Thread by @pal_legal

Palestine Legal stands with Fatima Mohammed, @CUNYLaw’s peer-elected commencement speaker, in the face of a racist, anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic harassment campaign exacerbated by public officials over her comments in support of Palestinian freedom and justice for all. 🧵

Yesterday, CUNY’s Board of Trustees and chancellor issued a statement condemning Mohammed’s speech as “hate speech,” a false accusation that flies in the face of the university’s First Amendment obligations and Mohammed’s principled words: www1.cuny.edu/mu/forum/2023/…

The BoT’s statement is particularly egregious given that the law school dean’s office reviewed and approved Mohammed’s speech in advance as part of an apparently new policy as a condition of her speaking.

In an April 28 email, CUNY Law administrators told Mohammed that “all student speeches need to be approved by the dean’s office in order to be used at graduation. Speeches that are not approved… will mean that you void your ability to give an address at commencement.”

To great applause, Mohammed’s powerful speech celebrated her peers for living up to CUNY Law’s mission and tradition of radical lawyering in service of oppressed and marginalized communities.

Mohammed highlighted injustices experienced by Black and brown communities in the US at the hands of the police and surveillance state as well as the harms experienced by Palestinians as a result of Israeli settler-colonialism.

Mohammed shared her pride that “CUNY Law is one of the few, if not only law schools to pass and endorse BDS on a student and faculty level recognizing that our mission to be in the service of human needs can no longer make exceptional the Palestinian struggle for liberation.”

Following her speech, Mohammed, as a 24-year-old first generation Arab-American and Muslim woman, faced a barrage of racist attacks from public officials, including NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who also spoke at CUNY Law’s commencement, but was booed and protested by students.

As a result of the pile on, Mohammed has been the target of a racist and vitriolic online harassment campaign:

https://twitter.com/rafaelshimunov/status/1663304684587696134

These attacks against Mohammed are part of widespread harassment campaigns to shut down criticism of Israel by attacking Palestinians and their supporters. This is what CUNY should be condemning.

We call on CUNY to apologize to Mohammed, correct the record, and take serious measures to protect its students from such attacks that put them, their families, and their careers at risk.