The Downingtown area school district, the sixth-largest school district in Pennsylvania, claims to be “a twenty-first century district with the idealistic warmth and charm of a small town”. The district’s diversity, equity and inclusion program says it “works to create a culture where every individual can feel included and thrive”. And this charming and inclusive school district has also just trammeled on my free speech rights. I’ve been cancelled.
Here’s the story. Last March, the district approached me about offering a virtual event supporting their diversity, equity and inclusion program. Initially, I was asked to present a program on Arab Americans, but in May, the district proposed changing the focus to supporting refugee students and their families. This is a topic I have previously presented on and one that is close to my heart, as my family has long been involved in various aspects of refugee resettlement. We agreed on the details, I sent them a headshot and bio, and the district began advertising the event on their website on 1 November.
Six days later, they cancelled it.
The reason I was given for the cancellation was the “conflict in the Middle East”, even though the school district acknowledged that I had been contracted to speak about a different topic. “While the district is aware that the program is not about the conflict in the Middle East,” their email to me read, “the decision [to cancel the event] is primarily influenced by the ongoing conflicts overseas and the overwhelming number of emails we have received expressing concerns about the timing.”
Well, I saw some of those emails, and they are in fact outrageous and fallacious assaults on my character, all because of my support for Palestinians in the face of Israel’s extremely brutal assault on Gaza, which according to Palestinian estimates has now killed over 11,000 people. One parent claimed to have found “several extreme antisemitic posts, videos and full out hate speech that he has very recently stated publicly”.
Excuse me, what? The writer of that letter provided no evidence for these scurrilous allegations because there is none. A recent post of mine on Twitter/X that has among my highest number of views this month was in response to a vile act of anti-Jewish graffiti in the Bronx. My post reads: “The only way we can free Palestine and free ourselves is to fight *all* forms of bigotry, including antisemitism.” Hate speech, indeed.
I have, of course, been critical of the state of Israel (may I remind you, once again, that the scheduled event was not about Israel?). Many people are critical of the state of Israel. As Israel is a state among nations, it must bear criticism of its actions the same way that every other nation must bear criticism of its actions. Labelling all criticism of Israel as antisemitic, as is often done, is an attempt to elide Israel’s responsibility in the world, impugn the character of the critic, and draw attention away from very real acts of antisemitism that are happening, which puts Jewish people further at risk.
Since my event was abruptly cancelled, several parents and recent graduates of the school district have messaged me privately, expressing their outrage. “I am so extremely disappointed that the district continues to fail us Muslims in representation,” one person wrote me. “We do not support the cancellation of your event,” another parent wrote, “and know that this is yet another instance of silencing Arab and Muslim voices.”
And that’s the point. If you are Palestinian, Arab or Muslim in the US today, or someone who is an ally of those groups, your speech is uniquely patrolled and your very right to speak is unfairly limited, if not banned outright. After the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law issued an open letter calling on university presidents to investigate pro-Palestinian student groups, the American Civil Liberties Union responded with its own letter, which “unequivocally urges universities to reject calls to investigate, disband, or penalize pro-Palestinian student groups for exercising their free speech rights”.
This month Barnard College cancelled a scheduled event with the Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd at the last moment. Brandeis University became the first private university to ban the student group Students for Justice in Palestine, in what the free speech organization Fire labels “a brazen act of viewpoint discrimination”. Columbia University suspended its chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace for the rest of the semester, alleging that the groups “repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events”.
And the US House of Representatives recently voted to censure the Michigan congresswoman Rashida Tlaib in a clear attempt to intimidate and silence the House’s only Palestinian American. People should read the actual resolution, which is full of distortions and half-truths, claiming for example that Tlaib “defended” Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel “as justified” in her statement of 8 October, which is simply not true. (Read it for yourself.)
And this is not even to ask why Tlaib is singled out for “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel” (which she in fact did not do), while the Ohio representative Max Miller suffers no particular consequences for telling Fox News that Palestine is “a territory that’s probably about to get eviscerated and go away shortly, because we’re going to turn that into a parking lot”.
It may seem misplaced to focus on free speech while the emergency in Gaza is so acute and Israeli bombs continue to kill Palestinian civilians. But they’re related phenomena. Both depend on dehumanizing the other for their power. And one of the quickest ways to dehumanize anyone is to not allow them to speak for themselves.
There certainly is objectionable speech out there, but the answer to speech you don’t like must always be to engage more speech, not to employ lies, half-truths, and wilful distortions to shut down someone else’s speech.
Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims are quickly silenced and easily dehumanized today, whether we are in Congress, on campus or at Zoom events. But the people who seek to silence us simply cannot be the arbiters of what is acceptable speech. More importantly, I don’t have to prove my humanity to those who seek to deny me mine, nor will I, even in a charming small town.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and a Guardian US columnist
