An upcoming course at Cornell University on Gaza, Indigeneity, Resistance, taught by Professor Eric Cheyfitz, has become the target of outrageous, serious, and intolerable attacks. The attacks on the course, and on Professor Cheyfitz, were initiated when a Zionist law professor complained about the course to Cornell’s Interim President Michael Kotlikoff. Kotlikoff emailed back agreeing with the Zionist professor’s complaints, and his response was made public.1
The Zionist law professor then followed up with a piece in the Cornell Daily Sun newspaper that accused Professor Cheyfitz of encouraging “antisemitic manifestations against Israeli and Jewish students.” In reality, Professor Cheyfitz (who is Jewish) has repeatedly, with substance, exposed how and why anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism.
As controversy spread, rabidly pro-Zionist Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres, of New York, posted an inflammatory, slanderous attack on X (Twitter) claiming “professors like Cheyfitz are poisoning young minds.”
Since the national and international coverage of the slanderous attacks, Cheyfitz and his family have received hate mail including obscene calls for violence against his wife, children and grandchildren.
In a very significant development, the Committee on Academic Freedom of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and the Executive Committee of the Cornell University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have issued open letters condemning Kotlikoff's blatant violation of university governance and academic freedom.
AAUP's public statement condemned Kotlikoff for denouncing a course that he knew nothing about,2 and then for going
further to question the integrity of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences college curriculum committee for approving a course he objected to on transparently political grounds. And he asserted that he was actively working with colleagues in other departments to develop courses that will offer more “objective” courses on the topic—in other words, that conform to political criteria for how Palestine should be studied and taught (or not) at Cornell.
The open letter called Kotlikoff's remarks an "egregious threat to bedrock principles of academic freedom," that "raise the specter of administrative interference in faculty control over curricular decisions and course instruction. The leadership of the University not only intends to scrutinize the in-class activities of Cornell faculty but is actively doing so where it is deemed politically desirable.” In fact, just a month earlier it was discovered that a Cornell Vice President promised a private meeting of parents of Jewish students that in-class instruction activities for all faculty would be scrutinized.
This attack on a new course on Gaza could be a preview of a more fundamental assault by Trump fascism ahead. Trump has already sworn to crack down on universities for “turning our students into communists and terrorists.” And the State University System under Florida's fascist Governor DeSantis has been ordered to review all Florida public university syllabi "for anything that might be considered antisemitic or anti-Israel." (Staff will use a keyword search on all available online course descriptions and syllabi to find words like, “Israel, Israeli, Palestine, Palestinian, Middle East, Zionism, Zionist, Judaism, Jewish, or Jew.”)
In his social media message @BobAvakianOfficial Revolution #106, Bob Avakian (BA) calls on everyone to Defend the Rights and Lives of People Targeted by Trump/MAGA Fascism. Take the Offensive in Opposition to This Fascism And The System That Has Given Rise to This Fascism. And BA goes on to say: “what is needed is bold defiance and a determined refusal to go along with any of this—now, and in an ongoing way.”
The powerful condemnation by MESA and Cornell's AAUP chapter of the Cornell president's actions as fundamental threats to the existence of critical thinking and academic freedom on the campuses, needs to be actively spread and taken up across the country. This is a time to take the offensive, with eyes set on the greater struggle to defeat a Fascist America, as part of putting an end to the system that has produced it.
