We are North American university professors and human rights lawyers who teach, write, and speak about the human rights of people around the world, including Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. In a country that purports to value democracy and human rights, we never imagined that we could face civil penalties or imprisonment for our work. That sense of security has evaporated after the Trump administration issued a series of executive orders and memoranda that aim to stifle speech and demonize dissent – particularly when it comes to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians living in Gaza.
Let us be clear: the evidence that Israel has committed war crimes is overwhelming. Israel killed an estimated 20,000 children – including more than 1,000 babies – in two years of war. Israel used starvation and thirst as a war tactic, leading to widespread famine that indiscriminately targeted the civilian population. It kept civilians from accessing cancer treatment, neonatal and maternal care, and basic antibiotics and painkillers by blockading the delivery of medical equipment and medications. Israel destroyed Gaza’s entire healthcare system, including reproductive healthcare facilities and Gaza’s largest fertility clinic. Israel’s systematic attack on Gaza’s civilian population was accompanied by dehumanizing language by authorities at the highest levels of government comparing Palestinians to “‘human animals” and “children of darkness”.
In January 2024, the international court of justice ordered Israel to take “all measures within its power” to prevent acts of genocide. Israel ignored that order. Since then, leading international and Israeli human rights organizations and experts–including the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, the UN commission of inquiry, and the authors of this essay – have concluded that Israel has committed genocide against the Palestinian people.
In May 2024, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; its defense minister, Yoav Gallant; and three leaders of Hamas. Within weeks of taking office, Trump declared that the international criminal court posed “an unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States because of its investigation of Israel’s war crimes. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, subsequently imposed sanctions on several prosecutors and judges of the ICC, three Palestinian human rights organizations, and a UN expert who has documented Israel’s atrocities.
That expert is Francesca Albanese, who was appointed by the United Nations to monitor human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory. Albanese’s offense? She recommended that the ICC issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, and further recommended that the ICC pursue investigations and prosecutions of certain companies and their executives who have facilitated the commission of war crimes.
For these statements, the Trump administration has punished her by imposing sanctions that amount to a “civil death”: she may not open a bank account, sell her Washington DC house, or draw a salary from the American universities that employed her. But the targeting of Albanese has had ripple effects that go far beyond Albanese, her husband and her 13-year-old American daughter. This is because Trump signed an executive order threatening to criminally prosecute anyone who provides her or other designated figures, including Palestinian human rights organizations, with “funds, goods, or services” – terms that are so vague that they recently led a Maine university to cancel an academic conference in which Albanese was to make an unpaid appearance by zoom.
On our campuses, faculty and students are afraid to criticize Israel out of fear that they will lose their jobs or face public censure. Although we have all conducted research on Israel’s human rights violations, we cannot freely share that research, our analysis, and our recommendations with Albanese or the ICC lest we or our students be arrested or fined. This is what the courts call a “chilling effect” on free speech. As the US supreme court recognized 60 years ago, the threat of sanctions can deter speech as effectively as the sanctions themselves – and this violates both the US constitution and international human rights law. That is why we have filed a “friend-of-the-court” brief in support of a lawsuit filed by Albanese’s husband and daughter against Trump’s unconstitutional sanctions. No one should be prevented from expressing her views merely because they oppose official orthodoxy. Nowhere is this more important than when it leads to silence in the face of genocide.
Trump’s retribution against Albanese should concern far more than those focused on Israel’s human rights record. It should trouble anyone who believes in free speech. Today the target is a UN expert. Tomorrow it could be journalists, scholars, peaceful protesters – or any citizen who challenges those in power. When a government claims the authority to police ideas, everyone’s liberty is on the line.
Sandra L Babcock is a clinical professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School. Susan M Akram is clinical professor and director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law. Asli Bali is a Professor at Yale Law School and is the past President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Thomas Becker is the Legal and Policy Director at the University Network for Human Rights and teaches human rights at Columbia Law School. James Cavallaro is the Executive Director of the University Network for Human Rights and a visiting professor at the Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs
