{"id":1442863,"date":"2024-01-13T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-13T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=457257"},"modified":"2024-01-13T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-01-13T11:00:00","slug":"pro-israel-effort-to-smear-penn-president-started-well-before-oct-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/13\/pro-israel-effort-to-smear-penn-president-started-well-before-oct-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Pro-Israel Effort to Smear Penn President Started Well Before Oct. 7"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Few U.S. colleges<\/u> have generated more controversy for their response to Israel\u2019s war on Gaza than the University of Pennsylvania. Penn\u2019s president Liz Magill faced criticism for her answers about hypothetical scenarios<\/a> of antisemitism posed during a congressional hearing by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who has herself faced criticism<\/a> for embracing<\/a> antisemitic conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stefanik\u2019s line of questioning last month was part of a wider campaign in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel: demonizing pro-Palestine activism. Stefanik conflated calls for \u201cintifada\u201d \u2014 an Arabic word for “uprising” \u2014 with antisemitic attacks and asked Magill, along with other university presidents, if these purported calls for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment. Magill, by all accounts, stumbled through a non-answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under pressure from billionaire donors and pro-Israel lobby groups, Magill and Penn board chair Scott Bok resigned four days after the hearing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n News of the resignations was framed as part of the university\u2019s failure to handle antisemitism on campus in the wake of October 7. But the effort to oust Magill began months before the Hamas attack, according to public letters<\/a> and people familiar with the fight over Israel and Palestine at Penn. As early as August<\/a>, Magill had drawn the ire<\/a> of pro-Israel lobbying groups, nonprofits, and university donors<\/a> after rebuffing their efforts to cancel a literary festival on campus called Palestine Writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The story of what happened at Penn was distorted to obscure the earlier round of anti-Palestinian attacks against the literary festival, said Radhika Sainath, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal who works on speech and academic freedom. Palestine Legal advised the festival and urged<\/a> Magill to resist censoring the event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sainath, who attended the festival to conduct research for a novel, said that media reports ran with unverified claims that Palestine Writes had stoked antisemitism, even suggesting<\/a> that the festival<\/a> was linked<\/a> to the Hamas attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou could really see how pretty much every newspaper was just adopting the framework of these Israel lobby groups as a given, as if the festival was antisemitic,\u201d she said. \u201cPeople were just really upset in part about a large number of Palestinians potentially coming to campus to talk about Palestinian literature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That coverage amplified the attacks that led to the congressional hearings, eventually precipitating Magill\u2019s resignation. University officials squandered an opportunity to correct false claims that students had called for the genocide of Jewish people, Sainath said: \u201cThey kind of went along with it and fell into this trap.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n