BY SHERRYL KLEINMAN

In late March 2019 at UNC–Chapel Hill, the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East and Islamic Studies held a conference titled “Conflict over Gaza: People, Politics and Possibilities.” The list of scholars, journalists, performers, artists, and films can be found here.

On the first night of the conference, Tamer Nafar, a rapper, actor, screenwriter, and social activist—a Palestinian citizen of Israel—sang a song called “I’m in Love with a Jew.” The song imagines a Palestinian telling his mother that he’s fallen in love with a woman who is an Israeli Jew. About three weeks after the conference, Ami Horowitz, an independent filmmaker with a pro-Israel bent, released a heavily edited video of the performance. It sped through social and mass media, eventually provoking a response by UNC administrators.

Two deans who had helped fund the conference and were listed as co-sponsors, as well as the chancellor of the university, publicly denounced Nafar’s performance as anti-Semitic. Much of the criticism, coming from administrators and others, conflated the performance with the conference as a whole.

Whether one interprets the song as satirical or anti-Semitic, many of the co-sponsors and high-level administrators made statements, based on Horowitz’s video, that are chilling for academic freedom.

One of the co-sponsors, the dean of the law school, accused the organizers of having committed a “breach of trust with innocent campus units who sought only to be good citizens and partners.” Another co-sponsor, the dean of the school of government, stated, “It simply is wrong to defend this explicitly anti-Semitic performance under the cloak of academic freedom. It crossed a bright line and you [the conference organizers] should have the integrity to reject it and take responsibility for it.” Both deans asked for their money ($1,000, altogether) back.

Their demand implies that faculty putting on events can know, in advance, what speakers and performers will say throughout a conference. This is impossible. Think of the Q&A that typically follows a talk or performance; participants often speak in rough drafts or make less than fully considered remarks.

Everyone of course has a right to criticize a speaker (as the deans are doing), but expecting a refund sets a terrible precedent. Faculty organizers often need every penny they fundraise from departments and schools (I say this as an emerita professor who organized many panels and events over thirty-eight years). Worrying about funders wanting their money back if they dislike any part of an event will make busy faculty members even less willing to organize panels, conferences, and teach-ins. Faculty who want to focus on controversial topics might be especially deterred. This is exactly what should not happen at a university.

The deans’ statements and the attacks on the conference will have another effect: department chairs and deans will be reluctant to co-sponsor, in name or money, events in the future. The two deans have said exactly that. The dean of the law school wrote, “As a result of this experience, I will be refusing all future sponsorship requests from other units on this campus.” The dean of the school of government likewise wrote, “It is extremely unlikely that I will agree to sponsor another program that is not connected with the School in some significant way.” In case others weren’t paying attention, the dean of the law school said he “copied the deans of the other schools listed as sponsors on [the organizers’] website so that they are aware of [his] position going forward and [his] reasons for it.”

Faculty freedom to put on extra-curricular events is now even likelier to be constrained by high-level administrative control. The dean of the law school wrote, “I have also asked Provost Blouin to place the question of campus sponsorships on the agenda for a future meeting of the Provost’s Cabinet.” The interim chancellor seems inclined to think similarly. He has already weighed in publicly on the conference, saying, “The Carolina spirit is not about hateful language that divides us, but about civil discourse that advances ideas and knowledge. We must continue to aspire together to that ideal.” Will that “aspiring” include high-level administrative surveillance and intrusion, perhaps as we have recently seen at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst?

Another danger is that public overreaction by administrators invites further political interference. On April 15, 2019, George Holding, a Republican congressional representative from North Carolina, wrote to US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos calling for an investigation of conference organizers’ use of public money. Holding said that he’d heard the conference “had a radical anti-Israeli bias” and “lacked balance.” The implication is that the only acceptable conference is one that plays the “both sides” game.

But academic freedom means that faculty can organize conferences with speakers who take strong stances on issues and perhaps say things that others find objectionable. Indeed, those who wish to present alternative perspectives can put on their own conferences. That’s how a university works. The marketplace of ideas is the university as a whole, not every event.

Faculty must resist these threats to academic freedom. At a time when legislators claim that faculty don’t work hard enough, especially at research universities, it’s ironic that administrators are acting in ways that threaten the volunteer labor done by professors.

Guest blogger Sherryl Kleinman is professor emerita of sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.