STANDING FOR FREE SPEECH AS SOUTH AFRICAN WRITER ASSAULTED

The following item from Antony Loewenstein's blog about a South African writer is reminiscent of the South African apartheid years when freedom of speech was strictly forbidden.

It was to be hoped that with Mandela's election and that of his successors South Africa would indeed become a liberated society, but, in fact, the reverse has occurred under Mbeki and Zuma.

Where is the South Africa we all fought so hard to establish? What happened to all the hopes and aspirations of its "liberated" citizens who now had the vote and were in the majority in parliament, not in the minority?  

The following story is yet another tragedy in the long line of tragedies since 1994 and, like Loewenstein, we need to address the people who were allowed to perpetrate this terrible crime and ensure it does not happen again.

Standing for free speech as South African writer assaulted

Antony Loewenstein,  27 March 2015

I just heard about this shocking story in South Africa and signed a statement in solidarity:

The savage attack on Zainub Dala shows the terror of the freedom to use words, and the desire to obliterate them.

On Wednesday March 18 author, Zainub Priya Dala was violently attacked as she left her hotel during the Time of the Writer Festival in Durban. A woman driving alone, she was harassed by three men who forced her off the road, cornered her, held a knife at her throat, smashed a brick in her face, and called her “Rushdie’s bitch”. The day before she had been asked about writers she admired: Salman Rushdie’s name had figured on a long list of others. People walked out in protest.

Writers do not fear difference of opinion. On the contrary, we thrive on difficulty, on complexity, on posing vexed questions and exploring unresolved ideas. We sketch characters with conflicting emotions, fraught relationships with their families, their lovers and their gods, we place them in troubled circumstances, sometimes offer them redemption. This is the stuff of good drama, of engaged fiction. We gravitate towards, not away from, debate and nuance, knowing that the more considered the idea the better the text.

But what we do not thrive on, and what we will not tolerate, is violent intimidation. Like us, Dala is a writer. She is a reader. She is both a consumer of and producer of words. She would not have avoided a conversation; she would not have shut down a debate. But debate, conversation and engagement are not possible in the face of violence.

And this type of violence – cowardly, sinister, designed to create fear in the moment and silence in the future – is the sort that simultaneously demonstrates its terror of words and its desire to obliterate them. In South Africa, our freedom of speech and movement is a fundamental right. Our Constitution insists on them. It is the same Constitution that protects the rights of those uncomfortable with or offended by Rushdie’s work.

The question of freedom of expression, of speech, has occupied South African writers for decades and is one that has changed shape over the years as we’ve moved from repression to democracy and into the troubling era of the “secrecy Bill”. As South Africans, as writers, we have not always experienced freedom but we have always known what we were fighting for, sometimes at a fatal cost.

We have always known that freedom of expression is, at its deepest, most profound level, the right to speak without fear. It is the knowledge that sharing an opinion with the public should at best be met with passionate engagement, at worst with disinterested dismissal. It is, in its simplest form, the right to speak. It is also the right to listen and to be heard.

There is no glory to be had in attacking an unarmed woman alone. There is nothing heroic about attempting to intimidate people into silence. This was an unconscionable and shameful act. Above all, it was criminal.

As writers, as South Africans, we wish to make this plain: we will not be silenced and intimidated by brutish thuggery. We stand in solidarity with Dala. She is one of us, and in the tradition of our country’s resistance and resilience, we say clearly and unanimously that an injury to one is an injury to all.

·        PEN South Africa, the local chapter of PEN International, a worldwide association of writers; Njabulo Ndebele, Nadia Davids, NoViolet Bulawayo, Rustum Kozain, Mandla Langa, Margie Orford, Phillippa Yaa de Villiers, Imraan Coovadia, Gabeba Baderoon, Fourie Botha, Imran Garda, Kirsten Miller, Thando Mgqolozana, Ben Williams, Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho, Dilman Dila, Siphiwo Mahala, Fiona Snyckers, Helen Moffett, Nthikeng Mohlele, Percy Zvomuya, Jacob Dlamini, Zakes Mda, Ivan Vladislavic, Elinor Sisulu, Rachel Zadok, Louis Greenberg, CA Davids, Futhi Ntshingila, Tony Eprile, Mark Winkler, Charlotte Otter, Beverley Naidoo, Elaine Proctor, Bettina Wyngaard, Sumayya Lee, Margaret von Klemperer, Hettie Scholtz, Danie Marais, Liesl Jobson, Henry Jack Cloete, Ingrid Glorie, Marita van der Vyver, Isobel Dixon, Jackie Phamotse, Lili Radloff, Adeline Radloff, Antony Loewenstein

       

  

 Israel’s supporters seek to restrict the freedom of speech of America’s academics

Iymen Chehade

April 19, 2014 Updated: April 19, 2014 13:45:00

        

weekend eye

The Israeli occupation is not only a physical occupation of Palestine but it is also an occupation of the mind, specifically on college campuses in the United States. Pro-Israel supporters have sought to limit the discussion to frame the conflict to Americans in a particular way.

The growing success of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement(BDS) has alarmed pro-Israel supporters to the point that they have sought to restrict one of the most cherished American values, that of free speech.

Groups and individuals have targeted organisations and professors on university campuses around the US, seeking to intimidate them into silence. They have also pushed for legislation on the state and federal levels that would target the academic freedom of pro-Palestinian professors and universities.

As a historian of Palestine and as someone active in public policy around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I have personally witnessed and experienced these attempts at silencing. Most recently, my course at Chicago’s Columbia College was targeted.

In October 2013, I showed the Academy Award-nominated film Five Broken Cameras in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict course I teach. The film documents the weekly protests in the West Bank village of Bil’in. Since 2005, Israel has constructed a wall cutting through the village, stealing much of the land for Israeli settlers.

Shortly after showing the film to my class, I received an email from the Humanities History and Social Sciences Department requesting a 30-minute meeting with Dr Steven Corey, my chair, regarding a student concern.

At the meeting, I was informed by the chair that an unnamed student had said that I was “biased” for showing the film and counselled me on the need for “balance” in my class. “Balance” has been a frequent demand by Zionists to present Israel’s violent occupation of the Palestinians as somehow symmetric with Palestinian resistance.

When I asked why he did not ask the student to come to speak to me, he went on to say that when he was at college, he found a particular African-American professor to be unapproachable due to the anger he showed towards white students.

I pointed out to Corey that I was open to my students and I do not show hostility or anger based on students’ backgrounds or perspectives. He continued the conversation with a request for my college transcripts, stating that he wanted to “make sure that professors were teaching what they are supposed to be teaching” despite the fact that I have worked at Columbia for years and I am the one who designed and created the course.

A few days after the meeting and within two hours of registration beginning, one of the sections of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict course was eliminated.

The actions that the college took to remove the class are not surprising given the historic and continuous anti-Palestinian bias at Columbia and at other campuses around the United States.

That bias manifests itself in many ways, from the need for “balance” (a requirement not asked of professors covering other conflicts), to pressuring university departments to shut down discussion of the topic, to intimidation of academics who are not seen to follow the line.

Soon after the cancellation of the class, my union filed a grievance, claiming a violation of academic freedom. Columbia’s own statement on academic freedom ensures that “all faculty members are protected against institutional discipline or restraint in their discussion of relevant matters in the classroom, exploration of self-chosen avenues of scholarship, research and creative expression, and speaking and writing as public citizens.”

Not surprisingly the grievance was rejected, since the college itself decides on its own whether there was a breach of academic freedom.

Columbia is not the only place in America where anti-Palestinian bias is rampant. In March, a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was suspended at Boston’s Northeastern University after members slipped mock eviction notices under dorm rooms to students to bring to light Israel’s continuous policy of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the confiscation of their property.

In March, the SJP at Barnard College in New York put up a banner entitled Stand for Justice-Stand for Palestine as part of Israeli Apartheid Week, a global week of action supported by millions who are in solidarity with Palestine. Barnard College took down the banner yielding to pressure that it “inadvertently gave the impression that the College sanctions and supports these events”.

The pressure extends beyond universities. After the American Studies Association passed a resolution calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions in December of 2013, there has been a backlash by Zionists to pass bills on the federal and state levels that would punish universities if they or their faculty support a boycott of Israel.

In one of a series of bills proposed by lawmakers around the country, Illinois State Senate Bill 3017 would obstruct the academic freedom of universities and professors and impose the will of Zionists who are threatened by the growing movement to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel until it conforms to international law.

However, they are fighting in retreat. Despite the many attempts to deny Palestinians their voice, more than 7,000 people signed a petition to restore the second section of my class.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) conducted an independent investigation and found that Columbia had violated my academic freedom.

As Dr Peter Kirstein states in the AAUP finding: “Professor Chehade has the academic freedom protection to present material in his own name in a course and articulate opinions in class.”

On March 31, Columbia College restored my class and I now have two sections in the autumn term. The Northeastern and Bernard SJPs have garnered thousands of supporters and Bill 3017 was withdrawn from the Illinois State Senate in April.

Supporters of Palestine are being heard, now more than ever in the United States. The BDS movement, in particular, has pushed back against the occupation and its supporters. There is also a greater awareness among supporters of Palestine of their ability to push back, and to organise. Without such widespread support, my voice, and in particular the ability of my students to gain a genuine education on the topic would have been silenced.

While there is an occupation in Palestine, there is also an occupation of the mind here in America.

Many Americans simply do not know the extent to which they are responsible for the subjugation of the Palestinians as a result of the financial, diplomatic and military support the US government provides to the state of Israel.

Thus, just as the Palestinians are resisting occupation in Palestine, there is growing American resistance to Israel’s criminal policies at academic and other institutions around the US.

In 2004, Palestinian civil society issued a call for the boycott, divestment, and sanctioning of the state of Israel until it complies with international law by ending the illegal occupation, providing full rights and equality for the Palestinians inside of Israel, and respecting the right of return for Palestinian refugees in accordance with United Nations Resolution 194.

The movement is growing in America, in Europe and in the Arab world. It is a true grassroots movement. But it is essential that governments, including Arab governments, are also part of this movement so that they are on the right side of history.

Iymen Chehade is a lecturer in Middle Eastern history at Columbia College in Chicago. He is active in the area of public policy and human rights regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

ichehade@hotmail.com