UIUC Students Organize Against Efforts to Equate Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism
/
Students voiced their demands at the university’s October 18 homecoming parade.
The student government at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) passed a resolution on October 23 demanding an apology from the chancellor over a school-wide email that conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism and called a Palestinian student’s presentation on Palestine antisemitic.
The resolution was the result of weeks of student organizing in response to pressure campaigns by pro-Israel groups targeting a presentation on “Palestine & Great Return March: Palestinian Resistance to 70 Years of Israeli Terror,” which a Palestinian student shared with colleagues in her Multicultural Advocacy and Residential Assistant program.
After a bias complaint was filed about the presentation, UIUC Chancellor Robert Jones sent an email to the entire student body on October 9 condemning the presentation at length. In contrast with the multiple paragraphs the chancellor devoted to criticizing the presentation, the email only devoted a single line to a swastika that was found on campus that week, and made no mention of many instances of holocaust denial that have occurred on campus.
Fifteen diverse student groups joined Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) in demanding that the chancellor retract his mass email, apologize to the student and others he wrongly condemned, make clear the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, and include trainings on anti-Blackness, Islamophobia and queerphobia in addition to antisemitism. The groups intended not only to condemn the chancellor’s anti-Palestinian sentiments but also to uplift all marginalized voices on campus .
Pro-Israel groups have pressured the university to take further measures to silence conversations about Palestine on campus. StandWithUs, a right-wing pro-Israel group that has a history of promoting lawfare and attacking Palestine advocates, started a petition stating that swastikas found on campus and other acts targeting Jewish symbols “pale in comparison” to the student’s presentation, which it gravely mischaracterized. The petition encourages the university to adopt a widely criticized redefinition of antisemitism that would label criticism of Israel as antisemitism.
Groups including Jewish Voice for Peace-Champaign Urbana, Under-represented Muslim and Minority Advocates, Black Students for Revolution, Movimiento Estudiantil, Students Against Sexual Assault, Party for Socialism and Liberation, Fossil Free UIUC, Black United Front, Graduate Employees’ Organization at UIUC, Women of Pride, Arab Student Association, Muslim Student Association, and Pakistani Students Association joined SJP in their demands.
As a result of the pressure campaigns against the university, the Palestinian student who authored the presentation has been the subject of dozens of online smears and attacks calling her a terrorist sympathizer and antisemite.
As SJP UIUC stated in their response to the chancellor, the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism “has been used in the past as a scare tactic against students and workers in the Palestine movement, and it is rooted in a false understanding of what the movement stands for and what it advocates for.”
The student groups have organized a series of actions to encourage the university to address their demands, including a teach-in and protests.
Last Wednesday’s student government vote followed a committee vote on October 17, which passed 29-4. The student government was warned that over 300 people opposed to the resolution would be present at the hearing, during which public comment was allowed. The student government secured an alternate location for the hearing to accommodate the expected turnout.
At the hearing, hundreds of opponents of the resolution were present and walked out soon after public comments began. The resolution passed 29-4-4 despite the intense pressure.
The chancellor’s email is in line with a widespread effort to define criticism of Israel as antisemitism. Pro-Israel groups have pressured state and federal legislatures as well as student governments and universities to label campus advocacy for Palestinian rights as antisemitic.
UIUC’s student government is the first to strongly condemn such efforts and demand that the university make clear the distinction between political advocacy for Palestinian rights or political critiques of Israel and anti-Jewish hate.
This case at UIUC raises the specter of Steven Salaita’s termination from the university after a massive pressure campaign for his tweets about the Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014. A freedom of information act lawsuit revealed that high level pressure by Israel advocacy groups and donors impacted the university’s actions.
Action Alert
Email Chancellor Jones at Chancellor@illinois.edu and ask him to respond to all of SJP and allied students’ demands, including that the university clearly distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.