By censoring and banning the speech of supporters of Palestinian national rights, CUNY administration is sending a clear message: pro-Palestinian ideas are a dangerous threat that must be silenced.
With their attempts to thwart a Nakba day event and erase commencement speeches from the internet, CUNY experienced its own version of the drama that had taken place only days earlier in Washington D.C., with Hunter College and “progressive” CUNY Law administrators playing the role of little Kevin McCarthys.
Although a section of the Right in recent years has advanced its program in the university under the guise of defending free speech, the widespread acceptance of institutional prohibitions on pro-Palestinian speech exposes the ruse. Speech that challenges dominant beliefs, such as those central to US foreign policy, is not considered deserving of protection.
The forces calling for censorship and repression at CUNY rely on a core Zionist myth to bolster their project: that pro-Palestinian speech equals anti-Semitism. This false equivalence has long been used to stifle dissent against US foreign policy on college campuses – and it thrives in an atmosphere of disinformation and ignorance. Portraying pro-Palestinian activists as racists, and their words as “hate speech,” serves as an ideological smokescreen for Israel’s ongoing genocidal state project, which operates directly in service of US imperialism. Crucially, it prevents students from being mobilized to defend the Palestinian right to self-determination, as in the past when broad youth movements opposed the Vietnam war and apartheid South Africa.
May Day Student Organization 