contained both Jewish and non-Jewish students and there is no evidence that Jewish students were the only ones targeted for the notices.

NGO Monitor claimed that SJP deliberately distributed eviction notices to non-Jewish students so it could not be prosecuted for a hate crime. Again, an evidence-free claim. This action did not involve, as the media reports allege, any lists of Jewish students, their mail or e-mail addresses. None of the reports substantiate this claim with any evidence whatsoever. There is no evidence. Even the ADL, not known for its fondness for BDS acknowledged this in the Forward :

“According to our research, there is no evidence pointing to Students for Justice in Palestine compiling specific lists of Jewish students.”

Even more virulent pro-Israel groups stepped back from Berko’s hoax:

… Officials from the Zionist Organization of America and Stand With Us…. told the Forward they had no knowledge of this sort of activity taking place.

But that didn’t stop other members of the pro-Israel media. The Times of Israel (which Jeffrey Goldberg calls a “highly credible” publication):

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a pro-Palestinian student advocacy group, has been compiling lists of Jewish students on college campuses in North America and detailing their dorm address information, raising fears for the students’ safety, Israel Radio reports.

The report came as the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee met earlier Tuesday to discuss Israel boycott efforts at US colleges.

Israel HaYom also went to town on the report. It’s come to smell like a bunch of flies buzzing around a corpse of a story. That’s what all the lies amount to. Defending the indefensible. You get tired of having to defend Israel’s oppression and so you turn the tables and blame the accusers, the victims. They’re not the real victims, you are. They hate you. Want you dead. You? You did nothing wrong. It’s all their fault. Focus it all on them. Then they won’t be able to shine the light back at you and what you’ve done.

August 17, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Solidarity and Activism | , , | Leave a comment

BDS suppression backfires as universities pass resolutions

RT | April 25, 2016

The United Auto Workers (UAW) union at the University of California has been fighting to uphold a resolution passed to support the BDS movement against Israel. Its struggle has inspired other university unions to pass their own resolutions.

The UAW Local 2865, which includes some 14,000 students and teaching assistants working for the University of California, passed a resolution to support the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement in 2014, becoming the first major labor union to do so, with 65 percent voting in favor of divestment and 52 percent supporting an academic boycott among the student-workers union of the University of California.

“The University of California divest from companies involved in the occupation of Palestine; that UAW International to divest from these same entities; the US government to end military aid to Israel. Fifty-two percent of voting members pledged not to ‘take part in any research, conferences, events, exchange programs, or other activities that are sponsored by Israeli universities complicit in the occupation of Palestine and the settler-colonial policies of the state of Israel’ until such time as these universities take steps to end complicity with dispossession, occupation, and apartheid.” UAW Local 2865 Resolution

An anti-BDS arm of the union called Informed Grads appealed the result, with the help of Gibson, Dunn & Crutche, a law firm that has defended Walmart, Amazon and Chevron, Salon reports. The firm has represented Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other corporations that gain from Israel’s defense spending.

While the International Executive Board defended the integrity of the vote, saying it represented the will of the members, it claimed it could interfere with the flow of commerce and pointed to the possibility of discrimination, despite the number of Jewish and Israeli members that supported the resolution and later wrote a letter attesting to the fact.

Following the decision, lawyer Scott Edelman expressed pleasure at the UAW’s “forceful rejection of BDS, which sets a powerful precedent for other labor unions and national organizations.”

UAW Local 2865 appealed the decision, saying the “IEB improperly ignored the UAW constitutional mandate to solidify the labor movement and build solidarities with other unions, such as the Palestinian labor unions representing hundreds of thousands of workers who issued the call for BDS in 2005.”

The appeal has gone to the UAW Public Review Board who will make a final ruling in the next few months.

The nullification of the resolution has led to increased support for both UAW Local 2865 and the BDS movement among university staff.

UAW chapters at the University of Washington, Univeristy of Massachusetts Amherst and NYU wrote letters of support for the resolution, and went on to pass their own resolutions in April with Massachusetts securing 95 percent of the vote and NYU’s chapter taking 67 percent.

Both groups cited the nullification as a motivating factor for their own votes.

Jennifer Mogannam, a PhD candidate at UC San Diego and member of the union, told Shadowproof the attacks are “part and parcel of the larger Zionist movement’s suppression and attacking of those fighting for Palestinian self-determination and against Israeli settler colonialism.”

A recent BDS victory that saw security firm G4S announce it would end its contracts in Israel has caused Florida country club members to partake in their own boycott. The country club members are threatening to end G4S’s contract with their country clubs in a show of support for Israel.

READ MORE: Israel connects BDS with terrorism while cracking down on German banks

April 25, 2016 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NYU grad student union votes to boycott Israel

Ma’an – April 24, 2016

A graduate student union at New York University on Friday voted in favor of joining the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israeli violations of Palestinian human rights.

Two-thirds of the Graduate Student Organizing Committee cast a vote in support of the resolution, which calls on both NYU and its United Automobile Workers union affiliate to divest from all Israeli state institutions — including universities — and corporations “complicit in” Israeli violations.

The resolution proposes that NYU join the movement “until Israel complies with international law and ends the military occupation, dismantles the wall, recognizes the rights of Palestinian citizens to full equality, and respects the right of return of Palestinian refugees and exiles.”

Over 600 union members voted in the referendum, a reportedly larger-than-average turnout for union votes. The 2,000-strong union represents graduate teaching and research assistants at the university.

Some 57 percent of voters made a voluntary individual pledge to participate in the academic boycott against Israel.

The BDS movement has gained momentum over the past year, aiming to exert political and economic pressure over Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory in a bid to repeat the success of the campaign which ended apartheid in South Africa.

Major actors to join the movement this year include British security giant G4S and French telecom company Orange.

The NYU union’s support of BDS comes after US President Barack Obama in February signed into law an anti-BDS trade agreement reiterating that US Congress “opposes politically motivated actions that penalize or otherwise limit commercial relations specifically with Israel,” referring directly to BDS activities.

The Israeli leadership has widely condemned the BDS movement as antisemitic or carried out from “hatred of Israel,” while proponents of the movement argue divestment measures are necessary in pressuring Israel to end its decades-long military occupation.

Moves inside the US — Israel’s longstanding ally and number one provider of military aid — to criminalize BDS have meanwhile been slammed by human rights defenders as a violation of free speech.

April 24, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New York professors join BDS movement

MEMO | April 11, 2015

Around 120 professors at New York University have joined the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement in calling for the institution to divest from companies linked to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, Al-Risalah newspaper has reported. The BDS movement has had some success in other parts of the US, notably in California.

According to Al-Risalah, the academics criticised the NYU policy of not disclosing the identity of the companies it is dealing with. This, they say, makes it harder to know whether they deal with the Israeli occupation or not. Students at NYU are pushing their professors to call for transparency in the university’s investments, and for divestment if and when links to the occupation are discovered.

“I support ‘NYU Out of Occupied Palestine’ because I am opposed to apartheid,” said Professor of English Elaine Freedgood in a press statement. “The international boycott of apartheid in South Africa was a significant factor in its demise.”

Other professors who signed the petition include Iraqi novelist Sinan Antoon, historians Greg Grandin and Zachary Lockman, and Ella Shohat, a well-known cultural studies scholar.

April 11, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | , | 2 Comments