More on the Censoring of the PFLP's Leila Khaled

It was deeply objectionable when Zoom and other networking platforms blocked Leila Khaled’s webinar at San Francisco State University earlier this fall, but accurate information about her, which was not provided by her sponsors at the time, is nonetheless necessary to understand why the tech companies acted as they did – and what can be done about it in the future.

Academic freedom rests on a postulate to which there is a corollary, and both are relevant to the censorship of Khaled’s presentations. The postulate is that democracy benefits when teachers and scholars are free to determine their subjects for research, teaching, and speaking. The corollary is that they must be as truthful as they are able. Regrettably, many defenders of Khaled’s right to speak have been less than forthright about who she is and what she had done.

It was bound to be controversial when SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies Department (AMED) announced a Zoom-based webinar titled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled,” scheduled for last September 23.  Although unmentioned in the promotional materials, Khaled was an operative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who hijacked two airplanes, in 1969 and 1970. She has since been a member of the PFLP’s Political Bureau. For the SFSU event, however, she was misleadingly billed only as a “Palestinian feminist, militant, and leader.”

SFSU President Lynn Mahoney resisted protests over Khaled’s appearance. In a message to the campus, she “emphatically” affirmed “the right of our faculty to academic freedom and to conduct[] their teaching and scholarship without censorship.”

An organization called the Lawfare Project bypassed Mahoney, appealing directly to Zoom. In an open letter to CEO Eric Yuan, the Lawfare Project argued that hosting Khaled would potentially constitute “material support or resources to a foreign terrorist organization,” in violation of the U.S. Criminal Code. As the letter pointed out, the PFLP has been on the State Department’s list of designated terrorist organizations since its inception in 1997.

Unwilling to risk violating federal law, Zoom invoked its “terms of service” and blocked the webinar, as did Youtube and Facebook when AMED attempted to switch platforms. Both the AMED sponsors and Mahoney decried the censorship, as well they should have.

Other organizations also protested, including the Council of University of California Faculty Associations, which described Khaled only as a “Palestinian militant and feminist,” and the National Coalition against Censorship, which did mention Khaled’s hijackings and position in the PFLP.

In a creative and appropriate response to censorship, the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel announced a “National Day of Action against the Criminalization and Censorship of Campus Speech,” calling upon “anyone with access to a university Zoom account” to hold a webinar featuring a message from Leila Khaled, to be held on October 23.  The USACBI appeal, also posted on the Academe Blog, included no background for her at all.

Only eleven webinars were ultimately scheduled, none of which appear to have come close to attracting the hoped-for “hundreds or thousands of attendees.” Turnout for the five programs that I attended ranged from a dozen to about forty-five participants. At only one of them was Khaled identified as a PFLP operative.

Deplorably, however, two webinars – at NYU and the University of Hawaii – were again blocked by Zoom. The AAUP chapter at NYU issued a statement in protest, posted on the Academe Blog, wryly noting that it is “an act of sick comedy to censor an event about censorship.” Equally ironic, however, was the chapter’s reference to Khaled only as “a Palestinian rights advocate.”

The sanitized references to Leila Khaled matter because it is impossible to assess the validity of Zoom’s actions – and YouTube’s and Facebook’s – without full information. Although there could be no good reason other than political prejudice for censoring a “Palestinian rights activist,” there may be a legitimate legal basis for denying a platform to an admitted hijacker and leader of a designated terrorist organization.

Like it or not, it is a crime under U.S. law to provide “material support” to a “designated foreign terrorist organization” such as the PFLP. In 2009, a 6-3 SCOTUS majority held, in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, that “material support” may include “advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization.” That is a muddled standard – far too broad, in my opinion – but it could still plausibly be applied to facilitating a speech by a member of the PFLP’S Political Bureau. (Airplane hijacking is a terrorist act by legal definition, and Khaled is steadfast in her commitment to armed struggle.)

Thus, the tech giants’ decisions were not vindictive or irrational. As publicly traded companies, with fiduciary duties to shareholders, they were rather playing it safe in a volatile and unprecedented situation. I would like to think that no university would have acceded to complaints about the Khaled webinar -- just as SFSU did not cave – but businesses answer to a different constituency.

In a better world, universities would not be dependent on Zoom and the others for webinar platforms. In a perfect world, companies like Zoom would be committed to academic freedom. But if we expect that ever to happen, there must be a reciprocal commitment to honesty and accuracy about the programs and people being hosted.

If it had been up to me, every one of the Khaled webinars would have gone ahead uninterrupted, although I probably would have joined a silent protest. But I am a professor, not a business executive. It is unreasonable, however, to expect Zoom to take legal risks over controversial events when the academic sponsors themselves are not straightforward about the webinar’s featured speaker. Unlike the general right of free speech, which imposes few if any obligations on the speaker, the exercise of academic freedom requires us to be as truthful as possible. The postulate demands the corollary.

Comments

[Bernie Burk]

Steve, I really appreciate the clarity you've brought to your discussions of such a difficult and divisive topic. Clarity is one of those virtues in short supply these days.

--Bernie

[Steve Diamond]

I concur. Much appreciated, Steve. Unfortunately there are many in the leadership of today's universities who are unwilling to be so clear about the principles of academic freedom.

[STAN NADEL]

Providing the PFLP with an online forum for an international audience that features and promotes as a heroine one of its top leaders clearly violates the law. Would academic freedom also include putting online a conference promoting the Islamic State or Al Qaida and featuring one of its leaders as a hero to be emulated? How about one promoting Nazi ideology and featuring a restored to life Adolf Eichmann or Josef Mengele? Surely there are some limits. True, Khaled herself failed as a mass murderer when the grenade she tried to set of in an airplane in mid-flight failed to explode, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. And in her role as a member of the PFLP Political Bureau she is responsible for recent terrorist attacks as well and can be counted on to promote more of them under the rubric of "resistance" if she is given an academic platform--so is incitement to terrorism covered under academic freedom? It seems to me that she is and should be beyond the pale.