Deportations, Foreign Policy, and Student Safety

Ironies of anti-anti-semitism

Photo from British Library on Unsplash

Mahmoud Khalil has been detained by ICE. A green card holder, he is threatened with deportation. His offense was demonstrating against Israel’s devastation of Gaza, a devastation funded and armed by the United States.

His detention appalls me on many different counts. Some are familiar; some have gone unnoticed.

Public space: The First Amendment

Democracy depends on open debate. Because the government rarely welcomes criticism of what it does, the First Amendment bars the government from suppressing speech. This protection is so fundamental that the courts have interpreted it to protect even the most heinous speech, unless it becomes a threat or an incitement to violence.

Mahmoud Khalil’s support of Palestinians was at odds with government policy. He’s not a citizen. But the Constitution applies the Bill of Rights to all “persons,” specifying “citizens” only for the rights to vote and to run for office. The courts have therefore generally held that other constitutional rights belong to everyone on American soil. That’s why the CIA’s secret “rendition” [torture] sites were created overseas. And why the Bush administration built the prison at Guantanamo. Eventually, however, the Supreme Court decided American law applied there, too.

The Supreme Court, however, has occasionally denied constitutional rights to non-citizens. Today’s Court frequently breaks precedent and in addition is committed to a strong presidency; no one can predict its decision if Khalil’s case comes before it.

The issue, though, is more than legal. It’s about the American commitment to free speech: Because the ability to say unpopular things is basic to democracy, the government should rarely have the power to limit speech.

The expansion of presidential powers also worries me. The present administration is pushing to enlarge those powers. Its original attack on Khalil deployed a McCarthy-era law that allows the deportation of non-citizens if their “presence or activities” endanger US foreign policy. Khalil was accused of having “led activities aligned to Hamas,” a terrorist group. The danger in that reasoning is obvious. It would justify deporting any non-citizen whose ultimate goals – not methods -- align with any terrorist group. Although the administration has chosen a new legal framework, its goal is unchanged: to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.

Finally, the bloodshed at the center of the controversy concerns me. Whenever our country is taking lives, directly or indirectly, space for dissent is essential.

In Private Space

Mahmoud Khalil led demonstrations on the campus of a private university. Speech there raises more complicated issues.

On campuses free speech matters not only for the sake of democracy, but also for the sake of academic freedom. Scientists and scholars need to be free to explore unorthodox ideas. So do students. In addition, however, they need to feel personally safe, safe from attack simply for being who they are. Over the years students of color, women, gays, and others have felt uncomfortable, even endangered, simply because of their identity. Right now Jews and Muslims sometimes feel the same way.

In public spaces language that is simply opinion, not incitement, is strongly protected. In private spaces opinions can feel like attacks. It can even be intended to feel that way. Clearly it can make learning harder.

Making a campus safe in both these senses -- to speak one’s mind, and to live without feeling threatened -- is challenging.

Schools have drawn up standards for handling sensitive material, ways to prepare students for the use of the N word, or portrayal of the Prophet, or descriptions of rape. But words and images are one thing, and ideas another. In a public space, even approval of genocide is protected. But on campus? Approving it would make almost anyone deeply uncomfortable, and Muslims and Jews even more so. The same holds for approval of terrorist groups. Hamas is a terrorist group. Yet one professor, a Jew and a Zionist, argues that support for it should be answered rather than suppressed.

[What’s needed] to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate is having strong democratic institutions. . . . [When I teach] about antisemitism and Israel and Palestine, I want students to be able to say what they think. I want to create a space where they feel comfortable to be wrong and experiment with ideas. Kenneth Stern

A skilled teacher can manage that in the classroom. Outside, on the sidewalks and lawns, demonstrations pose harder questions. Campuses are struggling to find answers, in sometimes clumsy and convoluted ways. I have no solution. My point is simply that students need two kinds of safety, and protecting either endangers the other. I believe the burden of proof lies with those who would limit free speech.

Whatever the legal pretext In Khalil’s case, the motive was to make a campus a safer place for Jewish students (and faculty). Deportation is not the way to do that. In fact, the bitter irony is that the administration’s action will deepen anti-semitism.

First, its actions equate being Jewish with supporting Israel’s current, and highly controversial, actions. Most American Jews do support them, but many do not, even in Israel. Haaretz, a newspaper critical of the Netanyahu government, is protected by Israeli law. Dissent, in fact, is central to the Jewish tradition. That fact should be foregrounded rather than effaced.

More deeply, Washington’s attack on Khalil reinforces an ugly conspiracy theory: that Jews control the country. That they’re the secret power behind — fill in the blank —banking; the media; the US; the world. Using presidential power to silence criticism of Israel will strengthen that fantasy.

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