The Coalition for Action in Higher Education and AAUP Local 6741 are delighted to announce their Fall 2025 series, “Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, Harassment, and Misinformation in U.S. Higher Education.” This series of five webinars from October to December brings together educators, activists, and organizations representing them to fight back against the bad-faith misuse of the “antisemitism” accusation to stifle speech on Palestine in America’s colleges and universities. Featuring experts in antisemitism, Zionism, Palestine, higher education, and domestic and international law, the series seeks to critically dismantle the use of the “antisemitism” accusation for political purposes; to power-map the individuals and organizations responsible for its implementation in U.S. higher education; and to chart a path towards solidarity and resistance for responsible higher education workers, administrators, and organizations.
The objectives of the series are fourfold:
1. Political education: present in a clear, coherent, and comprehensive fashion the latest research on the groups responsible for the attacks on Palestine speech and advocacy in US higher education to a broad higher education public.
2. Activist community building: open a space of coordination and organization for individuals and groups involved in pushing back, so that the series is an act of resistance as well as an expert account of a situation. We will have ways for attendees to get involved in defense of academic freedom through the AAUP and allied groups.
3. Strengthening AAUP advocacy: provide strategic and concrete actionable steps for attendees to organize within their local AAUPs and through the national body in defense of academic freedom in pursuance of our common goals. We aim to channel existing political anxieties, personal and professional concerns, feelings of grief, and emergent forms of mobilization into effective action that makes the AAUP more relevant for local members.
4. BDS: further develop the intellectual and activist conditions for the boycott, divestment, and sanction of Israel and complicit Israeli academic institutions as demanded by international law in response to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Please find more information and register for the webinars below:
Event Schedule
1. The Right-Wing Attack on Higher Education: Palestine as Crucible
Monday 27 October, 5:30—7:30pm ET | Register Here
Opening the “Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination” series, this panel centers Palestine in our ongoing collective effort to understand and respond to the right-wing attack on the higher education sector in the United States. As we have seen since October the 8th, 2023, the greater the oppression in Palestine and beyond, the greater the repression in the United States. Over the last two years, the Israeli state has destroyed every university in Gaza; murdered tens of thousands of men, women, and children there; and imposed starvation conditions on 2.3 million civilians. In tandem, U.S. colleges and universities–often under the auspices of the federal government–have taken unprecedented measures in suppressing academic freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly in relation to Palestine education and advocacy on campuses. While clearly intended to “dismantle” Palestine solidarity on campuses (as the Heritage Foundation’s “Project Esther” manifesto has it), these measures have further-reaching effects. The shift we are witnessing today represents the culmination of a 50-year bipartisan politics of austerity that has sought to privatize higher education, to denude the humanities and social sciences of their critical functions in society, and to impose ideological conformity. Palestine, this panel shows, is an occasion for achieving these objectives. It is also a crucible of our collective liberation.
Panelists address the Israeli genocide and scholasticide in Palestine historically and in the present; the relationship between spurious accusations of “antisemitism,” university governance, external special interest groups, and US foreign policy at a time of authoritarianism and genocide; Columbia University’s acquiescence to the federal government’s extortive demands; the relationship between Project 2025 and Project Esther, both authored by the Heritage Foundation; the implications of the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Bill for Palestine education and advocacy on campuses; the implications of these developments for academic freedom and the mission of the American university more broadly; and more.
Speakers
Isaac Kamola (AAUP Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom)
Heather Ferguson (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, AAUP-AFT United Academics Local 6741)
Judith Butler (Jewish Voice for Peace)
Lara Deeb (Middle East Studies Association)
Sherene Seikaly (American Historical Association, Middle East Studies Association, National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine)
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2. The Anti-Defamation League: Palestine and the Intersections of Race, “The Hate Framework,” and Power
Thursday 6 November, 5:30—7:30pm ET | Register Here
This panel explores the agency of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in efforts to excise the history and colonial/capitalist contexts of colonization in Palestine from education, to criminalize advocacy for Palestinian liberation, and to remake the university as an instrument of right-wing repression. Taking a deep dive into the history of the ADL in relation to Palestine, Zionism, and the “antisemitism” accusation, panelists discuss how this organization is at the heart of broader political, social, and cultural efforts to dehumanize Palestinians and insulate militarized racial states–particularly the United States and Israel–against popular resistance. It also demonstrates how the ADL has been central to attacks on civil rights, Black liberation, Indigenous rights, Islam and Muslims, and immigration and immigrants in the US since at least the 1960s, and how it has often worked hand-in-hand with repressive federal agencies to surveil and police human- and civil-rights activists on campuses and elsewhere and to promote a broader right-wing agenda in US political life.
Speakers
Emmaia Gelman (Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism)
Amira Jarmakani (Palestinian Feminist Collective, Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism)
Nora Lester Murad (Drop the ADL from Schools)
Merrie Najimy (National Education Association, Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism)
Anna Feder (AAUP Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, Palestine Anti-Repression Network)
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3. The Art of Doublespeak During a Genocide: Higher Education Law and Policy Since October 2023
Thursday 13 November, 1—3pm ET | Register Here
Oriented around case studies from the last two years, this panel provides a broader overview of the ADL-affiliated groups which have also been responsible for today’s attacks on Palestine education and advocacy on campuses. These groups include but are not limited to: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee, Campus Watch, Canary Mission, Hillel International, StandWithUs, the Academic Engagement Network, and the Heritage Foundation. How have these groups targeted and harassed students, faculty, and staff who advocate for Palestine human rights on campuses?; how have they pressured university administrations in specific cases and more broadly?; how have they weaponized Title VI investigations to enforce compliance?; and how have they helped shape federal policies regarding Palestine activism, “antisemitism” accusations, and academic freedom more broadly? How might we, as educators and academic organizers, push back against these attacks on higher education institutions, organized labor, academics, staff, and students?
Speakers
Jennifer Ruth (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, AAUP Committee A)
Maura Finkelstein
Meira Gold
Jonah Rubin (Jewish Voice for Peace)
Donna Nevel (Participatory Action Research Network)
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4. The Obligations of the University in Response to Genocide and Scholasticide
Monday 17 November, 5:30—7:30pm ET | Register Here
This panel explores intellectual, moral, financial, and legal dimensions of the complicity of U.S. higher education institutions in the genocide and scholasticide currently underway in Palestine. How, it asks, do the repression and attacks we are experiencing in the US relate to the systematic oppression and destruction Palestinians are experiencing in their educational institutions? While evidently intended to stifle free speech critical of the Israeli state’s atrocities and to undermine campus-led solidarity activism, the links run deeper. US universities hold investments in firms that profit from genocide, maintain ties and partnerships with complicit Israeli universities, and often serve as venues for the ideological normalization of Palestinian subjugation. In these ways, they are actively complicit with Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. What are the intellectual, moral, financial, and legal obligations of US universities in relation to their ties to the Israeli state and Israeli institutions, and what is the role of representative professional organizations such as the AAUP in holding them to account?
Speakers
Shahinaz Geneid (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel)
Maya Wind
Dylan Saba (Palestine Legal)
MB (The Anti-War Initiative)
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5. Why Palestine is a Union Issue
Wednesday 3 December, 5:30—7:30pm ET | Register Here
This panel explores the progress that has been made in representative professional organizations such as the AAUP, scholarly associations, and unions in supporting students and faculty under duress and in pushing back against Palestine-related attacks on academic freedom. It highlights the strategies of legal recourse, political education, and mass mobilization that have been pursued. It also foregrounds the work that still needs to be done. Bringing the series to its political and activist culmination, it stresses the boycott, divestment from, and sanction of Israel and complicit Israeli academic institutions by US higher education institutions and organizations as a moral and legal obligation in the face of genocide.
Speakers
Bill Mullen (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, AAUP-AFT United Academics Local 6741)
Michael Letwin (Labor 4 Palestine)
Sherena Razek (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, Labor 4 Palestine)
Jeff Schuhrke (UUP AFT Local 2190)
Olivia Katbi (Democratic Socialists of America, BDS Movement)
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Background
The Trump administration has made Palestine solidarity on campuses the leading edge of its attacks on higher education. In its efforts to clamp down on research, teaching, and advocacy on behalf of Palestine and Palestinians, the Trump administration has cut funding, threatened accreditation, and demanded fundamental changes to hiring and admissions. Although polls show that the vast majority of U.S. voters and taxpayers oppose these moves, the Trump administration has advanced a disputed definition of “antisemitism” and fostered the institutionalized dehumanization of Palestinians in order to insulate the Israeli government from criticism of its ongoing genocide and scholasticide in Gaza and its broader system of apartheid across historic Palestine. At this critical juncture in history, our ability to defend academic freedom requires a commitment to understanding and combatting anti-Palestinian discrimination, harassment, and misinformation–all forms of anti-Palestinian racism–on our campuses, in our communities, and in our government.
In their 2007 classic The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt map how organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) “actively work to steer U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction,” often against what they argue are American national interests. The authors demonstrate that these organizations, well-funded and working in coordination with one another, exert influence through contributions to electoral campaigns at the local, state, and national levels; political lobbying; the direct drafting of legislation; the leveraging of media assets; and what they call the “policing” of academia, among other mechanisms. In the domain of U.S. higher education, they—referring to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Congress (AJC) in particular—show how “[p]ro-Israel groups and individuals have fought a multifront battle—against students, professors, administrators, and the curriculum itself—to shape discourse on campus.” At the time of their writing, efforts to clamp down on criticism of Israel’s violations of international law and human rights and on advocacy for Palestinian liberation had not for Mearsheimer and Walt been as successful in academia as they had been on Capitol Hill. However, by the time Matthew Abraham published his full-length study Out of Bounds: Academic Freedom and the Question of Palestine in 2014, he was able to draw on nearly 400 pages-worth of case studies to demonstrate the gravity of the threat posed by these and other external special interest groups to the foundational norms, values, and principles of American higher education writ large.
Cut to the present, and what in 2007 was a well-orchestrated pressure campaign waged against America’s colleges and universities now has the full backing of the federal government. As the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Bill threatens higher education with what the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Debt Collective (DC) call “extinction,” legislation such as H.R. 6090 and H.R. 9495; neo-McCarthyist congressional “witch hunts” (per former AAUP President Irene Mulvey); the “extortion” of universities via withheld federal funds (per current AAUP President Todd Wolfson); the policing and militarization of campuses in response to student protests; the kidnapping and (attempted) deportation of students, and more all comprise the culmination of long-standing efforts by groups including AIPAC, the ADL, the AJC, Campus Watch, Canary Mission, Hillel International, StandWithUs, the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), and the Heritage Foundation to dismantle constitutional protections and academic norms when it comes to speech related to Palestine on campuses. At the heart of these attacks is the spurious accusation of “antisemitism,” as formalized and implemented in federal law and on campuses by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) 2016 “Working Definition of Antisemitism.” Casting criticism of Israel’s violations of international law and human rights as inherently “antisemitic,” this definition—when implemented in law—abolishes free speech and academic freedom when it comes to Palestine in teaching, research, and advocacy. It therefore fundamentally undermines the enterprise of American higher education, and distorts rational, objective inquiry into American foreign policy on campuses in favor of advocacy for a foreign entity.
Although the IHRA definition was never intended by its primary author, Kenneth Marcus, to be a legal standard, the Trump administration is invoking it to attack Palestinians and all those who stand in solidarity with them. It has invoked the IHRA definition to detain student activists, cut research funds, demand restructurings of centers for Middle Eastern studies, and impose draconian restrictions on the right to protest. Even simple acts of cultural expression, like donning keffiyehs and flags at graduation or establishing a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter are now the basis of federal investigation. Colleges and universities–hollowed out by neoliberal reforms, the erosion of shared governance, and a general anti-Palestinian atmosphere–have been quick to capitulate. Across the country, the discredited IHRA definition has been used to shut down academic conferences about Palestine, fire professors for speaking out on the issue, ban students and professors from attending their own classes, and punish students for silently studying in their library or praying for Palestinian lives. Although these actions are being taken in the name of “Jewish safety,” public polling shows the vast majority of Jews oppose the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education. Ironically, Jewish organizations and individuals who oppose Israel’s genocide and apartheid systems are also being targeted by these spurious accusations of “antisemitism,” despite rooting their actions in Jewish theology and social justice traditions.
This series, facilitated by the Coalition for Action in Higher Education and AAUP Local 6741, seeks to critically expose the fallacy of the IHRA definition of “antisemitism” and to demonstrate its use as an instrument of power and repression in American higher education by the organizations listed above, centrally the Anti-Defamation League.