2 — Friday, March 1, 2019
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LSA sophomore Emma Stein on her story “SMTD event talks sexual
misconduct in the performing arts”:
“SMTD has had two professors within this academic school year that have been charged
or convicted of sexual assault. So I think it was really important for the University to do this
[event]. But the student I interviewed found that they didn’t do a good enough job providing
actual solutions. They were talking about it, but there was no next step with what they
were going to do to actually prevent this.”
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QUOTE OF THE WE E K
“
Ted is all about ideas worth spreading. For us,
TedxUofM is about finding those people who spread cool
ideas in the Ann Arbor and University of Michigan
community. We’re trying to foster a community of
intellect and inspiration. ”
TedxUofM co-director Clara Munkharah, LSA junior, talking about the tenth annual TedxUofM conference, which drew more than
1,000 people to the Power Center Friday night.
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“What Canary does is it puts
normal people with staunch anti-
Semites,” Gayar said. “Are you really
going to compare me — just asking
for Palestinian human rights to be
recognized — to a Nazi who hates me
also? Like, what is happening here?
That kind of just speaks to the fallacy
of it.”
LSA
junior
Nesma
Daoud
conducts research for Ali. Her work,
which has yet to be published, focuses
on scapegoating and includes a case
study investigating those within
the University system targeted by
Canary Mission.
“When you google one of these
people’s names, one of the first links
that comes up is Canary Mission,
which basically frames you almost
as a terrorist,” Daoud said. “To be
completely
fair
and
completely
transparent, through my research
I’ve found they have a lot of alt-right
people, they have a lot of people that
are racist. But they are clumping
together student-activists who are
strictly anti-Zionist with people who
are very obviously anti-Semitic.”
Daoud said Canary Mission takes
social media content and distorts it to
negatively portray activists.
“They’ll take quotes out of
context,” Daoud said. “A lot of these
quotes
[from
student
activists,
professors and organizations], even
I would admit, they could have
phrased them better, especially with
posting on social media, but they
were taken out of context in a way
to paint them in a new, more anti-
Semitic light.”
In the fall of 2016, Lena, a
recent alum who asked to go by a
pseudonym to protect her safety and
privacy, was blacklisted on Canary
Mission. Lena, who is Palestinian
American, visited her family in the
West Bank during the summer of
2015 and said she was struck by the
violence she witnessed there.
“To have four soldiers in front
of me with guns fully loaded,
questioning my family, interrogating
us, that was scary, but to my family
that was normal,” Lena said. “While
Palestinian people and while my
family are happy with their lives,
it just seems like they’re constantly
battling the occupation and the
effects of the occupation within
their lives. That makes me think,
well, I live in the United States and I
have a lot of freedom that they don’t
have.”
After witnessing the challenges
her family faced, Lena decided to
become more active in advocating
for Palestinian rights on campus.
Lena said she was targeted despite
being cautious and ensuring her
name was not publicly associated
with Palestinian activism.
“It’s like they went out of their
way to find this stuff and to post
this stuff and to really target me as a
student,” Lena said. “I was kind of in
shock. I couldn’t really believe that I
was put on it. I was like, ‘Oh, so this
is what it feels like to be targeted.’”
Canary
Mission’s
ethics
policy states the blacklist profiles
anyone who falls under the State
Department’s definition of anti-
Semitism; disrupts Jewish or pro-
Israel speakers or events; or uses
language or speech that demonizes
Jews, Israel or supporters of Israel.
Ali said the effects of being
placed on Canary Mission remain
relatively unknown as few studies
exist on the blacklist, and faculty
and several students have said the
blacklist is not widely known or
highly regarded.
However, Ali said that does not
matter. According to Ali, Canary
Mission’s job is simply to create
doubt.
“The only thing that needs to
happen for Canary Mission to work
is for an employer to doubt,” Ali said.
“They’ll go with the candidate with
less questions to answer. That’s all
that needs to happen for Canary
Mission to work. It’s a matter of
spooking the employer.”
There
have
been
instances
of
government
agencies
using
information procured from the
blacklist. According to Haaretz,
a
left-wing
Israeli
newspaper,
the Israeli government has used
data from Canary Mission to ban
activists from entering Israel. The
Intercept reported there have been
at least two instances of FBI officials
questioning students about pro-
Palestinian views, referencing
information
from
Canary
Mission.
Daoud said the University
appears to be targeted more
than other universities, due
to the presence of active
Social Justice for Palestine
organizations, according to the
research she has completed
thus far. She estimates just
below 70 people associated
with the University are listed
on Canary Mission.
“What I’ve noticed in my
research is that there are a
couple of universities that you
could call hotspots, where
there’s more student activism,”
Daoud said. “So the University
of Houston, Tufts (University),
George Washington University,
the University of Michigan,
even
Stanford.
Those
universities have more active
SJPs.”
Ali
also
attributed
this
over-representation in part to
the University’s most recent
divestment campaign, when
CSG
voted
in
November
2017 to create a committee
to investigate divesting from
University assets that activists say
harm Palestinians, such as Boeing
and Hewlett-Packard. While the
proposal passed CSG, the University
Board of Regents rejected the
measure in December 2017.
“Here on campus, in particular,
University of Michigan students
and faculty have been singled out
because the University is one of a
very few number of universities
where student government has
passed
resolutions
asking
the
University to divest,” Ali said.
Before CSG representatives voted
on the resolution at hand, they had
to decide if the upcoming vote would
be secret — representatives’ votes
on CSG resolutions are typically
public information. Those in favor
of the secret ballot noted the risk of
being put on blacklists like Canary
Mission.
However, following the vote,
some representatives who voted for
the secret ballot discovered they
had been placed on the blacklist,
according to student sources.
LSA junior Reem Al-Khatib was
placed on Canary Mission three
months into her freshman year at
the University after appearing in
a pro-Palestine video where she
stated
her
Palestinian
identity
and her support for #UMDivest, a
proposal to divest University assets
from certain companies that “are
involved in human rights violations
against
the
Palestinian
people
according to international law.”
“I’m a Palestinian freshman,”
Al-Khatib said in the video. “I
support #UMDivest, because as a
Palestinian living in the diaspora, it
is my duty to stand up for those who
cannot speak for themselves.”
According
to
Al-Khatib
and
another person featured in the video,
despite the fact that a dozen people
appeared in the video, some speaking
for longer than Al-Khatib, she was
the only one who was blacklisted
initially (many of those who spoke
in the video were blacklisted later for
other pro-Palestine work).
Several students said the blacklist
targets Palestinians first, although
it claims to target anyone who
promotes hate of Israel or Jews,
including Jewish activists.
“I
was
pretty
irrelevant,”
Al-Khatib said. “I wasn’t doing
anything crazy on campus. The
most crazy thing I did was doing
that video, and because I said I was
Palestinian, I was the only one that
got targeted from that video.”
Nadine Jawad, a recent alum
and
former
vice
president
of
Central
Student
Government,
said that Palestinian voices are
often disfranchised, which adds
importance to the role of an ally.
CANARY
From Page 1
See CANARY, Page 3