Fallout continues from the December hearing of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, during which Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked Elizabeth Magill, then-president of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates UPenn’s code of conduct when it comes to harassment or bullying.
Ms. Magill stammered and struggled to answer what many said should have been an obvious answer. She resigned as president within days but still works for UPenn.
The House’s education committee launched a formal investigation into the learning environments at universities around the nation, Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) announced in December.
Records Request Is a ‘Witch Hunt’
But now two UPenn faculty members and a university organization are asking the court for an injunction to prevent UPenn from cooperating with the document requests, calling it in court papers, “a new form of McCarthyism, in which accusations of anti-Semitism are substituted for the insinuations of Communist leanings which were the tool of oppression in the 1950s.”
The plaintiffs are tenured professors Huda Fakhreddine and Eve Troutt Powell and the Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine, which was formed in January. That same month, the group blocked access to a campus building as part of an anti-Israel “die-in” protest.
Ms. Fakhreddine is an associate professor of Arabic literature and helped plan the controversial Palestine Writes Literature Festival held in September on the UPenn campus. The event included antisemitic speakers, and media.
Ms. Powell teaches the history of the modern Middle East and is the author of several books.
The two professors have been “threatened, accused, and doxed for the subject matter they teach, and their First Amendment protected criticism of Israel and their advocacy for Palestinians and the people of Gaza,” the complaint reads. “Neither of them is an anti-Semite, but both have been falsely accused of bias towards Jews. Plaintiff Fakhreddine is an Arab American who additionally has been reviled for her national origin and ethnicity.”
They are represented by Reading, Pennsylvania-based Attorney Shahily Negron, who says she has fielded around 200 requests for representation since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. The requests have come mostly from college campuses, with a few from K-12 level students.
“Across our nation, within the colleges and university campuses, where people who either showed support, shared a tweet, liked the tweet, or commented about anything showing any type of sympathy for Palestine, or Gaza, or the victims, were then put in this category of being anti-Semites,” Ms. Negron told The Epoch Times. “This is not really a political issue in terms of what side you’re on. Now we’re really talking about the universities taking the position of chilling speech, and making people fear to talk because of the consequences behind that.” She spoke of people losing their jobs and students being expelled or suspended.
“Handing over these documents to the congressional committee is a witch hunt,” Ms. Negron said. “Imagine the congressional committee taking these records and using them as a way to further dox my clients and to further release information. That would put them back in harm’s way.”
University classrooms are places where there can be a healthy discussion and debate, she said. But Jewish students have been troubled by the often-heard chant, “From the river to this sea, Palestine will be free,” which is understood to mean wiping Israel and its people off the map.
The Request
The Education and the Workforce Committee did not have a comment about the legal filing in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a committee spokesman said. In January, Ms. Foxx sent a 14-page letter to UPenn Board of Trustees Chairman Ramanan Raghavendran and Interim President Dr. Larry Jameson requesting documents and information regarding its response to antisemitism on its campus.“Penn’s failure to address antisemitism on its campus has been harshly and widely rebuked. … In defense of this disgraceful record, Penn has cited its supposed commitment to free speech. … However, Penn has demonstrated a clear double standard by tolerating antisemitic vandalism, harassment, and intimidation, but suppressing and penalizing other expression it deemed problematic,” the letter reads.
The letter quotes a social media post from Ms. Fakhreddine on the morning of the Oct. 7 attack, “while we were asleep, Palestine invented a new way of life.” And at an Oct.16 Israel protest on Penn’s campus, Fakhreddine said, “Israel is the epitome of antisemitism … it desecrates the memory of the Holocaust victims. It humiliates every Jewish person.”
The letter requests a long list of UPenn documents that were due Feb. 7. Requested documents were to show any disciplinary, academic, personnel, administrative processes through which allegations of hate crimes are responded to; the findings of any disciplinary processes, changes in academic status, or personnel actions by UPenn toward students and faculty; and information about Students Against the Occupation, the Palestine Writes Festival, and the Freedom School for Palestine, including university, departmental, faculty, and student organization funds, and foreign donations.
UPenn did not respond to a request for comment.
