2 — Friday, March 1, 2019
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ADRIANNA KUSMIERCZYK

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CATHERINE NOUHAN and JOHN FABIAN
Managing Podcast Editors

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.” 

TUESDAY:
By Design

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MONDAY:

Looking at the Numbers

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

