It Could Happen Here - Palestine and the American University feat. Dana El Kurd

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

Dana El Kurd outlines what is happening in higher education, how and why the Trump administration is attacking universities, and the role Palestine plays in all of this. Sources: Clifford Ando – The Crisis of the University Started Long Before Trump - https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-crisis-of-the-university-started-long-before-trump/ Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism - https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/ Ken Stern on IHRA definition - https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/nx-s1-5326047/kenneth-stern-antimsietim-executive-order-free-speech 2023 Pew Research Center Poll on Black Lives Matter - https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/06/14/views-on-the-black-lives-matter-movement/ Marc Bousquet – How the University Works - https://nyupress.org/9780814799758/how-the-university-works/ PBS Reporting on Harvard University negotiations with Trump administration - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/harvard-nearing-settlement-with-trump-to-pay-500-million-and-regain-federal-funding The Intercept’s reporting on Columbia University settlement with the Trump administration - https://theintercept.com/2025/04/16/columbia-middle-eastern-studies-trump-attacks/ Middle East Studies Association statement on Columbia University settlement - https://mesana.org/advocacy/letters-from-the-board/2025/03/28/joint-statement-regarding-columbia-university-and-the-department-of-education Results of the Middle East Scholar Barometer - https://criticalissues.umd.edu/sites/criticalissues.umd.edu/files/November%202023%20MESB%20Results.pdf Human Rights Watch statement on the IHRA definition - https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/04/04/human-rights-and-other-civil-society-groups-urge-united-nations-respect-human Axios reporting on The Nexus Project and Trump’s use of antisemitism investigations - https://www.axios.com/2025/03/31/college-campus-antisemitism-trump-nexus-project American Association of University Professors – Academic Freedom - https://www.aaup.org/issues-higher-education/academic-freedom/faqs-academic-freedom 2024 Announcement of 40 new AAUP chapters - https://www.aaup.org/academe/issues/winter-2025/warm-welcome-new-or-reestablished-aaup-chapters Executive Order on Combatting Antisemitism - https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to It Can Happen here. My name is Danelle Kurd, and I'm a writer, analyst, and researcher of Palestinian and Arab politics. I'm an associate professor of political science and a senior non-resident fellow at the Arab Center, Washington. I'm also occasional co-host of the Fire of These Times. Today I want to talk about the attacks on American universities and American academia and what role Palestine plays in all of this and maybe end on what's being done to stop it. So you may or may not have heard about the attacks on universities and academia, but given the general onslaught of disastrous news,

even for those of you who have noted something is happening in higher education, may not be keeping up with the details. So let me give you a brief summary. A number of universities, including Harvard, Brown, Columbia, and UCLA, have been investigated for campus anti-Semitism related to pro-Palestine protests on those campuses over the past two years. From there, the Trump administration has escalated by slashing federal funding that those universities receive and forcing those universities to settle with the administration not only monetarily, but also by implementing changes to how their universities are run. So, for example, Columbia University

agreed to pay the Trump administration $220 million, punish 70 students involved in the protests in a variety of ways, including by expelling them, and they agreed to monitor and report their programs for unlawful DEI goals. That's a quote. One of the ways Colombia has agreed to monitor, as the Intercept reported in April, is by appointing a vice-providence. in charge of monitoring the Middle Eastern South Asian and African Studies Department, in particular, for, quote, balanced curricula. The faculty in that department will no longer run that department. And as the Middle East Studies Association in a statement back in March noted,

this placing the department under administrative receivership is a, quote, fundamental abrogation of the autonomy of university governance. This comes at a time when the Trump administration has also attacked the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Institutes of Health, all of these are federal funding sources for the majority of research that happens at universities across disciplines, the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities. The Trump administration has also attacked foreign students and the processes by which they are able to get visa study in the United States, which is just another way to get out a major revenue source for many

universities. But why is the Trump administration doing all this? Here is Vice President. President J.D. Vance, speaking to the National Conservatism Conference back in 2021. We have to honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country. Ladies and gentlemen, the universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies. And it's time to be honest about that fact. And we subsidize, we support, and in our own ways, all of us, reinforce the power of universities to control our lives and control how we live them.

So much of what drives truth and knowledge as we understand it in this country is fundamentally determined by, supported by, and reinforced by the universities in this country. So that's Vance before him and Trump won the election. Identifying that universities are sites of power. Therefore, he argues, very explicitly, that conservatives must destroy these sites of power or submit them to their will. Are universities truly sites of power? The short answer is, yes, for two reasons. Number one, as Vance himself identifies, universities produce knowledge. And that knowledge produced at universities drives innovation in the private sector, in tech, in health, in weapons manufacturing.

Universities are a main engine of economic growth. In fact, universities are part and parcel of American global power. They are a major source of that power for the United States, whether in the students, and scholars they attract, whether for the research that they produce that various arms of the American government can use, or whether for the legitimization that universities provide for certain frameworks like the free market, liberalism, et cetera, et cetera. So really, universities largely generate power for the powers that be. But sometimes universities are also sites of power that can challenge orthodoxies,

With greater inclusion of scholars and students from a variety of backgrounds, we get a diversity of thought. And because of how universities are supposed to run, in theory, as governed by faculty and as sites of free inquiry, that means sometimes, occasionally, knowledge is produced that can challenge power to. That sometimes occasional knowledge production is too much for the J.D. Vance's of today's politics, though. So they're cracking down. The number two reason why universities are sites of power is because they offer a promise of social mobility. And that's generally true too. Even the most modest regional public school in America still offer some of the highest quality of education you can get around the world.

But that shot at upward social mobility that you can get with a university education is definitely getting harder and costlier and less accessible. There's this book by Mark Busquet, I highly recommend reading, titled How the University Works. In it, the author details how, as universities became more corporatized, tuition increased, university workers were disempowered, and the value of a degree plummeted. And this process started way before Trump. Clifford Ando, professor of classics and history at the University of Chicago, wrote for Compact Magazine recently on what's happening at the University of Chicago, right now. For those who may be unaware, at the University of Chicago, the university is

stopping PhD admissions. It's increasing enrollment numbers. It's slashing budgets. It's even proposing to teach some courses using chat GPT. Ando argues that this current dismantling of University of Chicago that we're witnessing is, again, not Trump related, but can be traced to this corporatization of the university, where universities prioritized money-making technologies and investments, and as he writes, quote, fundamentally corroded policymaking at universities. So, to get a high-quality education today at a university that isn't trying to trap you as cheap labor or doesn't just use overworked adjuncts to teach courses to avoid paying faculty their worth, you need to either come from money or you need to be highly, highly exceptional,

or you need to accrue exorbitant amounts of debt. And yet, and yet, marginalized people still made advances in this system. We saw, for example, more African-American presidents of universities, more women. We saw diversifying scholarship, courses, pathways for students as universities became more inclusive. That's what diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts did, imperfect as they were. And even though the university as an institution continues to exploit labor, continues to exploit their own students, often doesn't deliver enough on promise of social mobility. Even delivering a little was too much for the JD vances of the world. They don't want upward social mobility for some Americans. And they don't want those challenges

to power, even at the margins. So they're cracking down. The attacks on Harvard, Brown, George Washington, UCLA, the list goes on, is predicated on attacking DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Conservatives allege that universities taking a person's background into consider in admissions or in hiring or in scholarships, etc. All of that violates anti-discrimination laws. And our conservative Supreme Court, in its recent ruling in the cases of Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, agreed. They overturned the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case that had allowed higher education institutions to consider race and admissions. And all of this comes at a time, after decades of

the university as an institution eroded itself. But I would say attacking DEI wasn't effective enough, especially after the Black Lives Matter movement. Saying DEI is bad is a harder sell for an American public, 51% of which say they support Black Lives Matter. And this was according to a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center. Now 51% isn't overwhelming, but it's not nothing either. So conservatives, to attack the university have had to exploit the weaknesses that already exist within the academy. That has meant exploiting the way the university as institution has become sensitive to money and endowments and donors. And that has meant exploiting the way the university has not actually been a site of free inquiry or expression for particular people and particular

topics. And by exploiting and expanding that gap, they are now trying to take those freedoms away from everybody. This is where Palestine comes in. My name is Ed. Everyone say hello, Ed. I'm from a very rural background myself. My dad is a farmer. And my mom is a cousin.

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The truth is, attacks on student protesters for Palestine, attacks on scholars who work on Palestine, or speak on Palestine. That all started before Trump. And that has become the blueprint for attacking universities and academic freedom generally. They're using the pro-Palestine protests, pro-Palestine programming, or just any knowledge production about Palestine as an excuse to allege anti-Semitism, enter into these investigations, and demand the universities do what they want. After the Hamas October 7th attacks, we saw student protesters detained, like Mahmoud Khalil at Colombia, and Ramiza Osterk at Tufts, and many more,

We have seen diplomas withheld, like what Virginia Commonwealth University attempted to do to many students, including students, Srin Haddad. We have seen professors put on leave or fired, like what Mullenberg College did to Mara Finkelstein. The list goes on and on. But again, a lot of this pattern started before Trump. In a November 2023 poll conducted by political scientists Mark Lynch and Shibli Talhemi, called the Middle East Scholar, barometer, the results show that 66% of faculty members who study the Middle East, quote, self-censor when speaking about the Middle East in an academic or professional setting. And that number goes up to 77.4% when talking about Israel-Palestine. On the Israeli-Palestin issue in particular,

almost 52% of scholars have concerns about pressure from external advocacy groups. And of those who said they self-censor, a full 83% said the issue they most feel the need to censor themselves about is anything related to criticism of Israel. This is a crazy number if you consider that of the same group, only 1.6% of respondents said they censored criticism of U.S. policy. And a full 98% of assistant professors, untenured professors, who work on the Middle East, quote, feel the need to self-censor when speaking about the Palestinian-Israeli issue in an academic or professional capacity. Part of this story, the censorship story, is the large-scale adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. Back during his first term,

President Trump's executive order on combating anti-Semitism directed government bodies to take the IRA definition into consideration when enforcing Title VI, which is a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, that prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. The Biden administration didn't overturn any of that either. They implemented that executive order themselves throughout their tenure. And this definition is one definition of anti-Semitism that critics say conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. In fact, the main drafter of the IRA definition, Ken Stern, has expressed concerns that this definition is being used as a, quote, blunt instrument to label anyone an anti-Semite.

And it's for that reason that Human Rights Watch and 104 other organizations signed a letter urging the UN not to use this IRA definition as a result. There are, of course, a number of competing definitions of anti-Semitism, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, that has a more nuanced understanding of when criticism of Israel becomes anti-Semitism. As their website notes, the Jerusalem Declaration is a proper, of an initiative that originated in Jerusalem, and includes in their numbers international scholars working in anti-Semitism studies and related fields, including Jewish, Holocaust, Israel, Palestine,

and Middle East studies. But of course, the IRA definition is the one that the Trump administration wants to follow and the one that universities are adopting. Maybe it goes without saying, but I'll say it anyway, it's not because this administration that engages with the far right and propagates conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement. It's not like they actually care about anti-Semitism. It's just a tool,

as Jewish organizations working to combat anti-Semitism such as the Nexus Project explicitly point out. It's a way to, quote, weaponize anti-Semitism by attacking free speech, DEI, foreign students.

And in this environment, we can understand why there's so much fear to speak up and so much self-censorship. You can be falsely accused of anti-Semitism for bringing up Palestine as a topic of discussion,

for trying to study what's happening, for trying to produce any sort of knowledge on what's going on. I also really want to underscore that this self-censorship and fear

that already existed in a space in academia is a worsening trend today, but it definitely existed before October 7th too. Take it from me as someone who studies Palestine in America,

American academia, Palestinian scholars have long been under attack in the American Academy. But after October 7th and before Trump, this of course got worse. External actors and donors got involved in campus governance, as we saw in Harvard and many other places. University administrations crack down on students, professors, everyone, often preemptively doing the work of the right wing, because they thought that taking away freedoms from some groups wouldn't come back to bite them. And this is how Palestine is now one of the cudgels that Trump is using to attack universities and the academy. And it's an effective cudgel because some liberals in universities and outside universities can also be persuaded

to attack scholarship on Palestine and students who speak on Palestine. But those exceptions to academic freedom that have long existed in the academy are now being used to attack everyone. A quick note here to outline what academic freedom for a faculty member actually means. As the American Association of University Professors, the AAPUP, notes on their website, academic freedom has these main elements. Number one, the freedom to discuss relevant matters in the classroom. Number two, the freedom to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression, and to publish the results of such work.

Number three, intramural speech, freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when addressing matters of institutional policy or action. and number four, extramural speech, freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as citizens. So faculty members are allowed to speak on matters as citizens. Being a faculty member and being a member of the university community does not take away their right to be citizens. That last one is worth emphasizing. To maintain universities as sites of free inquiry and knowledge production, there has to be academic freedom. and that freedom includes teaching, research, intramural speech, and extramural speech.

You can't censor people you don't like or don't agree with and think your institution and your university will continue to function. You certainly can't do that and think the right wing won't sniff it out and use it against you. So what's to be done? Things are happening. People are fighting back. And just like Palestine has been the canary and the coal mine for so many things, including the assault on American academia, Palestine may be one of those crucial issues that helps academics and students and faculty to organize in this moment. For example, because of the arrests of pro-Palestine students and their attempted deportation, the American Association of University Professors, alongside the Middle East Studies Association, and the Knight First Amendment

Institute sued the Trump administration over this policy of arresting and threatening deportation for lawful speech on Palestine. The AAUP is also now a plaintiff in a number of cases, challenging the Trump administration on attacks on DEI, attempting to abolish the Department of Education, cuts in federal funding of research, etc. And attacks on students and faculty after October 7th, which set off this whole barrage of attacks on university since then, have galvanized people to demand their university administrations uphold academic freedom. In 2024, nearly 40 chapters of the AAUP were founded or reestablished across the U.S.

Even professors who don't teach or study the Middle East or Palestine are starting to speak out about the dangers of these moments and these trends. I think people are starting to realize that American universities will have to uphold their ideals of faculty governance, free inquiry, free thought, for everyone. Or they really will cease to exist. That's all I have for you today. I'll be back soon to talk more about the latest developments in Palestine. Stay strong, everybody.

Thanks for listening. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I just normally do straight stand-up, but this is a bit different.

What do you get when a true crime producer walks into a comedy club? Answer, a new podcast. called Wisecrack, where a comedian finds himself at the center of a chilling true crime story. Does anyone know what show they've come to see? It's a story. It's about the scariest night of my life. This is Wisecrack, available now. Listen to Wisecrack on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What would you do if one bad decision forced you to choose between a maximum security prison or the most brutal boot camp designed to be hell on earth. Unfortunately from

Mark Lombardo, this was the choice he faced. He said, you are a number, a New York state number, and we own you. Listen to shock incarceration on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Noah, and I'm 13, and I started this podcast because honestly, adults don't ask the right questions. Now you know with Noah DeBaraso is a show about influence. Who's got it, how they use it, and what it means for the rest of you. It's not the news.

It's what the news should be if someone Gen Z or Gen Alpha made it. Politics is wild, and I'm definitely not here to pay me. But I'm here to make sense of it. Listen to Now You Know with Noah DeBarrasso on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

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