Title VI vs. Academic Freedom

This episode of the special series “Academic Freedom on the Line” includes an excerpt from the webinar announcing the release of the AAUP’s Report On Title VI, Discrimination, and Academic Freedom last year. Committee A Chair Rana Jaleel and former General Counsel Risa Lieberwitz share big picture findings and key takeaways from the report. 

Following the excerpt, CDAF host Vineeta Singh is joined by 3 academics who have faced professional challenges for their support of students organiizng in defense of Palestinian rights: 

Anna Feder is an educator, curator, organizer, and documentary filmmaker with nearly two decades of experience in higher education. Her termination from Emerson College and the cancellation of her series have become the subject of a lawsuit, alleging that the college violated her free speech rights.

Andrea Brower is an activist-scholar whose work on capitalism, colonialism, and the environment is embedded in movements for collective liberation and ecological regeneration. She recently resigned from her position of Associate Professor and lead instructor of Solidarity and Social Justice at Gonzaga University after facing harassment and repression for her Palestine solidarity activism. 

Judith Norman is a professor and chair of the department of philosophy at Trinity University in San Antonio, TX.  She teaches topics in the history of philosophy and also works in prison education.  She has organized with local organizations and also with Jewish Voice for Peace San Antonio.  

 Links to resources mentioned in our conversation: 

AAUP’s Report On Title VI, Discrimination, and Academic Freedom

Andrea Brower's Open resignation letter

On the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

Middle East Studies Association's findings on 60+ cases of retaliation 

Jewish Voice for Peace

US Campaign for Palestinian Rights

Anna’s list of films

Israelism documentary

The Unmaking of a College

The Five Demands

Transcript

Judith Norman 0:00

i, I think, a typical us educational childhood involves uh, Holocaust narratives and imagining yourself as, you know, on the side of the resistance. if the Nazis came this, I'd hide the Jews, you know, I'd do this and that. and something's gone wrong with Holocaust education if we can have learned about all this, and it's supposed to be never again, if we can have learned about all this and somehow we still don't know. Right. Uh, and I do think it goes back a bit to the Title six conversation. you know, never again has just meant never again for Jews in this sort of Zionist captured way. And so what we are supposed to have learned from Holocaust education, which was, you know, how to resist fascism, how to imagine ourselves there, all this preparation, um, has, has, hasn't worked.

Vineeta Singh 1:00

Hello and welcome to the latest episode of Academic Freedom on the Line, a co-production of AAUP presents and the AAUP's Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom. I'm center fellow Vineeta Singh, and I've got a new format for you today inspired by our last episode with the folks from University Keywords. We're gonna try to do some radical studying together. So first I'll play for you an excerpt from a webinar that was released last September when the AAUP's new report on Title VI Discrimination and Academic Freedom was first released. That's the name of the report and it's linked in the show notes for this episode. The webinar excerpt that I'm about to play will introduce you to the broad themes of the report, but I encourage you to review it with your AAUP chapter, your journal club, your book club, your office mates, your friends, whoever your study group is. Because in the second half of this episode, you'll hear a conversation that we had it framed as a study group, but which for me at least, did feel like attending a political ed class or your most inspirational graduate seminar. So let's get started. First with the clips from the webinar on the A U P'S Title VI report. Here you're gonna hear from two members of committee A, the A UP standing Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure. First, you'll hear the voice of Risa Lieberwitz, professor of Labor and Employment Law at Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations, who also served as the general Counsel for the AAUP from 2014 to 2024. And then you'll hear from Rana Jaleel, who is a professor of gender, sexuality and women's studies and Asian American studies at UC. Davis Rana is also the current chair of Committee A. The excerpt we here will open with Risa Lieberwitz explaining how the current abuses of Title Six fit into the larger historical context of AAUP's a's advocacy work.

Risa Lieberwitz 2:58

the A AAUP has long been involved in making statements and taking actions to oppose discrimination in higher education, including discrimination on the basis of race and sex national origin. and there's a long history of AAUP doing this as part of our protection of academic freedom and the ability faculty and students to engage in robust education at the higher education level. and AAUP has also been very supportive of affirmative action through the years as part of the importance of expanding access to higher education. And we've, uh, done that, as I said, as part of enforcing. and supporting our basic principles of academic freedom, faculty governance, due process and job security through tenure and other forms as we know that may be developed for job security. we've also spoken out when we think that, anti-discrimination laws are being misused. In 2016, we put out a long report about Title IX and the way that Title ix, uh, that it was being used to actually undermine academic freedom by its overly broad application. And for this Title six report, we're doing the same kind of statement where we have such excessive use of, title Six to undermine, academic freedom and the ability to have access, free access to freely access higher education. So first, let me define for you the way that antisemitism, actually comes in to the question of Title vi. title VI does not include religion as a protected category. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin. But since, 2004 OCR, the Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Education has interpreted the statute to include religion as part of protected shared ancestry, as they call it, shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, which, OCR describes as protecting students and this could also be faculty, uh, who are Jewish, Israeli, Muslim, Arab, Sikh, south Asian, Hindu, Palestinian, or any other faith or ancestry. Now with the second Trump administration, OCR has focused particularly on antisemitism as part of protected shared ancestry, but they've used an overly broad definition of antisemitism developed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. That is the IHRA definition of antisemitism. OCR used that to define hostile. Environment harassment on campus. And the problem with using the IHRA definition is that, its examples are quite overly broad. The examples of anti-Semitic speech, which include criticisms about the state of Israel or about Zionism. And so with this conflation of political critique and antisemitism, OCR has alleged Title VI violations, based on speech that is protected by the First Amendment and by academic freedom. and this is a serious problem because of the way in which that will affect our ability to teach, our ability to research, our ability to, engage in public speech. And it affects faculty and staff and students. And as you may know, even Kenneth Stern, who was one of the authors of the IHRA definition has objected to what he calls the weaponizing of the definition. it's his position. And we agree with that, that this misuse of the, overly broad definition of the IHRA really undermines academic freedom. And it actually also undermines the ability to really address, actual situations of anti-Semitism rather than simply, conflating political critique with, anti-Semitism. And so the Trump administration has used this conflation of political criticism, of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism to justify just a wholesale cutting off or threatening to cut off, billions of dollars of federal funding due to these alleged Title six violations of antisemitism. And Trump has created this, a multi-agency quote, task force to combat antisemitism that's made these kinds of unsupported allegations. and the lack of support of the allegations violates the First Amendment. and academic freedom. But it also means that the OCR is not following the due process that's provided under Title vi. It's not going through investigations. It's not, finding evidence, it's just simply making kind of wholesale, allegations. And one of the things that's very important to point out is that in the lawsuit brought by the a AAUP, the AAUP chapter of Harvard and Harvard, university itself against the Trump administration about the cutting off of Harvard's, federal funds, by the Trump administration, that the district court in that case, judge Burrows found that it was appropriate and she, she ordered a permanent injunction against the Trump administration's withholding of federal funds from Harvard. And I just wanna quote, what she says, and I'll just quote a, a very small part of it where she said that. The fact that defendants, swift, defendants being the Trump administration, swift, and sudden decision to terminate funding ostensibly motivated by antisemitism, was made before the government learned anything about antisemitism on campus or what was being done in response. And she says then that this leads her the court to conclude that the sudden focus on antisemitism was at best, arbitrary, and at worst, pretextual, the government initiated onslaught against Harvard with much, much more about promoting a governmental orthodoxy in violation of the First Amendment, than about anything else including fighting antisemitism. And so, uh, we have recommendations that we're making that we've made at the end of the report and we'll return to that later. But now I'll, I'll turn it over to Rana to continue this discussion about the, uh, misuse of Title six. Thanks.

Rana Jaleel 9:59

Thank you, Risa. I'm gonna talk about Title VI and DEI together to discuss, attacks on the established concept of discrimination and how these things are fitting together. So federal agencies are redefining title VI discrimination to mean that the imagined harm that non-protected groups suffer as a result of institutional, um, actions to increase equality. That's how they're redefining discrimination. And as DEI, diversity and equity inclusion efforts, perversely become the face of discrimination. The Trump administration has opportunistically leveraged charges of antisemitism as a cover for dismantling the Civil rights project as a whole, both on campus and off of it. The implications of this maneuver, have really profound consequences as the report details about what is acceptable to know, to teach, to think, and to do on college and university campuses. So as we write in our report, as committee writes in the new report, and this is a quote, the Trump administration's attempt to unmake the Civil Rights Act by hijacking the language of discrimination is nothing less than an attempt to rewrite the history of the nation. So how are they doing this? Well, building on Trump's executive orders attacking DEI programs, on February 14th, 2025, the office for, uh, civil Rights issued. A Dear colleague letter. Dear Colleague, letters are administrative guidance. They're not binding law, And that Dear Colleague letter declares its intent to launch broad Title six investigations of colleges and universities', DEI programs. And they characterize these programs as quote, stigmatizing students that belong to particular racial groups end quote, based on, quote, crude racial stereotypes that teach that students of those racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. So, OCR R'S Dear Colleague Letter is aimed at shielding non-protected students, white students, from DEI programs that address the moral responsibility to expand access to all members of the public, to higher education and other opportunities in society. For the moment, at least OCR will not implement that Dear Colleague letter in the accompanying FAQs, due to a federal district court's preliminary injunction issued on April 24th and the NEA versus the US Department of Education. Now that injunction was issued on the likelihood that plaintiffs will win their claim that the Dear Colleague letter in the faq violate the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment. But even without such enforcement measures, Trump and OCR'S attacks on DEI constitute dog whistle politics as quote, an integral part of the partisan political playbook to turn back the clock on advances that have been made towards the goal of diversity in faculty, the student body and in areas of study end quote, that's a quote from the AAUP's committee, A statement, diversity, equity Inclusion Criteria for Faculty Evaluation. We wrote that, I believe. 2023 and it came out in 2024. But as that statement further explains, and this is a kind of long quote, but I think it's worth quoting In full, it's crucial to consider how attacks on DEI can easily reinforce and indeed fuel portrayals of entire field and disciplines, including ethnic studies, critical race theory, and gender studies as political and ideological projects and not serious subjects of research, So when entire fields and subjects related to the study of race and gender, for example, are not considered intellectual pursuits, both academic freedom and DEI social institutional values or compromised, and the charge of orthodoxy gains purchase. This not only affects the fields and subjects traditionally, targetted as ideological, but also compromises the progress of knowledge by thwarting interdisciplinary exchange and endangering the very mission of higher education. So, you know, given this higher ed should be taking a principled stand. But it's mostly not. So I'm gonna talk a little bit about how universities are responding, and I'm gonna try and keep it a little brief. But in many instances, what we're seeing are the college and the universities engaging in anticipatory obedience. We have a statement on that out as well. Anticipatory obedience is taking conciliatory actions based simply on fear of a Title six egal of allegation being made or of the consequences of the extortion that Risa was talking about. In other instances, universities capitulated to federal agency demands to enter agreements to make such institutional changes despite a lack of evidence of discrimination and the Federal agency's failure to follow any Title Six due process requirements, But despite the call by faculty, students and staff, and by organizations like the AAUP for collective action, colleges and university administrations have opted for a very indivi individualistic approach to these Title six allegations, which has led them to compromise and capitulate on principles that are fundamental to the university, fulfilling its public mission. Things like university independence, faculty, academic freedom and job security, faculty, student and staff, self-governance, freedom of expression for faculty, students, and staff, and due process and disciplinary proceedings. Acting collectively, colleges and universities could gain power by forging alliances with each other, with faculty, students and staff, and with the AAUP and other professional organizations and unions to fight effectively for these principles in the future of higher education. looking to strike an individual deal, however, strikes at the heart of what makes education meaningful in a democratic society. And that's the free exchange of of ideas that's protecting academic programs and areas of inquiry and not capitulating, when there's no evidence and there's no, and there's no real reason to other than the kind of threats that people are getting and the universities are getting. But rather than joining lawsuits as Harvard did or filing separate legal challenges, some universities, and that includes, there's a list of them, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University. many universities in the uc system have reached deals with the Trump administration, despite the absence of any finding of title VI discrimination. Further, these deals include measures that go beyond lawful remedies under Title VI, including university capitulation to make institutional changes and programs, curricula, admissions, and hiring. And to agree to external monitoring. Columbia is the most notorious for its July 24th, 2025 deal made immediately after suspending or expelling students for participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Under the agreement, which Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, describes as an excellent template for other universities unquote. Columbia agreed to pay 200 million to the US government, plus 21 million to an EEOC claims fund in exchange for the government's restoration of$400 million in grant funds. And closing, pending Title six and Title VII investigations or compliance reviews. The agreement formalizes, its earlier, capitulation to change academic programming and its code of conduct and discipline. And this is really, you know, this is really important because this is an overreach of what any remedy to Title vi would be. with additional provisions agreeing to. First, adopt the, uh, the IRA definition of antisemitism. Two to read to structure programs and hiring and regional and area studies starting with the Middle East. three, to decrease international student enrollment. Four to oversight, then external resolution monitor to ensure compliance with the agreement, including that hiring and admissions don't provoke, quote, unlawful DEI goals. And I'm either on five or six now. Establish processes to ensure all students commit to longstanding traditions and fundamental values as determined by the resolution monitor. So as committee A noted in a statement in response to the initial attacks on Columbia, implicit in these concessions is an unfounded assumption that critical scholarship in this case on Middle East, south Asia, and Africa produces antisemitism. The report again insists that allegations of discrimination must not be used to undermine entire bodies of knowledge, demonize student, staff, faculty, protest, undercut or eliminate shared governance or otherwise destroy the possibility of democratic higher education. And the position we take is one that the AAUP has long taken, which is, especially in times of controversy, campus anti-discrimination effort efforts, demand renewed and explicit dedication to the principles of academic freedom, shared governance, and free expression. Faculty have to remain stewards of knowledge for the good of the public. And that means all of the public, not those who would deny or opportunistically exploit the complexities and the difficulties of free inquiry to suit their interest alone. Um, and on that, I'm gonna pass it back over to Risa to talk about the recommendations that we make at the reports in that respond to some of these problems that we've outlined.

Risa Lieberwitz 17:55

Great. Thanks Rana. and before getting into the specific recommendations, I just wanna note, how active A AAUP has been in, opposing this overreach and extortion and coercion by the Trump administration. this is, this is a huge fight that we're in. We all know that. and that kind of of activity by the AAUP and other organizations and unions has been so important. And the key to all of this is that we have to act collectively. faculty needs to act collectively and make alliances with our students and our staff, and many of us are doing that on our campuses, through our AAUP chapters and other organizations, and also, of course, nationally we're doing that. and it's also important that university administrations and governing boards join into that kind of collective effort instead of as, as Rana was, explaining, acting in this kind of individualistic way, including by, capitulating to general allegations. And so to combat that, our recommendations include stating that faculty administrations and governing boards must refuse to comply with unlawful, federal government demands based on Title VI investigations that impinge on the higher education, institutions, autonomy, institutional autonomy, faculty, academic freedom, including governance issues, student academic freedom and freedom of expression of faculty members, students and staff. we call on administrations and governing boards to publicly affirm that they will commit to defending academic freedom in all of its broad aspects, and to support the faculty members who are under attack. It's, it's essential that administrators, administrations and governing boards of universities and colleges respect governance on campus, including faculty governance through senates, through collective bargaining, and other kinds of, procedural safeguards that are part of policies of universities. the anticipatory obedience problem is a huge one, and we call on, faculty and administrations and governing boards to refuse to and to simply cease from engaging in anticipatory obedience. We shouldn't be bending the knee to, these kinds of unconstitutional and unlawful demands from, the Trump administration and certainly shouldn't be doing that. in anticipation of such demands. we also call on support for international faculty members, staff, and students who have been subject to or threatened by governmental, discipline or threatened or actual deportation. administrations and governing boards need to step up to do more in that way. And we also call on administrators, and governing boards to reject the overly broad definitions of antisemitism, including the IHRA definition and include alternate formulations to address antisemitism. And that would include the Jerusalem Declaration on antisemitism. So with that, I I thank you. we hope that you'll read our title VI report and we really look forward to hearing from you.

Vineeta Singh 21:27

Thank you to Rana Jaleel and Risa Liebowitz and the A A UP team for allowing us to use that excerpt from their webinar. With that high level overview in mind, we're now gonna switch to a conversation where I got to speak with four amazing academics whose lives have been deeply impacted by abuses of Title vi. So if the webinar was a top down overview of what's going on here, we're gonna get a bottom up report from the grassroots. Thank you so much for joining us today. Can we start by having everyone quickly introduce themselves so that our listeners can put a

22:07

Voice.

Vineeta Singh 22:09

to a name?

Anna Feder 22:11

hi, I'm Anna Feder. I am, working with the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom at the AAUP, on a, project documenting, the cases of faculty facing repression for their advocacy around Palestine. And so, most of the people that I interviewed, were dealing with Title six investigations, um, sometimes multiple Title six investigations. and, uh, those folks are also connected to the Palestine Anti Repression Network. and that larger network also has, a lot of faculty and staff, who have had experience with the weaponization of Title vi.

Andrea Brower 22:50

Hi. my name is Andrea Brower. I was a professor of sociology at Gonzaga University and assistant professor. I was the lead instructor of a solidarity and social justice program. I recently resigned following years of harassment for my Palestine solidarity activism.

Judith Norman 23:11

And I am, Judith Norman. I am a professor and chair in the Department of Philosophy at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I teach mainly history of philosophy, and my teaching and research are only, uh, tangentially and occasionally related to Palestine. But I've been, uh, active outside of the university in Jewish Voice for peace and San Antonio, for Justice and Palestine. and I've supported student, events. inside the university. I've put on Palestine related events, at the university. Um, I'm the faculty chair for Students for Justice in Palestine, and I have faced two rounds of Title six complaints in the past two years.

Vineeta Singh 23:59

Well, thank you all for being with us today. I'd love to start by asking you to help us connect what we've heard

24:07

from the AAUP webinar on the new

Vineeta Singh 24:09

Title six report to your own experiences in the academy, and help us understand the relationship between Title VI and the Palestine exception. I.

Andrea Brower 24:21

I think it's important to first say that. Academic and wider repression on the topic of Palestine has been occurring since long before 2023 and lockstep with the longer war on Palestine. And there are many layered reasons for this, including a very coordinated infrastructure to attack Palestine solidarity work. One of the things I wanna name about this that I don't think is named enough is that to stand for Palestinian life is fundamentally to go up against racist, capitalist empire. control of Palestine and the wider Middle East is very much at the heart of the Western Imperial Capitalist Project, which of course also has everything to do with the racial racialization and dehumanization of Palestinians, the anti Palestinian racism and Islamophobia that sustain and rationalize really western hegemony in the Middle East. So, because Palestinian liberation actually puts one into conflict with the racist Imperial capitalist project, backlash to that movement is very severe and tends to garner broad support from the right wing, the far right and liberals alike, which is all part of what gets called the Palestine exception, right? The ways in which, and the reasons why advocating for speaking about participating in struggle for Palestinian humanity faces really exceptional forms of repression. So in regards to Title vi, opponents of a Free Palestine have long charge that pro-Palestine activities on US college campuses violate the anti-discrimination statute of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because they harm Jewish students and faculty. up until more recently, the cornerstone of this campaign has been harassment, character, slander, charging Palestine, solidarity activists with antisemitism, right, which rests on a definition of antisemitism as including critique of Israel. What we've seen since October, 2023 is That Title VI has been central to the attempt to silence dissent and on on campuses. Jewish students and faculty were actually not covered under the law until 2004. And while I do think protecting any structurally marginalized group from actual discrimination is very important, what we've seen is that a number of, vehemently pro-Israel pro- occupation, pro- apartheid groups have been filing civil rights complaints against speech and activism for basic Palestinian human dignity and equality. In the past, many of these attempts were unsuccessful, but pro-Israel actors have continued to kind of file them as a way to just generate bad publicity, even when they do not succeed legally. So this anti Palestinian Title Six Strategy intensified during the first Trump presidency at the same time that the Trump administration issued an Executive order directing federal agencies that enforce Title VI to also consider how they could incorporate the controversial, um, international Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the IHRA definition of antisemitism in their work. So the IHRA definition infamously, classifies much criticism of Israel as antisemitism. So when the IHRA definition was, beginning to be enshrined in law by the first Trump administration. Biden did not, revoke, Trump's first term executive order that conflated antisemitism and critique of Israel, which really left Title VI on the table as a potential instrument of repression. So as Palestine solidarity activism ramped up in 2023 and 2024, anti Palestinian groups turned heavily to use Title vi. And since 2023, the federal government has launched 99 antisemitism investigations into universities. With a steep increase following Trump's inauguration, and we've seen much better covered in the media how leading universities have already, reached settlements with the Trump administration over these allegations, including millions in payouts, a slew of draconian anti protests, surveillance, and other measure measures on campus that essentially aim to annihilate dissent. But parallel to this, what we haven't really heard as much about in the media and what both Judith and I faced, was that individual faculty are also being targeted by both their universities and from the outside and being subjected to internal investigations. And one of the main ways to measure the scale of this is that in recent months, universities have rushed to hire Title six coordinators to handle a surge of claims that have been raised against faculty members. There's an entire apparatus really, that has been constructed to coordinate these political attacks. It's a highly resourced effort with groups like Stand With Us, the Anti-Defamation League, Hillel, the Brandeis Center, all offering support to do things like file so-called discrimination complaints. complaints are often being filed or initiated by individuals or organizations that have absolutely no connection to the school in question. Anybody can file a complaint. Zachary Marshall, the editor of the Reactionary website, campus Reform, has alone filed dozens of these at multiple schools. And I actually think Judith story is really a great example of this sort of coordinated attack from the outside.

Judith Norman 29:53

I really appreciate that, and thank you so much for that, really rich and full and well contextualized, introduction, Andrea, and bringing in the conception. I mean, this is about, colonialism and uh, there's just really sort of broad values at the heart of this. and with that in mind, the Palestine exception is sort of, if you just shut up Palestine, we can do a lot of other things, right? that's often resisted with the notion that Palestine is somehow instrumental. You know, it's the test balloon, and if we allow for, the infrastructure of repression to be developed in the case of Palestine, they'll be coming for other things. it is true, but Palestine in itself matters. Even if it's just Palestine. we have a responsibility to, stand up, and, and speak out for that. If you don't have free speech on one thing, you don't have free speech. And I think somehow with the idea that it can be negotiated, we can find compromises in here. Palestine gets thrown under the bus, and that, is to be resisted. we can't compromise on Palestine. we're compromising on our own humanity if we do so. the other thing I wanted to point out is that as, title six is, weaponized something that I've seen in my case and, my cases and a number of other cases is, uh, Jewish students' sense of discomfort is weaponized too. something that I've heard in a number of Title six cases, and it's also true in mine, is that some of the, leadership, in, uh, weaponizing Title VI will, take the time to cultivate feelings of insecurity and danger in Jewish students. I mean, these are the fulcrum, right? They can't, the accusation is that we're making Jewish students feel unsafe. and in order to do that, Jewish students need to report feeling unsafe, right? And that takes that, that, that has to be manufactured too. That has to be manufactured first. I mean, in Texas, and I believe recently in California, we're seeing Holocaust education sort of brought in as you know, not I'm all for Holocaust education, but being brought in not, as memory or memorialization or even information, but as retraumatization, you know, for the sake of, encouraging Jewish students to feel like, that they have a lack of safety, which is tied to Holocaust, which is, continues with the Palestine movement. All that has to be manufactured because it's not, it's not true, right? it's a false narrative. it takes some effort to put it together. but it's been carefully put together. It's being carefully cultivated by groups like Hillel, and the Academic Engagement Network and some of the groups that Andrea mentioned. a component of this, and I know, Maura Finkelstein, mentioned in terms of her case, which is also the case with me, is, The director of Hillel went around showing Jewish students a Facebook post that I had posted and said, don't you feel threatened by this? Don't you feel threatened by this? And apparently some of them were sort of like, I don't, I don't wanna see that, right? If I'm gonna feel threatened, I don't wanna see that. And that's, if I were to put a name to that tactic, it's, um, putting Jewish students in danger, right? And they're putting Jewish students in danger in order to, make the argument that we're putting Jewish students in danger. It's all just so messed up. so as soon as you start to scratch some of the logic here, you don't, get anything very impressive. You just get, This sort of paradoxical nonsense.

Vineeta Singh 33:26

That's such a helpful framing, Judith. I think, um, often the way that we think about Title VI and Title IX and any of the sort of workplace, um, issues that might go through something like an Ombudsman's office, we tend to think of them as being somehow internal to the university. And of course, that's a very simplistic assumption anyhow, right, that we can draw these clear lines between the university and the rest of the world. And so your explanation really brings out how there isn't that clear delineation, right? But then can we also talk about why the university is such a battleground and such a focus for these, um, quote unquote outside ideological actors?

Judith Norman 34:04

Well. maybe I could just say I, I don't think the universities really care about Jewish students or, or anyone in, in, in particular. I don't know that there's a sense of a particular, fealty to, anti-discrimination. I, I'm Jewish and I'm being dangered, so, clearly, you know, Judaism is not, something that the university is concerned to protect. I mean, universities have become competitors for a consumer market, and it means that their brand and their donor base, Are really vital for their continuing functioning. and, uh, the business model is that sort of like grips onto universities with ever greater intensity. it just exacerbates these sets of values. and so, to, uh, get, attention from, the Biden administration, the Trump administration, in my case, the Abbott administration to, get negative political attention scares away donors. it reduces brand value. and so I think universities might just be trying to do whatever it takes to, minimize these reputational and potentially financial damages.

Andrea Brower 35:10

Maybe could I just add according to the AAUP in 2023, about 32% of faculty members held full-time tenured or tenure track appointments, which is, this is compared with over half in the eighties. And a good chunk of that 32% isn't actually tenured yet. So that leaves 68% of faculty. The vast majority are contingent faculty, and in associate colleges this is around 83%, So the vast majority faculty are contingent. And this decades long making of a precarious, highly insecure, underemployed, underpaid, highly exploited class of academic workers goes hand in hand with the vulnerability of free thought and speech and dissent on campuses today. Because if over two thirds of your faculty can simply have their contracts unrenewed with zero recourse for saying something about university partnerships with weapons manufacturers or investments in genocide or critiquing reactionary movements or anything for that matter, right, that that administrators don't like, or administrators are simply afraid of their faculty talking about you've really created a structure of silencing, right? A systematic compulsion for compliance and obedience, which of course erodes the truth and it erodes academic rigor and more say, against the grain liberatory thinking, which is really the best of what universities have to offer because universities aren't necessarily sites of emancipatory thinking and progressive advancement of the intellectual project, right? Universities can be institutions that merely reproduce dominant thought and ideology and reproduce ideas that support horrific inequalities they reproduce class relationships, right? The already wealthy get the degrees that keep them in the higher class positions. So universities are also sites that mirror and even exacerbate the wider inequalities in our world, but we know they can also be something else. They can be places where people unthink, dominant ideology where we learn to think critically about the operation of society and imagine other ways forward There are places that foster resistance, which is what we really saw in 2024, and this is precisely why they are so under attack, by reactionary and fascist forces who are, I think, attempting to eradicate the more peripheral but the more liberatory elements of universities. and that's what we really need to fight to defend right now. We don't need universities for university's sake. Um, if we're not struggling for like the best, the most honest, the most rigorous and critical of what we have to offer, I don't know what we're actually preserving within higher ed.

Vineeta Singh 37:45

Andrea, that's such an amazing point. And I think something that keeps coming up in these conversations with, uh, academic freedom on the line, right? That we're not fighting to defend universities for university's sake. Right. But what we're fighting for is for the university as a condition of possibility for radical studying and the imagination of ways of being with each other that don't just reproduce the university. Um, and the larger status quo that it's. Embedded in. Right. And Anna, that makes me think of, the students and, uh, the encampment, I believe it's called the People's University, the encampment at Emerson. And I'm thinking about, you know, the kinds of studying that were happening through those socialities, right. And protest as a pedagogical tool or a pedagogical approach. I wonder if that's something that resonates with you at all. I.

Anna Feder 38:39

Yeah, and I wanna talk too about these sort of, universities and colleges reproducing these sort of hierarchies and these hierarchies of course, exist in the institution. I'm speaking as somebody who was staff, and also contingent faculty. and, my position, terminated by the institution. not without some pushback. I was in a union, but I think one of the things that these institutions fear is the breaking down of these hierarchies. And that's really what the encampment was. It was a place where staff, students, faculty, alumni, community members all came together Um, and my role at Emerson, I ran a, a film series, with a very strong social justice focus. And one of the things that, that led to my termination, I believe was screening of this film israelism, which actually shows what Judith is talking about. You know, the ways in which, Jewish students are, their discomfort, their supposed lack of safety how that apparatus works. That's what the film is about. uh, on my campus at Emerson, which is their marketing, their brand is very much around social justice. this is a progressive campus and, and it's a campus that, is about training artists and communicators. I mean, it's sort of known as a communication school, and I was housed within the Visual Media Arts Department, which is the largest, it's actually now a school, um, where almost half of the students, are in that major. And it's, cinematography and producing and film production and, they didn't just, get rid of me. They got rid of the whole film series and the series wasn't just, showing these films. It was a, a site of conversation, where we'd have these 45 minute conversations and it wasn't just students there, it wasn't just faculty, it was the whole community coming together and to have this space where, where folks could have these conversations. And so, initially I I was made to postpone the film. I was supposed to show it in November of 2023, and I was made to postpone it to, February of 2024. That was the first opportunity the institution allowed me to show the film. And at that point, they had shut down all conversations on Palestine. None of them were allowed to happen officially on campus, or even on a virtual platform, until that screening happened. And then after that, you know, they, they couldn't, run with this narrative that these conversations are sites of, attacks on safety. and then, bringing into this conversation this, is this really for, Jewish, safety I'm Jewish. I was the advisor of an anti-Zionist Jewish group called Jews Against Zionism. and they were, some of the first violently arrested, um, when the encampment was dismantled. So, you know, anything we can do to push back or challenge this idea that this is at all for Jewish safety, either Jewish students, Jewish faculty, Jewish staff.

Judith Norman 41:32

one of the complaints and one of my title sixes also, um, uh, gestured to me having brought Israelism onto campus, which is actually false. I was the one that brought it onto campus. I didn't even know about it. But,

Vineeta Singh 41:45

but actually, Judith, could you tell us a little bit about what Israelism is for, um, folks who haven't heard about it before?

Judith Norman 41:51

Oh, yeah. Just as Anna was saying, it. It's a spectacular film about, a woman finding her way out of a sort of Zionist, exclusive education into discovering how within her Jewish identity she could show up, on behalf of sort of Palestinian liberation. it's, to put it strongly, digging your way out of like the propaganda that goes into a Zionist Jewish education and the capture of Jewish identity for Zionism.

Vineeta Singh 42:21

And so sort of unlearning the common senses that you've kind of uncritically inherited just from being around, which I think is a big part of, ideal university education, right, is this is a time for you to rethink all the common sense, ideas that you might have accrued over, over a lifetime and really critically analyze them.

Judith Norman 42:39

Absolutely. And, um, I love the co way the conversation is going, that there's, as Andrea suggested, there's two functions of the university. One is sort of to reproduce traditional hierarchies of power, but you know, And, uh, in all its slogans, the university talks about liberation and, academic freedom and, uh, inquiry and radical unlearning. and there's a sense in which the students have taken that, that seriously, right? They've taken the slogan seriously. I'm here to, you know, think beyond the confines of my traditional upbringing. I'm here to sort of, uh, call into question, traditional power structures. And the universities are like, no. Right? Like, coming down on that.

Anna Feder 43:20

So that's the whole idea behind the People's University is to, is to fill the void where these institutions are failing in that mission. And so the students, at Emerson, spent months trying to work within the institution, trying to have these conversations, And they weren't, they weren't allowed to have these conversations. So that's what the People's University was. It's an intervention. It's the students having an intervention saying the institution is failing in what they say their mission is, what they say in their marketing and, and so we are gonna take that upon ourselves. We are going to create this space, to have the kind of, inquiry, dialogue that you all say we're supposed to be having in this institution, but are not,

Andrea Brower 44:05

I know we're sort of focused on on title six, but Title six six is just one tactic in a web of strategies to shut down both the Palestine solidarity movement and liberatory critical thinking on campuses most generally. I just wanna name some of those strategies of repression, right? Um, that kind of intersect with Title vi. And, many of these things we already know, but if if you're not on a university campus, they might come as a surprise. Right? So, of course, most violently administrators calling upon cops, um, to attack peaceful student protestors, state violence that we haven't seen used against students since Vietnam War protests. the deporting imprisoning disappearing of campus-based Palestine solidarity activists. another strategy that is directly assaulting the livelihoods of Palestine solidarity activists is, Employment retaliation. So we are all part of a network of many scholars who have been repressed for their Palestine speech and activism. The Middle East Studies Association has identified 61 clear cases in higher ed of direct employment retaliation for Palestine advocacy since October, 2023. So this is terminations, forced resignations, suspensions, rescinded job offers. I actually believe the numbers are much higher, that retaliation is highly under-reported because many things are taking place quietly. Many people are very isolated and scared, and that is the intent. Many people are instructed by their universities to remain silent and their, their jobs, their prospects for future employment, their safety are, are all at stake. Some people have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreement. And then as we talked about with something like not renewing an adjunct or lecture contract or a disguised layoff like happened to Anna, it can be more difficult to definitively prove that somebody has been retaliated against for their advocacy. So the MESA numbers don't, get at all of that. They don't get at the well-documented hundreds of students that have faced similar direct retaliation like suspensions. Um, they're just faculty and staff. And then there are dozens of similar instances of retaliation that have been documented in K through 12 education as well. But in addition to all of this very direct violent, retaliation employment retaliation. there's a lot more that is not being seen by the outside, right? There's canceled educational events, canceled films and speakers, canceled publications, entire issues of academic journals being canceled, the canceling of classes on the topic of Palestine, people having their teaching increasingly monitored. students being denied enrollment because they refuse to engage in propaganda trainings that justify the Israeli occupation project. people being instructed to take signs off their doors and desks. I know people who have been instructed not to wear keffiyahs on campus. There's the harassment, there's the doxing, and it's just the wider atmosphere of silence that's being manufactured via retaliation and repression and the internalizing of all this repression, right? There is an intense chilling effect of all of this, um, innumerable ways that public discourse and thought about Palestine and Israel gets. Severely narrowed severely, highly scripted, infused with fear. And that fear is very, very, palatable on university campuses, which of course is also related to the wider crackdown on critical social thought conversations about race, gender, real history, climate change, quite literally anything. Right. That is pushing back on reactionary ideology.

Judith Norman 47:42

Yeah, it's related to that, but also Andrea, I wanna sort of point out the specificity, right? Mm-hmm. we have a sort of like, um, an ideological climate that's been constructed over decades where Israel is beleaguered, where Jews are victims, where Palestinians in particular, Muslims in general, Arabs in more general are somehow dangerous. Right. We have that like background, that's been like viciously constructed and when events like these, that name Israel, that name Palestine, are construed as dangerous and you know, it's like risk management at my university just goes nuts. Then it reinforces the set of prejudices that this context draws from and adds to, right. That Jews are in danger, that Palestinians are dangerous, the sort of like veneer of sort of danger or lack of safety or, don't go there around these events is Islamophobic, it contributes to the construction of Muslims, Palestinians, Arabs as somehow sort of like scary, dangerous, antisemitic.

Andrea Brower 48:49

Absolute, absolutely. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Anna.

Anna Feder 48:53

Okay. I was gonna say, so at Emerson, a week after they announced that they were closing my program, and they were, laying me off, quote unquote, they announced, uh, protest policy that, you know, is, uh, absurd. You know, students have to reserve a room 10 days in advance and they'll get an empty room to protest in. And they talk about their, collaboration. They're expanding their relationship with Hillel, working with the, academic engagement network, with the A DL. and then they mention this, this is all to, you know, to, to deal with the, the problem of antisemitism. They, and then in the same breath, they say, oh yes, and Islamophobia is a thing. And we will develop partnerships sometime in the future for that. So I think it's really important to center that, that this isn't just, weaponization of Title vi, um, to silence, critics of Israel, to protect quote unquote, Jewish students, faculty, staff. but that it is, that is actively choosing. this group for special protection and very obviously excluding the safety of, Palestinian students. We had Palestinian students and faculty at Emerson. and of course, Muslim students, faculty, staff, Arab students, faculty, staff, and that all of this is, weaponizing title vi supposedly to protect one class, but very much about punishing another group that is supposed to be protected.

Andrea Brower 50:19

Absolutely, and I think it's really important to call this what it is, right? Like these are this use of Title six, this wider Repression. It is anti Palestinian, right? It, these are anti Palestinian attacks and we need to call them that because when standing for Palestinian humanity and freedom is categorically described as antisemitism, it really obscures the anti Palestinian bias that is operating within these attacks. and of course this has been going on for decades as we've kind of already situated, and also for many months before Trump even took office, nearly daily reports were rolling in of students and professors on trial for their activism, for Palestinian life, right? Professors were already being fired, students were already being suspended. This was all already being normalized. And of course. All of it has gotten far more extreme and we need to pay attention to what is actually different in this moment. But, and it's a really important, but because it shines light towards the deeper roots of the problem, it was largely liberal actors and liberal ideology that were already paving the way for these fascist attacks and higher education, right? Liberal ideology that fits far too comfortably in an extraordinarily brutal capitalist world. Order accepts the Palestine exception. and liberal ideology, and I'm really pointing fingers at administrators here that clinging to notions of stability and civility over justice and dissent, and it's incredibly telling of where profit driven capitalist higher education has taken us that just before a regime that was clearly aiming for authoritarianism took over, it was universities themselves that were already deciding to do things like severely punish peaceful student protestors, go after their own faculty. essentially ban protest as, as Anna was talking about, over a hundred campuses, including Emerson and mine, Gonzaga instituted draconian anti protest policy in the fall of 2024. And the language in these anti protest policies, which was all remarkably similar, looks like it was pulled straight from some of the architects of Project 2025, the American Council of Trustees. So there were already these partnerships between our liberal administrators, our boards of directors, which were all, you know, ruled by CEOs and a fascist aspiring regime.

Vineeta Singh 52:39

So what, what should we be paying attention to right now? What can we, uh, be working on? Where, what, what should we do?

Judith Norman 52:50

I think that the way for people to advance in this conversation isn't to listen to more university professors, I'm sorry, but to sort of like, uh, pay attention to what people in Palestine are saying about their situation, um, and to, to think about like Jewish Voice for Peace is a great organization. Um, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, some of these, Palestine centered organizations, will give a sense of what needs to be done right materially on the ground in terms of organizing. So I would encourage people to sort of like listen to those voices and think about and hear what they're saying about, um, what liberation means.

Anna Feder 53:36

so I'm a, a documentary filmmaker and, um, and an exhibitor, a cinema exhibitor. And, so my homework is usually about watching films, um, but watching films in community, watching films and having conversations about them watching films and turning that into action. Um, but a couple, uh, to recommend, of course, Israelism is a really good place to start if people wanna understand The meshing of the American Jewish identity and Zionist identity, and how people can sort of untangle that. Um, but then there were two other films that I was really encouraging student activists watch, that came out in the last few years. One is called The Unmaking of a College, and it's about, the students who, occupied the president's office at Hampshire College, and were successful in thwarting an attempt to sell out Hampshire College, to UMass Amherst, and I think that it's, I mean, it has nothing to do with Palestine, but I think for students to see what's possible, you know, and anyone to see what's possible, what happens when you organize and what you can achieve. and then another one is a film called The Five Demands. it's about the takeover and shutdown of the campus for the City College of New York in 1968. That was part of my lineup, when the institution announced that they were, you know, closing my program. so I'm always encourage people to see these films that show us what's possible when we organize, um, and then to have conversations around it and then to use that energy to mobilize for action.

Andrea Brower 55:04

I, I think, you know, my concluding thoughts about all of it really come back to like, organize and don't, don't comply. Um, Maybe we should not be so surprised given what we know of universities and our administrators and everything we've been talking about this entire. Um, conversation, but we look at what is happening with, with just kind of widespread compliance, right? Take the recent example of UC Berkeley credited as the home of this free speech movement, and Berkeley alone sharing 160 names of students and faculty with the Trump administration as part of an investigation targeting Palestine solidarity activists. And this list includes international students that we know are highly vulnerable right now to attacks from the federal government. And just like what is happening elsewhere, as university administrators kind of succumb to the fascist agenda, the university's normal procedures for handling the complaint were completely suspended and the accused students and faculty were stripped of their basic rights to respond to the claims or even to get information about the allegations. And Berkeley's response to criticism of this was, well, we're subject to oversight by the government and we have to fulfill our legal obligations. No! Compliance with authoritarians is not the answer, right? You cannot appease fascists. Compliance is what is bringing us towards full throttle fascism and the fascists themselves are not, quote unquote, following the law in this. It's a very weak excuse for, for Berkeley to hide behind in their compliance and complicity. So I think we really need to understand that the current administration's crackdown on critical thought and dissent at university campuses is part of a much wider reactionary attempt to purge any and all critical thought roadblocks to the, to their agenda from all media, from all education, from the courts, from political parties, from the arts, from society at large, um, and hand in hand with this, that the crack down on Palestine solidarity movement and activism is part of bulldozing the way for more authoritarian attacks. So while the Palestine solidarity movement is one of the front lines of this, the authoritarian aim is to crush all dissent and to make an enemy of all struggles that stand in the way of tyranny and oligarchy. And we, we talk a lot in academia about intersectionality of oppression, right? But we're really gonna need to grow our movement's ability to engage in intersectionality of struggle because our movements are, are deeply connected and repression of any movement for liberation and peace and humanity, and is an assault on all of our movements for, for peace and, and liberation and humanity. And the response can only be collective courage and collective organizing and collective movements for our collective liberation. Right? It's time to organize, organize, organize.

Judith Norman 57:57

Yeah. Uh, this is really very much a coda, but, I mean, I grew up, I had a Jewish education, but all this sort of like holocaust memory stuff, you know, just imagining yourself, if the Nazis came this, I'd hide the Jews, you know, I'd do this and that. I, I think, a typical us uh, educational childhood involves sort of like a lot of, um, uh, Holocaust narratives and imagining yourself as, you know, on the side of the resistance. Um, so I feel there's been a lot of practice there and something's gone wrong with Holocaust education if we can have learned about all this, and it's supposed to be never again, if we can have learned about all this and somehow we still don't know. Right. Uh, and I do think it goes back a bit to the Title six conversation. you know, never again has just meant never again for Jews in this sort of Zionist captured way. And so what we are supposed to have learned from Holocaust education, which was, you know, how to resist fascism, how to imagine ourselves there, all this preparation, um, has, has, hasn't worked. Um, and that's, um, that's horrible.

Vineeta Singh 59:14

That's it for our conversation today. Thank you to all my guests for speaking with me and to you for listening to our conversation. I hope we're leaving you with a clear idea that the purpose of Title VI, as it was originally envisioned, was to protect people. We're calling What's going on right now, the weaponization of Title vi because it's actually being used against a group of people rather than protecting anyone. We understand that this has everything to do with the political economy of the university, with the material conditions of employment, of the people who work in these institutions and who are being targeted for their speech. We understand that college students find themselves in the headlines and find themselves being targeted because they're seen as a threat to the reproduction of the social order. If you'd like to learn more, please do read the A A UP report on Title six, discrimination and Academic Freedom Linked In the show notes for this episode. We've also got links to help you watch Israelism to follow Palestinian calls for action, and to organize on campus and beyond. Thank you for listening to this episode of Academic Freedom on the Line. I'm Vineeta Singh. We've got another episode in this special series, but we're working on other ways for us to keep studying together, so please stay tuned.