Last month, the United States celebrated Black History Month; and yet, many American teachers are now too afraid to talk about the history of slavery. NPR reports that: “According to PEN America, a non-profit that advocates for freedom of expression, 39 states have introduced over 160 bills in the past year limiting what schools can teach about race, politics, American history, sexual orientation, and gender identity.” Why? White people are uncomfortable, it seems, because our history makes us feel badly. These laws are effectively trying to ban the teaching of any concepts that cause “guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” because of a student's race, sex, or identity—read whiteness. It’s a reactionary response to the popularity of the movement Black Lives Matter, a phenomenon that academic and educator Robin DiAngelo calls “white fragility”.
Legislatures in some states want to prevent us from teaching about the transatlantic slave trade, a period of history from approximately 1526 to 1867, when the Gilder Lehrman Institute notes “some 12.5 million slaves were shipped from Africa, and 10.7 million arrived in the Americas”. It is the ugly history of white supremacy that has shaped the story of our nation (and other colonial powers) past and present. Censoring this narrative only ensures that racism strides confidently into our collective futures.
Censorship is also a tactic used by the Israel lobby, which tries to silence Palestinian narratives, even when coming from Israelis. Scholars and universities in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and Israel are fighting false charges of Antisemitism just for acknowledging that history also exists from a Palestinian perspective. It sadly reminds me of the time when it was “illegal to criticize the Nazi government”. Ironically, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance would classify that last statement as Antisemitic.
Part of the reason critical scholars of Palestine face discrimination and double standards is because we uncover uncomfortable truths about Zionism, the Israel lobby and the oppressive conditions for Palestinians living under occupation. David Miller, formerly a Professor of Political Sociology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, was recently fired from his job after a public misinformation campaign to discredit his scholarship. Although he was cleared of any charges of hate speech, he still lost his job.
I believe Miller was sacked because of his research. The organization he heads, Spinwatch, a project of Public Interest Investigations, has published numerous reports on the overlapping funders of the transatlantic Islamophobia network and the right-wing of the pro-Israel lobby. I have contributed to several of these reports. Our research follows a clear methodology, using network analysis and content analysis, and in our field work we forensically search the internet for tax documents, annual reports, media reports, and official websites.
Our research results are not deliberate, they are factual. They raise uncomfortable truths. I have a chapter in the book that Dr. Narzanin Massoumi and Dr. Tom Mills edited with Miller, What is Islamophobia? It reveals the results of three years of research on the overlapping donors to transatlantic organizations that actively promote Islamophobia and those financing Israel’s occupation of Palestine. I found that out of the 60 known American funders of Islamophobia, 45 also sent money to Israeli settlements or related causes. A co-authored report, The Israel Lobby and the European Union, also details how many of the pro-Israel groups recently launched in Europe have right-wing and/or Islamophobic links.
I know, these findings are uncomfortable – how else do you think I felt after uncovering them? So how do we talk about difficult areas of research?
I struggle with this question, especially in the classroom where pro-Israel voices are now often in the minority, at times even marginalized. I also try to employ language that does not alienate and reaches wider audiences, especially liberal Zionists who are critical of the settlements. So yes, some may disagree with the language that Miller uses to describe our collective research findings. But how does one speak truth to power when politics in Israel is now completely dominated by the far right? As Israeli-born writer Abraham Gutman argues, he is often charged with “feeding Antisemitism” whenever he just criticizes Israeli policies.
Even though I prefer the use of “pro-Israel” to Zionist and try to always make pains to stress that our focus is on right-wing Zionism, I too have been called a conspiracy theorist and also faced claims that I am dismissive of Antisemitism. I have also had my employee rights denied by two different academic employers. This is because the language that I use is not the problem; it is the uncomfortable truths that our research findings reveal.
Perhaps we do need a more robust debate to determine what kind of language is appropriate – especially for children – when human history is so ugly, as the purpose of research is to educate the next generation to make better choices than we made. However, we need to be able to carry out and teach difficult research without fear of punishment. Censoring other peoples’ oppression is nothing but McCarthyism for the 21st century.