The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) has repeatedly abandoned its legal obligation to be institutionally neutral “on the political controversies of the day.”
On Feb. 16, I attended a campus panel titled, “News Media Frameworks for Israel/Palestine” that five UNC departments and institutes sponsored. Only about 25 people attended this overtly anti-Israel event.
All five panelists were well known anti-Israel activists. As I previously reported, four panelists signed a 2021 statement pledging to promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel “in the classroom and on campus.” The fifth panelist signed a statement saying, “We acknowledge our complicity in Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians.” Five UNC administrators from the event’s sponsoring organizations also signed the 2021 statement condemning Israel’s “oppression” of the Palestinian people.
The event began with UNC professor Nadia Yaqub requesting that the audience not record. This was reminiscent of when UNC hosted the notorious 2019 “Conflict Over Gaza” conference, which made international news for featuring an antisemitic rap performance. As I reported at the time, the 2019 UNC audience was also instructed not to record. It was wise that some in attendance ignored this directive, because it was the publication of a recording of the antisemitic performance that forced UNC into a Resolution Agreement with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
Why is UNC — a taxpayer-funded public university — so afraid of having their anti-Israel events recorded?
About 55 seconds into her opening remarks, Yaqub told the audience that Israel is fighting “Palestinian resistance groups.” Not a single panelist spoke up to disagree, and to let the audience know that the United States and many other countries have designated Hamas as a terrorist organization.
During the Feb. 16 UNC event, Israel was accused of targeting Palestinian journalists and the families of journalists. Israel was repeatedly accused of genocide, and accused of having a history of starving Palestinians. This went unchallenged. Hamas’ use of rape as an instrument of war, Hamas’ use of civilians as human shields, and Hamas’ practice of building terror tunnels under and near hospitals and other Palestinian civilian sites were not mentioned a single time.
Students and the community were provided a one-sided demonization of Israel that ignored the legal requirement of institutional neutrality without including a single pro-Israel or even neutral voice to challenge the biased panel and the two hours of Israel-bashing speeches.
The so-called Gaza Ministry of Health was discussed as if it were a well respected institution that can be trusted to provide accurate information to the public. If a single pro-Israel or even neutral speaker had been included on the panel, the audience may have heard that Hamas runs the Gaza Ministry of Health, which could more accurately be described as the voice of an internationally-recognized terrorist organization.
Sitting near me were students taking notes throughout the event, which made me wonder, were they actually receiving university credit for attending this biased, anti-Israel event?
While Yaqub was not listed on the flyer as a panelist, she was clearly in charge of this event. Yaqub’s Zoom account was used to project the three panelists who participated remotely, and Yaqub introduced the speakers and moved around the small room as host. She also signed the 2021 statement pledging to promote BDS “in the classroom and on campus.”
In January, Yaqub spoke at a UNC Faculty Council meeting to oppose a resolution, titled “Condemning Antisemitism on Campus.” The resolution sought to condemn remarks made by Rania Masri, a recent speaker on UNC’s campus, who described the Oct. 7 massacre as a “beautiful day.”
Yaqub told Inside Higher Ed that she did not believe Masri’s comments were “objectively antisemitic,” and that “what actually happened on that day [Oct. 7], and who actually committed what, is still very unclear.”
Why would UNC and the five sponsoring departments and institutes ever think that Yaqub is equipped to lead what should have been an institutionally neutral event on Israel and the Palestinians?
The panelists suggested three media sources to the audience, which Yaqub wrote on the blackboard. They are +972, Jadaliyya, and Mondoweiss. All three of these publications are stridently anti-Israel. For example, UNC doctoral student Kylie Broderick is Managing Editor of Jadaliyya, which has a long history of promoting BDS. Broderick is a well known anti-Israel activist who has recently tweeted “F—k Israel.” Mondoweiss’ current social media banner says in bold text, “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”
Does UNC actually believe that presenting a panel which consists entirely of like-minded anti-Israel activists, and recommends only anti-Israel publications to its students and community, is going to be institutionally neutral on the issue of Israel and the Palestinians? It is time for the Board of Governors, the Board of Trustees, and the legislature to make changes at UNC, so that the law on institutional neutrality is followed.
