The “Palestine Exception”

11/27/24 • 26 min

1 Listener

Continued campus protests against the Gaza war have sparked heated debates around free speech, academic freedom, and the role of universities in addressing global issues.

This spring saw an outpouring of students demanding that their institutions divest from Israel. Since then, universities have taken sometimes draconian measures to stop protests before they even begin.

On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporters Akela Lacy and Jonah Valdez, who have been following the protest movements for months, discuss the latest developments and how college administrators are responding.

Lacy followed one such case at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where students were hit with severe charges for vandalism. “The school is trying to make an example of student leaders in the movement for Palestine to chill further speech,” Lacy says. “I want to emphasize the fact that these are felony charges for undergraduate students for a nonviolent offense that is putting paint on a building.”

Students and organizers who spoke with Valdez anticipate even greater hostility for protesters of every kind once Donald Trump takes office again in January. “This is what a lot of organizers were telling me leading up to Election Day was that there’s going to be so many other attacks on the rights of many other people," he says, "whether it’s reproductive rights, rights of trans people, LGBTQ community at large, rights of immigrants, all on top of the ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine.”

To hear more about the chilling effects on free speech and protest, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

The Intercept: "Class Struggle"

The Intercept: "No Room for Emergency"

The Intercept: "100 Days in Appalachia"

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continued campus protests against the Gaza war have sparked heated debates around free speech, academic freedom, and the role of universities in addressing global issues.

To hear more about the chilling effects on free speech and protest, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

The Intercept: "Class Struggle"

The Intercept: "No Room for Emergency"

The Intercept: "100 Days in Appalachia"

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Previous Episode

Rep. Summer Lee on the Fight of Our Lives

As the clock winds down on the Biden presidency, Democrats have a limited window to act. Come January 20, Republicans will control the executive branch and both houses of Congress.

On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., acknowledges the need for swift action, particularly on the war in Gaza, prison pardons, and immigration. “I’ve been on calls with advocacy groups around immigration,” she says. President-elect Donald Trump's promises to conduct mass deportation are “an imminent threat.”

One tactic she’s employing to drive home the urgency is bringing Dreamers and their stories to meetings. “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power, closest to the policy solutions. That is not just a cute saying," Lee says. "It is, I would say, a very lifesaving way of thinking about the policies and the solutions that we have for the very real problems that we face. We can't keep icing out the people who live it.”

But she is also planning beyond the next eight weeks and is determined to fight the Trump administration. “When you're playing, it's Friday night football, it's raining out, you should not leave that field and your jerseys white. You gotta get dirty,” she says. “Not a single voter wants to see us looking pristine when we're in the fight for our life right now.”

To hear more about how Lee and her colleagues on the left are planning to handle the next four years, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Next Episode

Silencing Dissent: Attacks on Free Speech and Nonprofits Are Already Ramping Up

For years, Donald Trump has vowed to go after his critics and journalists. As he prepares to reenter the White House, he’s nominating loyalists, like incoming FBI director Kash Patel, who have pledged to do the same.

The Trump administration may soon have a new weapon to target perceived enemies. On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, we discuss the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, or H.R. 9495.

Last month, the House passed H.R. 9495, which would give the Treasury Department secretary the authority to label any nonprofit — like The Intercept — a terrorist-supporting organization and take away its tax-exempt status, likely forcing them to shut down.

Noah Hurowitz, who has been covering the bill, says, “One thing that has come up a lot in my reporting on this, in talking to civil liberties experts and talking to nonprofits, is that the vagaries of the bill and the broad powers that it allows will likely have a chilling effect on free speech.”

Shawn Musgrave, The Intercept’s senior counsel and correspondent, points out the legal implications: “One of the things that I think is important to think about for a bill like H.R. 9495, which is framed around terrorism, [it] really reduces the level of due process and takes a lot of the guardrails off of the current system.”

Though it’s not likely that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., will bring it up for a vote this session, the legislation could resurface in January when Republicans control both houses of Congress. To learn more about the implications, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.