Is This the End of Academic Freedom?

NYT OPINION: Is This the End of Academic Freedom?
By Paula Chakravartty and Vasuki Nesiah
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: April 5, 2024 at 03:00AM

Silencing pro-Palestinian speech and action sets a dangerous precedent.

​At New York University, the spring semester began with a poetry reading. Students and faculty gathered in the atrium of Bobst Library. At that time, about 26,000 Palestinians had already been killed in Israel’s horrific war on Gaza; the reading was a collective act of bearing witness. The last poem read aloud was titled “If I Must Die.” It was written, hauntingly, by a Palestinian poet and academic named Refaat Alareer who was killed weeks earlier by an Israeli airstrike. The poem ends: “If I must die, let it bring hope — let it be a tale.” Soon after those lines were recited, the university administration shut the reading down. Afterward, we learned that students and faculty members were called into disciplinary meetings for participating in this apparently “disruptive” act; written warnings were issued. We have both taught at N.Y.U. for over a decade and believe we are in a moment of unparalleled repression. Over the past six months, since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, we have seen the university administration fail to adequately protect dissent on campus, actively squelching it instead. We believe what we are witnessing in response to student, staff and faculty opposition to the war violates the very foundations of academic freedom.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/05/opinion/free-speech-academic-freedom.html?partner=IFTTT