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We Will Not Be Silenced

We Will Not Be Silenced

William I Robinson | Maryam S Griffin

(2017)

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Abstract

As criticism continues to mount over Israel's violation of Palestinian human rights and of international law, campaigns to silence and repress those who speak out against Israeli apartheid have grown alarmingly.

College and university campuses across the United States now find themselves centre stage in this conflict over free speech: targeted by the Israel 'lobby' for the critical content of their scholarship, academics have been turned away from jobs, denied tenure and promotion, rejected for funding, and even expelled from institutions, while student groups like the 'Irvine 11' have faced harassment and sanctions.

From establishment figures like Richard Falk and former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, to professors, postgraduates and activist alumni, We Will Not Be Silenced contains thirteen testimonials from those whose struggle to defend their academic freedom has garnered widespread public and international attention.
'It is perhaps no surprise that as Israel drifts towards repression and reaction within, and becomes increasingly isolated internationally as a result of the harsh and criminal occupation, its informal lobby in the US becomes more desperate to stifle free and open discussion of the state they seek to protect. Efforts of the kind sampled here, targeting the academic world, are as deplorable as they are predictable, and should be dismissed with contempt, and strongly opposed.'
Noam Chomsky
'These testimonials provide a stunning and all too familiar portrait of the extent to which the forces that suppress free speech and academic freedom are at work in the U.S. university system'
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
'The insightful and captivating testimonials in this book are ... not just about challenging the 'Israel exception to free speech'; they are also about protecting civil liberties and democratic rights at large against the ominous rise of McCarthyism 2.0'
Omar Barghouti, Scholar and Co-founder of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) and the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover Cover
Contents v
Foreword - Cynthia McKinney vii
Preface - Richard A. Falk xi
Introduction: Academic Repression on US University Campuses - William I. Robinson and Maryam S. Griffin 1
1. The Trial of Israel's Campus Critics - David Theo Goldberg and Saree Makdisi 20
2. They Shoot Tenure, Don't They?: How I Crossed the Borders of Acceptable Academic Discourse on Holocaust Film and the Question of Palestine, and Never Came Back - Terri Ginsberg 36
3. My Ordeal with the Israel Lobby and the University of California - William I. Robinson 53
4. The Irvine 11: Power, Punishment, and Perserverance - Taher Herzallah with Osama Shabaik 71
5. A Problem Grows in Brooklyn - Kristofer J. Petersen-Overton 84
6. Speaking Truth to Power: Advocating for Justice in/for Palestine - Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi 98
7. Hanlon's Razor Cuts Both Ways - David Delgado Shorter 107
8.The Intolerability of Intolerance - Persis Karim 120
9. Responding to Columbia University's McCarthyism: Excerpts of Statement on March 14, 2005 to Columbia University Ad Hoc Grievance Committee - Joseph Massad 129
10. A Multiyear Zionist Censorship Campaign - David Klein 149
11. Some Thoughts on Facts, Politics, and Tenure - Nadia Abu El-Haj 163
12. Censoring and Sanctioning Students for Justice in Palestine - Max Geller 171
13. A So-called Self-hating, Anti-Semitic Jew Speaks Out - Lisa Rofel 182
14. Interrupted Destinies: Before and After and Forthwith - Steven Salaita 191
List of Resources 206
Notes on Contributors 208
Index 212