The Coalition for Action in Higher Education and AAUP Local 6741 are delighted to announce their Fall 2025 series, “Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination, Harassment, and Misinformation in U.S. Higher Education.” This series of five webinars from October to December brings together educators, activists, and organizations representing them to fight back against the bad-faith misuse of the “antisemitism” accusation to stifle speech on Palestine in America’s colleges and universities. Featuring experts in antisemitism, Zionism, Palestine, higher education, and domestic and international law, the series seeks to critically dismantle the use of the “antisemitism” accusation for political purposes; to power-map the individuals and organizations responsible for its implementation in U.S. higher education; and to chart a path towards solidarity and resistance for responsible higher education workers, administrators, and organizations.

The objectives of the series are fourfold:

1. Political education: present in a clear, coherent, and comprehensive fashion the latest research on the groups responsible for the attacks on Palestine speech and advocacy in US higher education to a broad higher education public.
2. Activist community building: open a space of coordination and organization for individuals and groups involved in pushing back, so that the series is an act of resistance as well as an expert account of a situation. We will have ways for attendees to get involved in defense of academic freedom through the AAUP and allied groups.
3. Strengthening AAUP advocacy: provide strategic and concrete actionable steps for attendees to organize within their local AAUPs and through the national body in defense of academic freedom in pursuance of our common goals. We aim to channel existing political anxieties, personal and professional concerns, feelings of grief, and emergent forms of mobilization into effective action that makes the AAUP more relevant for local members.
4. BDS: further develop the intellectual and activist conditions for the boycott, divestment, and sanction of Israel and complicit Israeli academic institutions as demanded by international law in response to war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 

1. The Right-Wing Attack on Higher Education: Palestine as Crucible

Monday 27 October, 5:30—7:30pm ET

Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MfvL1NNhSaGnT9BrOUx5mg

Opening the “Mapping Anti-Palestinian Discrimination” series, this panel centers Palestine in our ongoing collective effort to understand and respond to the right-wing attack on the higher education sector in the United States. As we have seen since October the 8th, 2023, the greater the oppression in Palestine and beyond, the greater the repression in the United States. Panelists address the Israeli genocide and scholasticide in Palestine historically and in the present; the relationship between spurious accusations of “antisemitism,” university governance, external special interest groups, and US foreign policy at a time of authoritarianism and genocide; Columbia University’s acquiescence to the federal government’s extortive demands; the relationship between Project 2025 and Project Esther, both authored by the Heritage Foundation; the implications of the 2025 Budget Reconciliation Bill for Palestine education and advocacy on campuses; the implications of these developments for academic freedom and the mission of the American university more broadly; and more.

Speakers: Isaac Kamola (AAUP Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom), Heather Ferguson (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, AAUP-AFT United Academics Local 6741), Judith Butler (Jewish Voice for Peace), Lara Deeb (Middle East Studies Association), Sherene Seikaly (American Historical Association, Middle East Studies Association, National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine)

2. The Anti-Defamation League: Palestine and the Intersections of Race, “The Hate Framework,” and Power

Thursday 6 November, 5:30—7:30pm ET

Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_NyNbBTLZRI-OhujJbIYqDw

This panel explores the agency of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in efforts to excise the history and colonial/capitalist contexts of colonization in Palestine from education, to criminalize advocacy for Palestinian liberation, and to remake the university as an instrument of right-wing repression. Taking a deep dive into the history of the ADL in relation to Palestine, Zionism, and the “antisemitism” accusation, panelists discuss how this organization is at the heart of broader political, social, and cultural efforts to dehumanize Palestinians and insulate militarized racial states–particularly the United States and Israel–against popular resistance. It also demonstrates how the ADL has been central to attacks on civil rights, Black liberation, Indigenous rights, Islam and Muslims, and immigration and immigrants in the US since at least the 1960s, and how it has often worked hand-in-hand with repressive federal agencies to surveil and police human- and civil-rights activists on campuses and elsewhere and to promote a broader right-wing agenda in US political life.

Speakers: Emmaia Gelman (Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism), Amira Jarmakani (Palestinian Feminist Collective, Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism), Nora Lester Murad (Drop the ADL from Schools), Merrie Najimy (National Education Association, Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism), Anna Feder (AAUP Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, Palestine Anti-Repression Network)

3. The Art of Doublespeak During a Genocide: Higher Education Law and Policy Since October 2023

Thursday 13 November, 1—3pm ET

Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_iRfpQggRRwKyTmC7qKNo0w

Oriented around case studies from the last two years, this panel provides a broader overview of the ADL-affiliated groups which have also been responsible for today’s attacks on Palestine education and advocacy on campuses. These groups include but are not limited to: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the American Jewish Committee, Campus Watch, Canary Mission, Hillel International, StandWithUs, the Academic Engagement Network, and the Heritage Foundation. How have these groups targeted and harassed students, faculty, and staff who advocate for Palestine human rights on campuses?; how have they pressured university administrations in specific cases and more broadly?; how have they weaponized Title VI investigations to enforce compliance?; and how have they helped shape federal policies regarding Palestine activism, “antisemitism” accusations, and academic freedom more broadly? How might we, as educators and academic organizers, push back against these attacks on higher education institutions, organized labor, academics, staff, and students?

Speakers: Jennifer Ruth (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, AAUP Committee A), Maura Finkelstein, Meira Gold, Jonah Rubin (Jewish Voice for Peace), Donna Nevel (Participatory Action Research Network)

4. The Obligations of the University in Response to Genocide and Scholasticide

Monday 17 November, 5:30—7:30pm ET

Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ZEjFQSEpSw-z_12CrwSmyg

This panel explores intellectual, moral, financial, and legal dimensions of the complicity of U.S. higher education institutions in the genocide and scholasticide currently underway in Palestine. How, it asks, do the repression and attacks we are experiencing in the US relate to the systematic oppression and destruction Palestinians are experiencing in their educational institutions? While evidently intended to stifle free speech critical of the Israeli state’s atrocities and to undermine campus-led solidarity activism, the links run deeper. US universities hold investments in firms that profit from genocide, maintain ties and partnerships with complicit Israeli universities, and often serve as venues for the ideological normalization of Palestinian subjugation. In these ways, they are actively complicit with Israeli settler colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. What are the intellectual, moral, financial, and legal obligations of US universities in relation to their ties to the Israeli state and Israeli institutions, and what is the role of representative professional organizations such as the AAUP in holding them to account?

Speakers: Shahinaz Geneid (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel), Maya Wind, Dylan Saba (Palestine Legal), MB (The Anti-War Initiative)

5. Why Palestine is a Union Issue

Wednesday 3 December, 5:30—7:30pm ET

Register here: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sEY0WrVSSm2kwgzBHooPdA

This panel explores the progress that has been made in representative professional organizations such as the AAUP, scholarly associations, and unions in supporting students and faculty under duress and in pushing back against Palestine-related attacks on academic freedom. It highlights the strategies of legal recourse, political education, and mass mobilization that have been pursued. It also foregrounds the work that still needs to be done. Bringing the series to its political and activist culmination, it stresses the boycott, divestment from, and sanction of Israel and complicit Israeli academic institutions by US higher education institutions and organizations as a moral and legal obligation in the face of genocide.

Speakers: Bill Mullen (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, AAUP-AFT United Academics Local 6741), Michael Letwin (Labor 4 Palestine), Sherena Razek (Coalition for Action in Higher Education, Labor 4 Palestine), Jeff Schuhrke (UUP AFT Local 2190), Olivia Katbi (Democratic Socialists of America, BDS Movement)

The Coalition for Action in Higher Ed (CAHE) consists of rank and file organizers and academic workers focused on higher ed and cross-sector coalition-building. Visit the website to learn more.