Two weeks ago, the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine publicized an email leaked by an anonymous student at the university’s social work school. In the email, a professor, who was also not named in the screenshot, raised the issue of a Palestinian flag emoji that the student had placed next to her name during Zoom meetings.
“On an unrelated matter,” the professor wrote, “it has recently been brought to my attention that geopolitical emojis” — the Palestinian flag — “used at the end of name info has caused trauma reactions, making it difficult for some to remain present and not dissociate during class session.”
The professor asked for the student’s “continued partnership in ensuring our class space remains a safe one for all.” In an excruciatingly polite response, the student asked for permission to discuss the issue collectively, with the class.
It’s the stuff of far-right parody: an absurd example of “woke” culture. An Ivy League professor, invoking the language of “trauma response” and safety, in an email that refers to class members as “folx,” suggesting the removal of an emoji.
Yet the professor’s email speaks to a broader problem of student safety being flattened into a question of whether students feel safe. And these aren’t the reactionary tropes of left-wing “snowflakes”: “Safety” is being invoked by pro-Israel students, many conservative and center-right, who believe that protests targeting the nation state constitute inherent attacks on them as Jews.
The same dynamic played out in the fall at the same university. Last November, Columbia banned its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, as The Intercept reported, because an “unauthorized event” put on by the groups “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.” When challenged to name the threat, Columbia Senior Executive Vice President Gerald Rosberg said only, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the student groups, that “accusations that Israel was ‘a racist state committing genocide’ and ‘is an apartheid state’ could upset some people and ‘seem … like an incitement of violence.’”
R/I ~ AA
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Article URL : https://theintercept.com/2024/03/28/safety-college-columbia-stanford-antisemitism-israel-palestine/