March 12, 2024
Thom Carroll/For PhillyVoice
The Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine has sued the university for turning over teaching documents to a U.S. House committee investigating antisemitism on campus, saying it threatens professors' academic freedom and free speech rights.
A group of University of Pennsylvania professors say that new scrutiny over antisemitism on campus endangers their right to free speech and the academic freedom.
In January, the House Committee on Education & the Workforce demanded that Penn turn over any documents related to antisemitism on campus, including syllabi, emails and other teaching materials. On Saturday, Eve Troutt Powell, a professor of History and Africana Studies, and Huda Fakhreddine, an Arabic literature professor, joined the Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine in filing a federal lawsuit against the university.
The suit claims that Penn's compliance with the committee's request threatens the privacy, safety, careers and academic freedom of professors. It likens the committee's request to a modern-day form of McCarthyism, a term coined to describe the intense campaign Sen. Joseph McCarthy waged against alleged communists in the 1950s.
The lawsuit is asking the court to bar Penn from complying with the committee's document request. The suit says Penn could have declined to comply because the committee did not issue a subpoena, but instead requested voluntary compliance in a Jan. 24 letter.
"The Committee has eagerly joined billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, other litigants, and segments of the media in accusing Penn of being a pervasively anti-Semitic environment (which it is not) — but to advance this narrative, every one of these participants in the hue-and-cry, including the Committee, have asserted that anti-Zionism, and in fact virtually any criticism of the state of Israel, is anti-Semitism," the lawsuit reads.
The document request is part of a larger House investigation into antisemitism at Penn following former President Liz Magill's Congressional testimony and subsequent resignation. In its letter requesting the documents, the committee accused Fakhreddine of "making antisemitic remarks and statements in support of Hamas."
In a statement, the Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine said the committee is using an overly broad, outdated definition of antisemitism that allows anyone, even Jewish Israelis, who criticize the Israeli government to be "enemies of the people and the religion." The group also noted that though the Education & Workforce committee was created in 1867, it never subpoenaed a university until three weeks ago, when it requested the same kinds of documents from Harvard.
"The Committee is engaged in a partisan witch hunt by seeking syllabi, academic papers, and other material from Penn faculty of all ranks, with the search highlighting keywords like Jew, Israel, antisemitism, Palestine, Gaza, resistance, settler colonialism and diversity, equity and inclusion, to name most of their criteria," a press release from PFJP said.
Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine is as a group of faculty, researchers, staffers and students who support Palestinian rights and liberation from Israeli occupation, the lawsuit says.
Last month, Penn moved to dismiss a lawsuit from two Penn students who accused the university of antisemitism. The students called Penn an "incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination" and compared the Palestine Writes Literature Festival to the 2017 white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
PFJP's statement said Penn has "shied away" from acknowledging the disenfranchisement of Muslim, Arab, African American and Jewish students and staff. With the lawsuit, PFJP said that it hopes the university will acknowledge this and protect students and faculty from "a committee that forced the resignation of former president M. Liz Magill."
"This new McCarthyism, which was growing slowly before the Hamas atrocities on October 7, 2023, but is surging up very rapidly now, has already been hugely successful at ending careers and blighting lives, just like its predecessor," the lawsuit said.
