BY JOHN K. WILSON
The Trump Administration’s decision to ban Omar Barghouti from coming to America is an alarming attack on academic freedom and free speech. Barghouti, a co-founder of the Boycott, Divest, Sanction (BDS) movement, was scheduled to speak at Harvard and New York University but the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) ordered the American Consulate in Israel to ban Barghouti from traveling to the US, even though he had all the valid travel documents. https://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/BDS-founder-Omar-Barghouti-denied-entry-to-the-US-586558
After Harvard’s Undergraduate Student Council provided minimal funding for an “Israeli Apartheid Week” (but not for any of the speakers), conservative media widely attacked Barghouti by name as a speaker that a pro-Israel student at Harvard said should not be allowed to speak because “he makes me feel unsafe” due to his criticism of Israel.
Elan Carr, the Trump administration’s new special envoy for combating anti-Semitism, declared on April 11 about the BDS movement,“that is anti-Semitism.”
Hina Shamsi, director of the ACLU’s National Security Project, said: “The Trump administration should not decide which ideas Americans can and cannot hear directly from speakers.”
Barghouti said, “This US entry ban against me, which is ideologically and politically motivated, is part of Israel’s escalating repression against Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights defenders in the BDS movement for freedom, justice and equality.”
Many conservatives supported the move. Ben Shapiro’s website The Daily Wire praised the ban on Barghouti, declaring that “the Trump administration indeed has its immigration enforcement priorities in order.” Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), who is leading the effort for a House vote to allow penalties against groups that support the BDS movement, also is a fan of the ban: “I applaud the Administration’s denial of his entry to the United States.”
In reality, this is a terrible attack on academic freedom. It is worse than all of the leftist protesters who have shouted down speakers in the 2018-19 academic year so far at all American colleges combined. Imagine if a mob wearing MAGA hats had shouted down Omar Barghouti and announced that they would shout him down at every college in America, and physically him from being hired to teach at any American college, and implicitly threatened to do the same to every foreign speaker disliked by Trump. That’s what this is, only worse because it carries the power of the government behind it.
And while the shout-downs by leftist protesters are widely condemned on campus and in the media, the ban on Barghouti has received far less criticism.
If anyone wonders how hypocritically the Trump Executive Order demanding “free speech” will be carried out, here is a clear signal. This act of censorship should be front-page news. And all colleges should resist this repression by inviting Barghouti to speak via skype on campus. I oppose BDS, and I disagree with Barghouti’s views.
But I oppose this horrific suppression of academic freedom by the government because we should all worry when politicians with no respect for free speech want to control who is allowed to speak on college campuses.
I agree with the writer’s position as to this action serving as a suppression of free speech. It is rather quizzical to say the least, as it doesn’t seem to pose any particular difficulties in civil law, except in Harvard’s effective ETJ (extraterritorial jurisdiction) whereby interpretations of potential discrimination in Title IX and VI of the CRA could be invoked from a student plea for institutional protection, which is clearly an abuse of federal law for special interest ideological interests. And therein is the grave danger of the still-lingering radicalization of those two Titles (among others). I would point out however that this administrative blockade emanates not from Trump per se, but from his aids Miller and Kushner who are both dual citizens with deep economic and partisan interests in Israel, such that they will maneuver federal public law for private purposes. The University of Chicago is a related example of careful management of BDS activism given its Chairman Trustee’s multi-million dollar private investments in Israeli weapons manufacturers (available in the public domain in his foundation filings). Moreover, UChicago’s president is an active sponsor of university joint venture investments in Israel, among other conflicts of interest. This White House action otherwise, also rests in a much larger institutional context that defines US policy posture: the GWOT, which has both stigmatized (if not criminalized) Arab and Muslim identity, per se, and advanced a pro-Israel agenda that is moreover ratified by Netanyahu’s 5th term (an executive office term duration normally observed only in 3rd world oppressive regimes such as Angola, Panama, Iran or Saudi Arabia). I don’t know if otherwise this White House act qualifies as one stemming from the recent Executive Order directing university compliance with free speech latitudes, except it is an obvious hypocrisy, but instead one energized by larger US policy. Few Americans, students or their professors, have actually closely read the Patriot Act. That, along with private conflicts of interest, are primarily causal. The continued radicalization of US Middle East policy, and its analogue ramifications domestically including (perhaps especially) in higher education, will be an enduring flash point in the 2020 election. Minnesota’s Muslim congresswoman is already being used as ideological and partisan fishbait.