SFSU Press Conference/Rally:Time To Take A Stand! From 1968 ’To 2021 - The Fight Continues

11/11/21 SFSU Press Conference/Rally Time To Take A Stand: From 1968 ’ To 2021 - The Fight Continues to Defend AMED & Prof Rabab


Join us for a Press Conference & Community Speak Out @SFSU Weds 11/17 @11am to stand up for the Arab & Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies Program at SFSU. Facebook event pg: https://fb.me/e/2CZfI4KHh
You can also support by sending a letter to SFSU Pres Mahoney, whether you are an alumni or community member by clicking here: https://www.nationalsjp.org/save-amed

Background
Since its inception in 2007, AMED remains critically under-resourced, while enduring ongoing attacks against Dr. Abdulhadi and her students at SFSU who have experienced death threats, wanted style posters and ominous blacklists, with attacks on their freedom of speech and academic freedom from corporate and zionist outside forces.
Instead of opposing these attacks, the Administration and the Chancellor have not only refused to take a stand, they are now openly partnering with AEN: https://academicengagement.org a known Zionist network and supporter of apartheid Israel in the censoring of AMED by Zoom, Facebook and Youtube, and in doing so clearly chosen to side with the oppressors.
The 1968 San Francisco State Student Strike hailed as the strike that Changed Higher Ed Forever—was over 53 years ago, but today the struggles remain the same. Email: defendrabab [at] gmail.com and let us know if your organization can endorse or how you can get involved. Share widely!

In Support of SFSU Professor Rabab Abdulhadi & the AMED program.

SFSU Press Conference and Community Rally/Speak Out

Statement by Abdul Jabbar, Emeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, City College of San Francisco.


Harassment of Prof. Rabab Abdulhadi at San Francisco State University
It is retrogressive, regrettable, and unacceptable that SFSU administration is siding with the oppressors and enemies of academic freedom. We cannot allow the administration to destroy the University’s reputation that goes back to the 1968 strikes and sacrifices that overthrew an unjust system and ushered in the era of academic freedom for students, professors, and all associated with education. The target of corporate media lynching, now supported by SFSU administration, is the Palestinian-American professor Rabab Abdulhadi, who is a famous award-winning scholar and author in her field. In 2006, she was invited to head the newly created program of Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies and promised funding for new full-time faculty members and other resources. Subsequent to a controversy over an event relating to the Edward Said mural at the University, the administration caved in to sustained pressure from Israeli lobbies and did not honor its contract with Prof. Abdulhadi. After fifteen years since her hiring, she remains the only full-time faculty in the entire program.

As an example of targeting Palestine-focused scholarship, Zoom cancelled a September 23, 2020, open classroom virtual event, titled "Whose Narratives: Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled." Zoom was hired by California State University system to facilitate classroom instruction over video/web conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic after in-person instruction became impossible. Zoom cited the background of a panelist Leila Khaled (accused of terrorism) as the reason for their action. Zoom’s action prevented the event organizing professors from teaching and the students from learning.
In a statement posted on Facebook, International Campaign to Defend Prof. Rahab Abdulhadi has questioned Zoom’s judgement: “Zoom cites Leila Khaled’s virtual presence as the issue. But we know that this repeat cancellation is not about ‘material support,’ an argument that has already been effectively dispelled by legal experts.…it is rather about an ongoing, coordinated and intensive campaign waged by pro-Israel Lobby to ensure that Palestine is barred from the classroom as well as corporate digital platforms.”

In December, 2020, Prof. Abdulhadi and Prof. Tomomi Kinukawa, Faculty Lecturer in the Department of Women and Gender Studies, filed a claim against California State University over the cancellation of their September 23 open classroom. The claim is a procedural requirement for filing a lawsuit against CSU and Zoom Video Productions. The suing professors and their attorney argue that “Zoom's action in cancelling their class and CSU's failure to provide a safe and secure means for them to communicate with their students, violated their rights and their students' rights to free speech and academic freedom protected by the U.S. and California constitutions.”

In another glaring example of banning Palestine-related academic programs, Facebook, like Zoom, failed to remain neutral over controversial topics. It removed from its platform the page relating to AMED Studies, thus interfering with a university-sponsored academic offering and depriving the professors and students of the opportunity to continue with educational activities online—the only means of instruction during the COVID-19 crisis. The seekers of academic freedom depend on the internet to uphold their right to freedom of speech. These are just a few of the numerous examples of the harassment of Prof. Abdulhadi, which has to be brought to a stop immediately and the University’s contract with Prof. Abdulhadi fully implemented.

Save AMED Studies & Defend Dr. Abdulhadi

President of San Fransisco State University Lynn Mahoney,

Dear President Mahoney and Chancellor Castro,

I am writing to express my full and continued support for the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies Program at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and demand that the University fulfill its contractual obligation to support and expand the program. Over the past decade, the SFSU administration has consistently opposed and thwarted the AMED Studies Department and attacked Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, director of AMED Studies. In doing so, the university has leveraged historic iterations of anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic violence to stiffle the diffusion of critical, paradigm-shifting knowledge and resources on Palestine and the Arab world. In suppressing AMED Studies, SFSU has seriously undermined academic freedom at CSU, and by extension California and the United States.

Over the past 12 years, the SFSU administration has made it their mission to hinder the advancement of AMED Studies and Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi. The University has withheld resources from the department, censored vital curriculum on Arab and Muslim communities, and most egregiously, has abetted the defamation of Dr. Abdulhadi by racist, heavily-funded groups such as the Lawfare Project, which seeks to smear Dr. Abdulhadi’s Palestine justice-centered scholarship, pedagogy and activism as “terrorism” and “antisemitism.” This is most tangibly evident through the shutdown of a university-sponsored open classroom, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, and Resistance,” which virtually brought students into conversation with a panel of international luminaries whose speech was described by SFSU President Lynn Mahoney as “abhorrent” and “deeply offensive.” The university's censorship of Dr. Abdulhadi does not only silence and repress Palestinian freedom narratives, but also deeply betrays SFSU's history of grassroots student anti-racist organizing. As people who believe in freedom, justice, and equality for all, we demand that the University:

1. Positively respond to the two upcoming statutory grievances filed by Dr. Abdulhadi and the University’s hostile climate actions. Similarly, redress the grievance of Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, co-organizer of the silenced AMED open classroom, meaningfully and substantially.

2. Make a solid and institutional commitment to community-centered pedagogy and completely support AMED Studies by fully funding and resourcing the department.

3. Hold responsible university administrators accountable for their prejudicial and unethical actions that have poisoned the university community.

4. Guarantee academic freedom for all faculty members, departments, and programs. Protect Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian faculty, staff, and students’ rights to academic freedom and freedom of speech. Defend and protect them from all forms of discriminatory and disparate treatment, including Zionist, Islamophobic and right-wing white supremacist attacks and smear campaigns.

As students, faculty, staff, and social justice activists across the globe affirm our unwavering support for Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi and the AMED Studies Department, we call on all people of conscience, educators, community organizers, activists and student groups to support Dr. Abdulhadi and the teaching of Palestine and call upon all academics and educational institutions to categorically reject the private intervention in and vetoing of the curriculum and the corporatization of higher education as well as the New McCarthyism silencing all who stand for Palestinian freedom and liberation.

Free Palestine! Palestine Belongs in Critical Ethnic Studies! Save AMED Studies Now!

I have been teaching at City College of San Francisco since 1968 and know from personal experience that conflating anti-Semitism with asking for Arab and Palestine studies is against academic freedom and tantamount to squelching educational rights. Lobbying efforts driven by imperial geopolitical interests should be kept separate from rights to education

Abdul Jabbar
Emeritus Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, City College of San Francisco

Send letters:

Dr. Lynn Mahoney, President, San Francisco State University President [at] sfsu.edu

Dr. Joseph Castro, Chancellor, California State University csu-chancellor [at] calstate.edu

Send copies of letters of support to: team [at] professorabdulhadidefense.com


SAVE AMED STUDIES, SUPPORT ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND END SYSTEMIC RACISM AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
https://www.nationalsjp.org/save-amed


SFSU President sides with tech giants on silencing of Palestinian voices
President Mahoney’s decision upholds the University’s acceptance of Big Tech’s increasing control over academic discussion, and its complicity with Zionist organizations.
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/sfsu-president-sides-with-tech-giants-on-silencing-of-palestinian-voices/
BY OPEN LETTER NOVEMBER 5, 2021 7
Share on Facebook Share on Twitter
San Francisco State University President Lynn Mahoney (Photo: San Francisco State University)
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT LYNN MAHONEY (PHOTO: SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY)
Editor’s Note: The following press release was issued on November 4, 2021 by the International Campaign to Defend Professor Rabab Abdulhadi. The press release comes as San Francisco State President Lynn Mahoney overturned the decision of a campus panel that ruled the school failed to protect Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa from censorship when Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube denied their services for an event featuring Leila Khaled. For more on this story see here. Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked issues.

PRESS RELEASE: November 4, 2021

SFSU President Lynn Mahoney overrules her own faculty panel & supports Big Tech intrusion on academic freedom and the silencing of Palestinian narratives

In an outrageous and insulting decision, President Lynn Mahoney of SFSU has disregarded the legitimate reprimand of a faculty panel that recommended redress to Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) program, for the University’s failure regarding violations of Professor Abdulhadi’s and her colleague Professor Tomomi Kinukawa’s academic freedom.

President Mahoney’s decision upholds the University’s corporatized acceptance of Big Tech’s increasing control over academic discussion and its complicity with Zionist organizations that stifles all discourse on issues of human rights and dignity for the Palestinian people.

The President’s decision follows a ruling by the faculty member panel based on a six hour hearing following the arbitrary cancellation by Zoom and other social media outlets of Drs. Abdulhadi and Kinukawa’s online open classroom, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled.” The University is bound by contract, law and AAUP policy to protect academic freedom rather than subcontracting the responsibility to private companies. Further, universities must maintain structural independence from the whims and demands of partisan lobbying organizations, including Zionist groups like the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and the Lawfare Project.

In its ruling, now vetoed by President Mahoney, the faculty panel affirmed that: “San Francisco State University has inflicted harm upon Dr. Abdulhadi (and co-instructor, Dr. Kinukawa) and that her academic freedom was, in fact, violated. We characterize this harm in two ways: 1) that the university did not provide adequate support to Dr. Abdulhadi against the actions of the corporate entity, Zoom, and, more importantly against the outside organization, Lawfare Project.” Furthermore, the panel ordered the university to provide remedy in the form of a public apology to Dr. Abdulhadi and to provide “a site for rescheduling the event with Leila Khaled on an alternate platform, without interference”.

Clearly, with this decision, SFSU is continuing its policy of harassment of Dr. Abdulhadi, intensifying its efforts to dismantle the AMED program, and confirming its complicity with Zionist organizations that seek to silence Palestinian voices on campuses across the country as Israel has pursued against Palestinian human rights organizations. SFSU’s lip service to academic freedom flies in the face of limiting Palestinian speech in favor of an overriding concern for its corporate bottom line.

As with this week’s criminalization of 6 legitimate Palestinian human rights organizations by the Israeli government, SFSU chose to follow the Zionist playbook of demonizing all actions in support of Palestinian liberation and teaching about Palestine as “terrorism” and “anti-Semitic”.

President Mahoney’s decision was written by Ingrid Williams, Vice President of Human Resources. According to University by-law, the President’s veto will trigger an automatic and independent arbitration hearing for a final decision on Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance.
Professors fight to defend Palestine and protect academic freedom
Two upcoming hearings at San Francisco State University could have nationwide impact on academic freedom and the fight against the censorship of Palestinian voices. Here's how you can help.
https://mondoweiss.net/2021/09/professors-fight-to-defend-palestine-and-protect-academic-freedom/
BY DAVID SPERO SEPTEMBER 28, 2021
Two upcoming sets of statutory grievance hearings at San Francisco State University (SFSU) could have nationwide impact on academic freedom, the rights of faculty, and student access to education regarding Palestinian narratives.

On 9/30, from 10-4pm PST, Professors Rabab Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa willseek redress for the cancellation of “Whose Narratives?”, a virtual open classroom they co-organized. This highly popular event was attacked by the Israel lobby and right-wing groups with false and discredited allegations of “material support for terrorism,” and shut down by Zoom, YouTube, and Facebook, without any protest from the university.

Flyer for the event, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice & Resistance: A conversation with Leila Khaled”
FLYER FOR THE EVENT, “WHOSE NARRATIVES? GENDER, JUSTICE & RESISTANCE: A CONVERSATION WITH LEILA KHALED”
Instead of providing an alternative platform, SFSU posted defamatory articles about the open classroom on their websites and falsely warned Professors Abdulhadi and Kinukawa that they could themselves be criminally liable for holding this virtual open classroom. The University is bound by contract, law, and AAUP policy to protect academic freedom; and by allowing outside tech corporations to shut down a for-credit class, SFSU has jeopardized academic freedom for any teacher with a counter-narrative.

The second hearing on 10/19 from 10-4pm PST addresses 14 years of attacks on Professor Abdulhadi and the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) program she directs. This abuse includes:

contract violations that have sabotaged the efficacy of AMED Studies.
reneging on the written promise of creating two new AMED faculty positions.
repeated class cancellations and changes, and
personal and professional smears, threats, and character assassination–abuses that have impacted her health, interfered with her scholarship, and reduced this unique program to a one-person operation.
For years, a series of administrations have tolerated and promoted egregious attacks against the Arab, Muslim and Palestinian communities at SFSU. SFSU administrators have consistently opposed and thwarted the growth of the AMED program and systematically participated in efforts to dismantle it.

The university has been complicit with Zionist organizations to conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism and to elevate the interests of the Zionist Jewish community above other communities and ethnicities, including anti-Zionist Jews and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.

The administration has recently intensified their promotion of Zionism. On September 9th, 2021, Jeff Jackanicz, SFSU’s Vice President for University Advancement sent an email announcing that SFSU intended to, “address and take action on the campus climate experiences of several affinity and identity groups at SF State” by partnering with SF Hillel, Hillel International, and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN,) three groups committed to defending Israel from criticism. The partnership makes clear that the university is prioritizing Zionism and reiterates the longstanding and false conflation of Jewishness with Zionism.

Defending academic freedom

University administrators often act as though academic freedom and freedom of speech do not apply to Palestine. Israel’s defenders have made suppressing Palestinian narratives and activism on campus a top priority, and they do it by alleging their critics hate Jews. Scholars who challenge Israel, like Dr. Norman Finkelstein have been denied tenure. Steven Salaita PhD, a highly-regarded professor, was removed from his job at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana after a vicious smear campaign by friends of Israel. He wrote, “Mainstream journalists, administrators, and politicians are receptive to Zionist pressure because their primary obligation is to serve centers of power. You’re not simply up against devotees of Israel, but more broadly an imperialist geopolitical structure in which pro-Israel sentiment is embedded.”

The grievants want SFSU to commit to support AMED, honor Dr. Abdulhadi’s contract, and protect faculty against tech censorship. The grievances will be heard by a committee of three faculty members. If they vote to redress Professors Abdulhadi and Kinukawa, SFSU President Lynn Mahoney will review the decision and decide what, if any, actions to take. The decision will then be reviewed by CSU Chancellor Joseph Castro. In this process, the case will bring attention to the question of how far Israel’s influence on American higher education extends. Strong support from the community and academia will make it hard for administration to ignore the hearing’s results.

Rightwing Zionist Carary Mission Secretly Funded By Jewish Federation of San Francisco
REVEALED: Canary Mission Blacklist Is Secretly Bankrolled By Major Jewish Federation
Josh Nathan-KazisOctober 3, 2018
https://forward.com/news/national/411355/revealed-canary-mission-blacklist-is-secretly-bankrolled-by-major-jewish/?fbclid=IwAR2B4HvjYsYlvjdiCL9KcrcEosr08JNZEIprKSDYdH6cs2nVq_Y0Ix1PU4A
One of the largest Jewish charities in the U.S. has been secretly funding a shadowy online blacklist targeting college students who criticize Israel.
For three years, a website called Canary Mission has spread fear among undergraduate activists, posting more than a thousand political dossiers on student supporters of Palestinian rights. The dossiers are meant to harm students’ job prospects, and have been used in interrogations by Israeli security officials.
At the same time, the website has gone to great lengths to hide the digital and financial trail connecting it to its donors and staff. Registered through a secrecy service, the site is untraceable.
?Josh Nathan-KazisOctober 3, 2018Following Forward Report, Federation Says It Will No Longer Fund Canary Mission
Now, for the first time, the Forward has definitively identified a major donor to Canary Mission. It is a foundation controlled by the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, a major Jewish charity with an annual budget of over $100 million.
The federation’s support of Canary Mission connects the American Jewish establishment itself to a website that is facing increasing criticism from young Jews.
Canary Mission has been controversial since it appeared in mid-2015, drawing comparisons to a McCarthyite blacklist. While some of those listed on the site are prominent activists, others are students who attended a single event, or even student government representatives suspected of voting for resolutions that are critical of Israel.
In recent months, it been the subject of growing backlash from pro-Israel Jewish students and local Hillel professionals, who say it is damaging to their own work.
Mainstream American Jewish leaders have claimed not to know who funds Canary Mission. As it turns out, a big chunk of the money came from within their own ranks.
In late 2016 or early 2017, the Helen Diller Family Foundation earmarked $100,000 for Canary Mission. It made the donation to the Central Fund of Israel, a New York-based charity that serves as a conduit for U.S. taxpayers seeking to make tax-exempt donations to right-wing and extremist groups in Israel. In its tax filings, the Diller Foundation listed the purpose of the grant as “CANARY MISSION FOR MEGAMOT SHALOM.”
That phrase, which may have been mistakenly included in the public document, appears to indicate that the grant to the Central Fund of Israel was intended for Canary Mission via Megamot Shalom, a hitherto-unknown Israeli charity.
Megamot Shalom appears to be an Israeli public benefit corporation that operates or operated Canary Mission. Jonathan Bash, who the Forward previously identified as the person who operates Canary Mission, signed the charity’s 2016 financial reports.
Though it does fund a number right-wing causes, the Diller Foundation is known mostly as a provider of well-regarded Jewish teen programming. It runs a yearlong Jewish leadership program for teenagers from around the world, and sponsors the Diller Tikkun Olam awards, which honor young Jewish volunteer workers with $36,000 cash prizes.
The president of its board, real estate developer Jaclyn Safier, sits on the board of visitors of the University of California, Berkeley, and is a distinguished director of a foundation that supports the University of California, San Francisco. Another board member, Richard Rosenberg, is the former chairman and chief executive of Bank of America.
The Diller Foundation is organized as a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, an arrangement that confers certain regulatory benefits. The San Francisco federation, according to its website, appoints the majority of members of the boards of directors of its supporting foundations. The Diller Foundation says in its tax returns that it operates by “conducting or supporting activities for the benefit of” the San Francisco federation. Two federation staff members sat on the Diller Foundation’s board during its 2016 fiscal year, including the federation’s number two executive, chief philanthropic officer Joy Sisisky.
The federation is among the largest and most influential in the U.S., with net assets of more than $800 million and two seats on the board of the Jewish Federations of North America. Neither the Diller Foundation nor the San Francisco federation responded to multiple requests for comment.Pigeon Droppings
Megamot Shalom’s listed address is a padlocked building in a rundown commercial strip in Beit Shemesh, a fast-growing city just west of Jerusalem. There are scuff marks and footprints on the white front door, as though someone has recently tried to kick their way in.
The building’s vestibule is littered with pigeon droppings and random office furniture. A window upstairs is wide open. If the building isn’t abandoned, it has at least seen far busier days.
According to filings with Israel’s charities registry, Megamot Shalom was set up in July 2016, just over a year after Canary Mission’s website appeared online. Its mission, according to the filings, is to “ensure the national image and strength of the state of Israel via the use of information disseminated by technological means.”
The public filings don’t mention Canary Mission by name, though they do say that the organization paid freelancers for editing website content and a consultant for data security. Among Megamot Shalom’s only reported assets are computers worth around $5,000.
Megamot Shalom’s publicly available financial reports bear two signatures. One signature is illegible in English and Hebrew. The other is the signature of Jonathan Bash, a British-born Jerusalem resident who two people, granted anonymity to speak about private conversations, told the Forward identified himself to them as the person who operates Canary Mission, as the Forward first reported in August.
Bash is identified in the filing as a “member of the directorate” of Megamot Shalom. When the Forward emailed him for comment in late September, two of his email accounts bounced back auto responses saying he was on an extended vacation.
Megamot Shalom has virtually no online footprint. What does exist on the Internet was scrubbed after the Forward began asking questions about the organization. An Israel-based writer named Zahava Raymond previously identified herself on LinkedIn as a “writer-researcher” for Megamot Shalom, but removed the organization’s name from her profile after the Forward sent her a query over Facebook. Raymond previously worked for Honest Reporting and NGO Monitor, pro-Israel advocacy groups.
Megamot Shalom received roughly $165,000 in the last six months of 2016, according to its financial report. It has not yet filed its financial report for 2017, which was due at the end of August. It’s not clear whether the donation from the Diller Foundation is reflected in the 2016 filings, or if it came in the 2017 calendar year.In recent months, Canary Mission’s activities have grown more aggressive. Last spring, two men in canary masksparaded around a Washington, D.C. campus, in a weird display meant to frighten student government representatives. On the Israeli border, Canary Mission is being used as an intelligence source on thousands of students and academics.
One young Jewish student profiled on the site told the Forward that he has been afraid to talk to pro-Israel students on campus since his profile went up, for fear that they would report him to Canary Mission.
Meanwhile, the site appears to be specifically targeting the growing ranks of its student critics. In three separate instances since the spring, Canary Mission appears to have posted dossiers or reports on its site targeting people who had criticized it weeks earlier.
In June, Canary Mission posted dossiers on 14 students associated with the chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of California, Davis. The SJP chapter at Davis had not been particularly active since 2015, when the student government there passed a nonbinding divestment resolution. But less than a month earlier, on May 24, the student Senate at Davis had passed resolution condemning Canary Mission by name.
The resolution said that Canary Mission, along with other blacklists, “threaten the security of student activists, as well as create a toxic atmosphere of fear and paranoia among fellow students, thus infringing upon students’ ability to freely express their opinions.”
“We had known this would definitely put us on their radar,” said the chapter’s president, Khadeja Ibrahim. Ibrahim said that Canary Mission had posted dossiers on a handful of core SJP activists at Davis, plus others who had just shown up at a single rally.
Also in early June, Canary Mission posted a report on a University of Michigan divestment vote that had taken place seven months earlier. The report included dossiers on some 40 Michigan students, including student government representatives accused of voting in favor of the resolution, which was passed by secret ballot. The report came just weeks after two pro-Israel Jewish students at Michigan published a widely read op-ed attacking Canary Mission for its role on Michigan’s campus, calling it “counterproductive” and “morally reprehensible.”
And in late August, a report by Canary Mission on a divestment vote at George Washington University featured two Jewish students who had condemned Canary Mission in interviews published in the Forward, one just weeks before. The report highlights Abby Brook, who was quoted in an August story in the Forward saying that she was frightened by two men who showed up at the GW campus in canary costumes. It also highlights Kei Pritsker, who spoke to the Forward in October 2017 about being profiled by Canary Mission. The new report accuses Pritsker of, among other things, having “nodded” in agreement with “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic” statements, and links to a year-old video of a protest against AIPAC in which he appears in the background.
“The tactics of the organization are troubling, both from a moral standpoint, but have also proven to be ineffective and counterproductive,” said Tilly Shames, who runs the campus Hillel at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in an interview with the Forward this summer.
Shames said that Canary Mission’s publication of dossiers on students on her campus had led to greater support for the targeted students and their beliefs, and had spread mistrust of pro-Israel students, who were suspected of spying for Canary Mission.
Additional reporting by Naomi Zeveloff from Beit Shemesh.
Do you have more information about Canary Mission or Megamot Shalom? Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at nathankazis [at] forward.com or on Twitter, @joshnathankazis