NLG and other Groups Call on Universities to Protect Open Debate on Palestine/Israel

Official discrimination against particular viewpoints violates longstanding First Amendment free speech rights. Administrative usurpation of a faculty’s right to decide whether to maintain a departmental association with a scholarly association violates the core values of academic freedom that school officials claim to be defending. This includes the right to engage in prior debate before making a decision. Faculty are entitled to take public positions, individually and as associations, on matters of public concern. The severing of official ties with a scholarly association because it took a controversial position on a matter of public concern chills campus speech and debate. Beyond these constitutional violations, such actions undermine a school’s responsibility to teach – and model – democratic decision-making and dissent.

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed that “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” (West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette)

NLG President Azadeh Shahshahani said, “In a hasty and intolerant official rush to dissociate themselves from the ASA resolution, some colleges and universities are trampling this core free speech right and academic freedom itself, which they purport to defend.”

As this country’s longtime defender of academic freedom, the American Association of University Professors, has stated: “It is the right of individual faculty members or groups of academics not to cooperate with other individual faculty members or academic institutions with whom or with which they disagree.”

Signatory organizations are the National Lawyers Guild, American Muslims for Palestine, the Center for Constitutional Rights,Jewish Voice for Peace, the National Students for Justice in Palestine, Palestine Solidarity Legal Support, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, The United States Palestinian Community Network, the Council on American-Islamic Relations – California, and Al Awda-New York.

http://www.nlg.org/news/releases/national-lawyers-guild-and-other-rights-groups-call-universities-protect-open-debate