With additional reporting by Harmony Witte and D.Y.

In the spring of 2024, students at colleges all over Greater Boston called out what they viewed as a campaign of genocide in Gaza. The students objected to the U.S. paying for much of Israel’s military expenses. They protested their universities’ ties with U.S. companies who build the weapons and fighter jets used by Israeli forces, by calling for divestment and boycott. And they marched against Israel for dropping bombs and flying drones throughout the strip, demolishing entire neighborhoods.

But groups like the Anti-Defamation League, the Canary Mission and others saw something very different in the rallies. They claimed many of the pro-Palestine demonstrations were anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli — at times appearing to conflate the two. Some U.S. lawmakers cast the demonstrators as fanatics and threats.

A couple of pro-Israeli groups even doxed individual students, posting their photos and “bios” online. Dozens of students were arrested, when cities like Boston and area universities sent in police to clear encampments. The ADL, meanwhile, handed out failing “grades” to universities whom it said were too lax on the protests it felt were anti-Semitic. The group’s chief executive, Jonathan Greenblatt went on television, blasting the encampments in New York and appeared to compare the traditional Palestinian headscarf to Nazi symbolism and demonstrators to Iranian “proxies.”

The administration of Pres. Donald Trump now vows to put forth actual immigration penalties for some non-citizens involved in those past protests — in a move that threatens to potentially have students booted from the country.

“To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice,” wrote Trump recently, “we will find you, and we will deport you.”

Vowing to target “perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence,” Trump declared the students will undergo extra scrutiny and monitoring, according to his recently signed executive order. Under the title of combating “anti-Semitism,” the order calls for federal agencies such as the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Education, and the Secretary of Homeland Security to coordinate with schools to “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff” for possible investigation and removal from the country. His order additionally calls for an inventory and an analysis of so-called anti-Semitic complaints and related administrative actions from Oct. 7, 2023 to now, including in elementary classrooms as early as kindergarten.

To assist in this effort, a group called Betar, told the news outlet Salon that it’s already created and shared with the government a list of foreign students and teachers it feels should be expelled. And a company called Stellar Defense & Cyber Intelligence, according to a report from DropSiteNews, claims it can use artificial intelligence technology to “identify anonymous, masked” pro-Palestinian protesters.

All this has raised concerns over free speech and First Amendment rights, as well as immigrants’ rights, according to several civil rights groups, including those whose missions include defending the rights of Jewish, Islamic and Arab Americans.

“This executive order is an over-broad and unenforceable attack on free speech,” Mariam Aydah, a civil rights attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations-Massachusetts, told the Sampan. “We all agree that protecting the civil rights of Jewish Americans is not controversial. What is controversial is criminalizing dissent against Israel and criminalizing dissent against Zionism. And what’s more problematic is equating criticism of Israel and Zionism with criticism of the Jewish faith.”

Aydah also noted how many students — some of whom are themselves Jewish — are being punished for their protest activity several times over – doxed by online groups, punished by their schools and sometimes even arrested – and now face further risk by the new executive order.

“There are many coalitions who are supporting these student protests, including Jewish students, Jewish groups, Muslim students, Palestinian students and others who oppose Israel’s actions,” she said.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs publicly stated concerns that the order could undermine civil liberties, saying “Everyone in the United States has basic due process rights, and when we start applying them selectively we don’t only threaten our values – we ultimately threaten our safety too.” The group acknowledged a recent rise in anti-Semitism, but said that it should be addressed without abandoning fundamental values of democracy.

“It essentially criminalizes people on student visas when they express their political conscience,” said Haris Tarin, the vice president of policy and programming at the Muslim Public Affairs Council. “So, anyone who’s on a student visa, who wants to be part of a workshop, a sit-in, a protest, they would essentially be criminalized, and they could potentially be deported, which is absolutely crazy.”

The order, he said, would limit the free speech, “not only of students, but of professors, of programs that are focused on political science. It would limit free speech on college campuses.”

Especially problematic to Tarin and others is the push to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism, mainly because some of the definition’s “examples” appear to conflate certain criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. Even attorney and holocaust expert Kenneth Stern, who contributed to the original draft, has opposed using the definition and its examples in a legal setting.

“It’s not the definition that’s the problem. It’s the abuse of it,” Stern told The Times of Israel during the first Trump administration in 2020 after his first draft of the order. Stern argued at the time that the Trump administration was then also using the IHRA definition to cancel pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses.

Yet, lawmakers have recently renewed efforts to pass legislation that would require the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to use the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism when investigating civil rights complaints.

Indeed, groups like the ADL have cast efforts to boycott Israeli companies, divest from Israel and call for sanctions over the attacks on Palestine, as an attempt “to dismantle the Jewish state and end the right to Jewish national self-determination on any portion of this contested land.”

The ADL did not return an email seeking comment for this story, but, in a public statement said it welcomed the executive order.

“ADL long has supported holding those accountable who harass, intimidate, or attack Jewish students, faculty and staff on college campuses,” stated Greenblatt, but added that “any immigration-related ramifications obviously must be consistent with due process and existing federal statutes and regulations and should not be used to target individuals for their constitutionally protected speech.”

Double-Standard?

Tarin, an Afghan American, noted a clear bias when it comes to America’s views on his birth nation of Afghanistan vs. Israel.

“There’s much more room for criticism of our own policies in Afghanistan than our policies in Gaza …. We’ve been able to allow our own presidents and our civilian leadership and even military leadership to be criticized on how we dealt in Afghanistan. But that does not extend over to a criticism of Israel. Now that tells you something. We can’t criticize Israeli politicians and Israeli military leaders for how they’ve conducted the war in Gaza, but we can criticize our own officials for how we engaged in Afghanistan. That tells you a lot about bias and then coverage in media.”

“You don’t have to agree with every form of free speech or every idea, but as Americans, that is who we are, and we should be able to express that openly, freely, and even those who come to study in our institutions and participate in our education system, they should have that right, that uninhibited right to do that, as long as they’re not involved in criminal activity.”

Aydah added that the executive order is biased in that it fails to acknowledge anti-Muslim hate or anti-Palestinian violence on college campuses, “which has had a real and documented impact on our community.”

It’s odd, she added, that an administration that vows to put “America first” in this case appears to be putting the state of Israel first.

Sometimes Hate Never Happened

Nearly a year before the order was rolled out, colleges and universities in Massachusetts and across the nation were already eager to quash protests on their campuses, as groups and politicians pressured them to do so. In some cases they blamed the crackdowns on anti-Semitic speech — the purported focus of Trump’s executive order — which at times never actually occurred. A glaring example was Northeastern University’s handling of its student demonstrators. In the late spring of 2024, that school sent authorities to shut down its encampment, (they had encircled it all day prior), and arrest and punish some demonstrators. The school, according to press reports, justified the crackdown on alleged shouting of “virulent antisemitic slurs.”

But according to reporting and video coverage at the time, no actual anti-Semitic words came from demonstrators in solidarity with Palestine. The statement was instead yelled out by a couple of Israeli supporters who apparently were taunting those in the encampment.

“The university said that antisemitism and remarks such as ‘Kill the Jews’ are never acceptable. And that’s true, which is why we demand that the university hold the two people who actually made those remarks accountable,” one pro-Palestinian demonstrator was quoted as saying in the university’s newspaper, The Huntington News, at the time.

As the year progressed, schools were quicker to end protests before they could become established. A Sampan reporter who covered some of the recent “Block the Ban” demonstrations at MIT over a “banned” South Asian American student for his pro-Palestinian activities and writings, witnessed extraordinary presence by university authorities who severely restricted where demonstrators would stand.

One of the Block the Ban’s organizers, Richard Solomon, a doctoral student at MIT, called out the new executive order and said it would not stop him from protesting the death and destruction in Gaza and the West Bank, which early in the war claimed the lives of members of his host family.

“Come hell or high water, we will continue to take care of our own, both U.S. citizens and international students. Calling on MIT to stop doing weapons research for the Israeli military is not a fringe demand: It represents the will of the supermajority of MIT students. Trump’s corrupt attempts to quell dissent are a continuation of the crimes of the Biden administration,” Solomon told the Sampan recently. “As a former U.S. consular official, I ask all diplomats to refuse any directive to revoke the visas of students for exercising their constitutional rights to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

SIDEBAR:

Handcuffed on Campus

Numerous encampments and protests since October 2023 were shut down across the state – most of which resulted in arrests and charges of unlawful assembly and trespassing. Following are some of the notable incidents:

• April 21, 2024: Students initiated the “Scientists Against Genocide” encampment on Kresge Lawn, demanding that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sever research ties with the Israel’s defense forces. By May, the MIT administration had warned protesters to disband the encampment or face suspension. Later, nine students were arrested for blocking the Stata Center parking garage, and police dismantled the encampment, arresting ten additional students. President Sally Kornbluth released a statement claiming that the student encampment was diverting school resources such as campus police and creating a “potential magnet for disruptive outside protestors.”
• April 24, 2024: At Emerson College in Boston, students established an encampment in the Boylston Place alleyway to express solidarity with pro-Palestinian movements. Boston police intervened, arresting 108 people on charges of unlawful assembly. The detainees were to be arraigned the next day. City officials had said the encampment violated a new city ordinance aimed at banning tents pitched by homeless people on public property. Mayor Michelle Wu spoke on the matter, saying that tents in the alley posed health, fire and access hazards.
• April 24, 2024: Harvard students established an encampment in Harvard Yard, also advocating for the university to divest from holdings associated with Israel. The Harvard administration issued warnings to protesters, threatening suspension if the encampment was not disbanded; afterward, an agreement was reached between the university and protesters to end the encampment. The university agreed to reinstate 20 suspended students and engage in discussions about divestment.
• May 7, 2024: The University of Massachusetts Amherst witnessed a significant pro-Palestinian protest where more than 130 people were arrested after setting up an encampment on the South Lawn of the Student Union and refusing to disperse upon police orders. Students present said the area was fully militarized and complained of how the students were treated by authorities. Some charges were later reduced or dropped.
  — Compiled by D.Y.