Thread by @Shanfaraa

A thread on the incident at Dean Chemerinsky's home @BerkeleyLaw yesterday @JameelJaffer @DavidLat

First, while it is most likely the case that the student did not have a First Amendment right to speak at the dinner, per @DavidLat's useful analysis (see ), one is left wondering at the proportionality of the response.

bit.ly/3Ue6uh1

https://twitter.com/i/status/1778445036914708772

On the assumption that the student did not have a right to give that speech, she was engaged in politically righteous civil disobedience, even if, ex post, it is determined she was a trespasser. I wish to discuss this act from the perspective of principled civil disobedience.

This is what Rawls says about civil disobedience in Theory of Justice:

One might ask: how does giving an unauthorized speech at a dinner of the law school Dean have to do with respecting "the principles of social cooperation among free and equal men [and women]"?

The Dean, even if he is hosting an event on his property, his position as dean surely is relevant in the context of a dinner for law students, even if it is intended to be purely celebratory. In fact, we are quite accustomed to protesters disrupting **precisely** those moments.

But what does the Dean have to do with the slaughter in #Gaza, one might say, such that he deserves having the decorum of his dinner party interrupted?

Let me say that I do not accept for a moment that Dean Chemerinsky harbors any personal animus to any Palestinian student, Arab student or any student at @BerkeleyLaw or anywhere else.

But this was not about Dean Chemerinsky's personal character: it was about the role of institutions in contributing to the unfreedom of #Palestinians. Before the student could even mention #Palestine, she was grabbed. Clearly, she was marked as a troublemaker by her appearance.

I think the Dean's **institutional** attitude toward #Palestine advocacy is well-illustrated by this passage from a December 2022 article from the NY Times.

nytimes.com/2022/12/21/us/…

While in that NY Times article he correctly affirmed the right of Berkeley Students to refrain from inviting Zionist speakers, that represented a reversal of his initial reaction, in which he threatened student groups who adhered to this policy thedailybeast.com/there-are-no-j…

His attitude is at best a grudging commitment to protect the expressive rights of students who wish to defend #Palestinian freedom, laced with barely suppressed anger that they are making his life difficult.

Let's call this the "ghosting" reflex of administrators toward advocacy for #Palestinians: a profound desire that they would just disappear because it's going to bring grief to the institution and their own lives as administrators, if not their careers.

Let me humbly suggest that if administrators stopped trying to ghost #Palestinians, they would not need to interrupt the decorum of dinner parties.

If institutions vigorously - not grudgingly, and not with the boilerplate denunciations as a precondition for allowing #Palestine speech - simply granted the same rights to Palestine events as they do for all other events, the temperature on campuses would go down dramatically.

Ghosting #Palestinians is the first way institutions violate "the principles of social cooperation among free and equal [persons]." But there is a second way as well, which is best characterized as the "gaslighting" reflex.

The gaslighting reflex manifests itself in crediting Palestinian opposition to #Zionism in Jew-hatred rather than the well-documented political injuries Jewish nationalism and the state of #Israel has imposed, and continues to impose, on the #Palestinians as a people.

These injuries are not limited to the #Palestinians physically under the control of the Israeli state, but reaches into the lives of Palestinian refugees in neighboring states, where they were forced to take refuge after #Zionist militias and Israel expelled them.

It also reaches into #Palestinian lives in the United States, where anti-Palestinian animus was the origin for much of US anti-terrorism laws: ccrjustice.org/anti-palestini…

Anyone who knowns Palestinian-Americans know that they are subject to various discriminatory acts and omissions: actions, such as being denied security clearances and thus opportunities to work for the federal government . . .

and omissions, by refusing to afford them the protection of US law afforded other US citizens when they are abroad in #Israel and the #OPT. The clearest example of this was Israel's murder of #ShireenAbuAkleh.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that #Israeli forces targeted her intentionally, no criminal investigations were launched despite her status as a US citizen when she was murdered.

nytimes.com/2022/06/20/wor…

But #Palestinian Americans are routinely subjected to other forms of abuse routinely when they return to #Palestine with the US government seemingly unwilling to protect them or indifferent to their fates.

When I was an undergraduate at @UVA, I went on a UVa-sponsored Arabic-study program in Jordan. During our intersession break, most students went to the West Bank. The Israelis strip-searched all students with Arab backgrounds and interrogated us for hours

When I returned to Jordan, I immediately went to the US embassy in Amman to lodge a complaint, and the officer, as gracious as she was, complained of her powerlessness to help me.

The greatest gaslighting, however, takes the form of pervasive #Nakba-denialism, even though the litany of atrocities committed by Zionist militias and later the Israeli army in 1948-49 are thoroughly documented and not a subject of scholarly dispute.

Benny Morris, a fully-committed Zionist historian, not only does not deny the #Nakba, he defends it as necessary, and is critical of Ben Gurion for not doing a more thorough going job of it. newleftreview.org/issues/ii26/ar…

He also compared the #Nakba to the genocide of the American Indians, defending the latter as necessary too

The Israeli expulsion of Palestinians is thoroughly documented by both the UN and cables from the United States Department of State at the time, to say nothing of Resolution 194(III) requiring their return.

And it should not be forgotten that Zionist terrorist assassinated the UN mediator, Count Folk Bernadotte, in large part because of his insistence on the right of Palestinians to return. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folke_Ber…

He affirmed the right of #Palestinian refugees to return to their homes as a requirement of "elemental justice" in any peace settlement.

It is frankly insulting to #Palestinians and advocates of Palestinian freedom to be casually accused, routinely, by university administrators, of #AntiSemitism, in the face of the overwhelming evidence of the violent and colonial history of #Zionism.

Students have the right to know, as Edward Said put it, "plainly and in the full light of day," whether administrators believe in the political equality of #Palestinians, or "that they feel Palestinians are and should remain less equal than Jews.” chronicle.com/article/no-ber…

#Palestinians have been dying for more than century, going back to the British Mandate, , for the sake of a #JewishState that by design treats them as aliens in their own country.palquest.org/en/highlight/1…

But if people are really interested in promoting civility on campuses, then stop the ghosting and gaslighting and support Palestinian freedom and Jewish freedom by supporting a constitutional regime of equal freedom. That is the only way forward, particularly for law schools. end

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