Harvard, University of Toronto and others ban critics of Israel's Apartheid regime - sad times are these
/Most of us know Harvard stands for corporations and some terrible people like Alan Dershowitz, George W. Bush, Barack Obama (yes him too) and even money from Jeffrey Epstein so it does not come as a surprise to seem them knuckle under pressure from Israel, and pro-Israeli groups… shameful really. More on the breaking story here: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/hrw-harvard-israel-kennedy-school/
Withholding of Fellowship is Reportedly Linked to Roth’s Critiques of Israel’s Human Rights Record - more on this below and also for background: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jan/08/kennedy-school-human-rights-watch and this https://www.thenation.com/article/society/hrw-harvard-israel-kennedy-school/
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE from https://pen.org/press-release/pen-america-expresses-dismay-over-harvards-denial-of-fellowship-to-former-human-watch-executive-director-ken-roth/
January 5, 2023
(NEW YORK)—PEN America expressed dismay today over the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s decision to deny a planned fellowship for Ken Roth, reportedly due to Roth’s criticisms of Israel’s human rights record. Over his decades-long career as a leading global human rights advocate Ken Roth has excoriated many dozens of governments for their abuses; this goes with the territory of building and leading a human rights organization credited with having advanced respect for rights and freedoms the world over. It is the role of a human rights defender to call out governments harshly, to take positions that are unpopular in certain quarters and to antagonize those who hold power and authority. There is no suggestion that Roth’s criticisms of Israel are in any way based on racial or religious animus. Withholding Roth’s participation in a human rights program due to his own staunch critiques of human rights abuses by governments worldwide raises serious questions about the credibility of the Harvard program itself.
Roth, who joined Human Rights Watch in 1987, stepped down as executive director last August. He conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world.
NOTE: Suzanne Nossel, PEN America CEO, was chief operating officer at Human Rights Watch from 2007-2009.
Did a University of Toronto Donor Block the Hiring of a Scholar for Her Writing on Palestine?
Activists refer to a “Palestine exception to free speech” at North American universities.
In late April, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, which unites a majority of college faculty in the country, took the extraordinary step of censuring the University of Toronto, Canada’s top-ranked institution of higher learning. The move amounts to a boycott: the association is asking members not to accept job offers or attend conferences at the school. The censure vote came at the end of a nearly eight-month controversy, which centers on a single rescinded job offer from a tiny program at a small school within a very large university. The entire affair, however, resides at the precise intersection of scholarly freedom, the place of the university in broader political conversations, and the influence that financial donors wield over academic institutions.
Last summer, a search committee at the University of Toronto interviewed Valentina Azarova, a human-rights lawyer and scholar based in Germany, for the director job of its International Human Rights Program (I.H.R.P.), which is housed in the law school. Azarova has worked in the academy and in the field. Early in her career, she focussed primarily on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, writing papers on a variety of legal issues such as the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and the legal responsibilities of Israel’s diplomatic and trade partners. Azarova’s more recent work looked at migrant rights, structural violence at international borders, and the use of European Union funds by war criminals.
For Human Rights Watch and Roth