UIC Excludes Palestinian Students from Israel Study Abroad Session

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Issues: Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, Title VI

Palestine Legal filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights demanding an investigation into the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), after the university intentionally barred Palestinian students from a January 2023 informational session on study abroad in Israel.

Pathway on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. SOURCE: FLICKR

Palestine Legal is representing six Palestinian UIC students barred from the January 23, 2023 informational session hosted by the UIC Study Abroad Office and a Jewish UIC student who was censored during the event. The students had all registered to attend the event, which was held remotely via Zoom. Once the session started, six Palestinian students with Arab-sounding names were left in the waiting room, while students with non-Arab sounding or ethnically ambiguous names were admitted.

Palestinian Students Allowed to Enter Event After Changing Names to Hayley, Rebecca and Alissa

Partway through the session, three Palestinian students renamed themselves or rejoined the meeting with non-Arab sounding names: Hayley, Rebecca Goldstein, and Alissa James. They were then promptly admitted, while their friends who had not hidden their Palestinian or Arab identities continued to be left in the waiting room for the entirety of the program.

After UIC faculty and staff finished their presentation, several students asked the hosts about whether Palestinian students would be able the attend the trip in light of Israel’s discriminatory border policies, and whether Palestinian students and their allies would be safe if they were admitted into the country. The executive director of the Study Abroad Office threatened to eject students if they continued to ask critical questions and did not comply with their request for a “peaceful” information session. The responses of UIC faculty and staff to students’ concerns during and after the information session reveal a lack of awareness of Israel’s well-documented apartheid policies and a disregard for their potential impact on UIC students of Palestinian national origin as well as those who are Arab or Muslim or could be perceived to be Palestinian, Arab or Muslim.

UIC Faculty and Staff Call Police on SJP Students and Threaten Them with Legal Action

Over the next several weeks, UIC faculty and staff continued to infringe on Palestinian students’ rights as they attempted to inform the community about their experience being barred from entering a school event.

On February 13, two departmental colleagues of the professor leading the Israel study abroad trip threatened to call police on a group of Palestinian UIC students who were distributing flyers in her building. As students were attempting to leave the building, police arrived and detained students who were wearing kufiyas (traditional Palestinian scarves), but did not approach students without kufiyas who were part of their group. One officer grabbed the sole hijab-wearing Muslim student in the group to prevent her from leaving. Police filed a complaint with the student conduct office, which charged SJP with violating the university’s vague and apparently unenforced flyering policies.

On February 17, after UIC SJP posted on social media about what took place, a UIC staff member threatened SJP with “legal action” over alleged copyright infringement if students did not take down the social media posts describing the incident, which included a quote from him alongside his staff photo from the UIC website, because SJP did not “have the rights to” the photo.

On March 10, Palestinian students and their allies who had attended or attempted to attend the information session filed complaints with the university’s Office of Access and Equity (OAE) detailing the discriminatory treatment they had experienced. Instead of responding to their complaints, on March 15, OAE informed a different group of Palestinian students—the group stopped by police for flyering—that they were under investigation because the professor leading the trip had accused them of discriminating against her on the basis of her religion and national origin.

Palestine Legal Demands End to Discriminatory Investigations of Palestinian Students

On March 16, Palestine Legal wrote the school, describing the discrimination and censorship Palestinian students and their allies had experienced and demanding that the retaliatory investigations of the students be dropped.

 As Palestine Legal explained in the letter, denying students access to an event out of fear that they will protest is an unjustified prior restraint in violation of the First Amendment, but even if the restriction had been justified, “the manner in which the university did so was not permissible. The university singled out students with Palestinian or Arab-sounding names for exclusion from the information session. This racist stereotyping, which students clearly demonstrated by changing their display names and gaining access to the session, cannot form a reasonable justification for censoring student speech.”

Palestine Legal also explained that the professor’s complaints against the students were a form of unlawful retaliation against them for exercising their right to free speech and equal access to education.

After Palestine Legal sent its letter, the university changed course and claimed that the discrimination notices had been sent to students in error, and that OAE had simply wanted to meet with students to learn more about discrimination complaints the students themselves had filed. The university also closed the student conduct investigation by issuing SJP a warning.

In late March and early April, Palestinian students and witnesses spoke with UIC investigators about the discrimination and censorship they experienced. After initial assurances that they would be updated in two to three weeks, and later statements that the investigation could take 60-90 days, the university informed students on July 17 that their complaints had been dismissed because OAE had found “no actionable allegations under the University Nondiscrimination Policy Statement.”

Despite demands from students and from Palestine Legal, the university never apologized for discriminating against and censoring Palestinian students and their allies. It has not taken any public action to ensure that its programs, including study abroad, provide equal access to all students regardless of ethnicity, national origin, or political viewpoint. Nor has it assured students that faculty and staff involved with the Israel study abroad trip and the UICPD officers who targeted students would undergo training on anti-Palestinian racism and on the First Amendment rights of students.

As a result, Palestine Legal called for a federal civil rights investigation into this incident.

Records reveal discriminatory treatment was premeditated

On April 21, SJP members learned via a record request that the Study Abroad Office and the professor leading the trip had been in touch with an outside consultant for support navigating potential criticism of the program. On January 19, four days before the session, the study abroad director emailed Daniel Wehrenfennig, who founded a normalization project known as the Olive Tree Initiative, informing him, “Unfortunately, a social media post promoting the program has received negative comments from supporters of the BDS movement (see below) and we are pretty sure that these protestors are likely to join the info. session on Monday.” The day before the session, the executive director provided an update revealing that the professor would have free rein to decide who to admit to the session and that the Study Abroad Office approved of her plan to preemptively censor students they expected to have a critical view of the program: “We were able to identify that at least a couple of the commenters who have registered for the info. session are UIC students. I believe the plan is for [professor] to only admit those students she knows have expressed interest in the program tomorrow.”

History of Discriminatory Silencing at UIC

On April 10, SJP members and supportive UIC faculty members met with administrators to share their concerns about the discriminatory treatment students had experienced and the broader climate of anti-Palestinian racism at UIC. SJP members and allies had previously faced censorship in a March 2021 Zoom session where they had their chat functions disabled and were kicked out of a Zoom session for posting questions about Israel’s discriminatory denial of COVID-19 vaccines to Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. Their bias complaints to the university at the time did not result in any action against the organizers of the event. Instead the discrimination office found the censorship was justified because students had engaging in “text shouting” by posting in the chat. That finding left the door open to the even more egregious censorship that took place in January 2023.