The panel featured members of the Muslim, Arab and Palestinian (MAP) Communities Committee, including co-chair Alexander Key, a comparative literature professor, and committee member Natalie Jabbar ’09 M.A. ’10, the Public Humanities Initiative associate director. Members of the Subcommittee on Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias (ASAIB) were also on the panel, which included co-chairs Larry Diamond ’74 M.A. ’78 Ph.D. ’80 and Jeffrey Koseff M.S. ’78 Ph.D. ’83. Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and Koseff is a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment.

The panelists addressed student questions on free speech and open dialogue at the event hosted by the Stanford Political Union and moderated by YuQing Jiang ’25, a Stanford Daily opinions editor.

Following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel and a reported rise of hate crimes against Jewish, Muslim and Arab students, former University President Richard Saller commissioned the two committees in November 2023 to evaluate antisemitic and anti-Palestinian discrimination in the Stanford community.

Last spring, each committee — composed of faculty, staff, students and alumni — released a 148-page report detailing dozens of instances of restricted speech, harassment and intimidation on campus.

Both committees conducted listening sessions, drafted reports and crafted recommendations for confronting bias and fostering community at Stanford. But “everyone was afraid to have their name attached to their sentiments,” Jabbar said, which made their work “very difficult.”

Diamond said he gained insight into the sentiments shared by members of Stanford’s Jewish and Israeli community during the ASAIB subcommittee’s listening sessions.

“The hardest [part] was having Jewish students tell me what they have been experiencing,” he said.

He recounted “one surprising and very tearful incident” in which a student told him: “‘I haven’t had any trouble. You know, no one’s said anything antisemitic about me’ — and then the tears start forming — ‘but most of my friends don’t know I’m Jewish.’”

Koseff said that Stanford’s Jewish students felt as though they were being held responsible for the actions of the Israeli state, leading to “feelings of alienation.”

Key described the University’s tendency to “assume the position of a neutral container” in light of campus protests in support of Israel and Palestine, as “detrimental to both the community of the University and its scholarly work.” Key added that in order to be welcome in the neutral container, students are forced to “leave their whole selves at the door.”

Diamond emphasized the importance of creating a campus culture of “mutual respect, mutual tolerance, mutual engagement and mutual listening.” The University must continue its work to ensure student safety, Diamond said, citing instances of physical harassment on Stanford’s campus and across the country.

In September, the University published updated policies on the expression of free speech and processes to report discrimination and harassment. The guidelines replaced Protected Identity Harm (PIH) reporting, instead implementing a new means for reporting physical harassment under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

The panelists criticized a New York Times article that stated the two “dueling reports” illustrate the “rift between Jewish and Muslim groups on campus.”

“It’s not Jews versus Muslims. We say it over and over again, ‘We’re not fighting Jeff and Larry,’” Key said. “The framing just keeps coming back to this binary balance. It instrumentalizes and objectifies. It doesn’t listen [to members of these communities].”

The panelists said both committees plan to present their respective findings with the Faculty Senate. They also plan to discuss the University’s role in facilitating future discussions between Stanford’s Jewish and Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities on campus.

“Our dream for the report is that we will be able to build a university [culture] where students don’t have to go out and camp on White Plaza to talk about issues [the University] won’t,” Key said.

Diamond underscored the importance of using the University’s academic platform to advance rational debate on all relevant issues, beyond the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“There shouldn’t be an exception to what we can debate and talk about in terms of domestic policy, international affairs, philosophy and basic values,” Diamond said. “Students will find a variety of means to ensure that their voices are heard, that issues are raised, and hopefully that we listen to one another and push the boundaries of our understanding and our arguments with discourse that is both vibrant and mutually respectful.”

Source: The Stanford Daily

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Patriot Act, and the surveillance of Muslim communities destroyed all trust between the two sides. The Democratic Party filled this void and offered Muslim and Arab voters a new political home. The nascent political alliance between the two was built upon the vision that Arabs and Muslims were a unique and welcomed component of American society.

But President Biden’s handling of Israel’s war on Gaza has led Muslim and Arab voters to grow disillusioned with the party and feel they are no longer as welcome as they may have once been.

This sentiment was further reinforced by the uncommitted movement that sprung up in protest against Biden’s policies in March.

Efforts to wake up Democrats and the Biden administration highlight a seemingly unnoticed theme within today’s political scene: The Muslim and Arab community does not fear another Trump presidency.

Not only are they a demographic desensitized by historical discrimination in the U.S., but many are immigrants and refugees coming from such horrific situations that they view the potential harms from another Trump presidency as relatively insignificant.

Try telling an Iraqi who fled America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, or a Palestinian who has lived in the shadow of Israel’s brutal occupation, that Donald Trump would be their worst nightmare.

Ultimately, it is this unique outlook on their lives that has enabled them to conclude that Biden and Trump are just not that different.

For example, during his 2020 campaign, Biden promised to re-open the Palestinian consulate in Jerusalem, which had been closed by Trump. Nearly four years have passed, and the administration has not fulfilled the pledge. This was a missed opportunity by the Biden administration to differentiate itself from its predecessor.

Muslim and Arab voters also do not fear Trump because of critical moments in which Biden has appeared apathetic toward Palestinian suffering, just like Trump. The most glaring instance occurred last October when Biden stated he had “no confidence” in the Palestinian death count in Gaza because it came from the Gaza Health Ministry, a source used by Israeli Intelligence. Muslim and Arab Americans were deeply disturbed by such apathy and concluded that Palestinian lives do not matter to Biden and the Democratic Party.

This notion was also reinforced during last week’s presidential debate. Trump attacked Biden and called him “a weak Palestinian, a very bad one.” Trump had used “Palestinian” as an obvious slur. Not only did Biden not condemn such hatred, he seemingly ignored it and retorted with a pitiful response: “That is a bunch of foolishness.”

With that said, both Biden and the mainstream Democratic Party need to ask themselves this one question: Despite our foreign blunders, how do we get Arabs and Muslims to support us in 2024? It seems as if they already asked themselves this question, and concluded that playing the proverbial “Trump card” will somehow intimidate the Arabs and Muslims into voting for Democrats in November.

It will not work, because the dystopian Islamophobic and anti-Arab world that liberals keep warning about is already unfolding right now in Biden’s America.

Consider the evidence from the Council on American-Islamic Relations. According to organization, over 8,000 complaints of anti-Muslim bias were reported last year. Under Biden, pro-Palestine supporters have been beaten, jailed and doxxed for expressing solidarity with Gaza. Some students from Harvard have even been denied their degrees.

Why would Muslim and Arab Americans forgive such repression, especially from an administration they initially believed supported them?

Arabs and Muslims are so hurt now that, even if the embattled president drops out of the race, nothing will restore their lost confidence in the Democratic Party.

To assert themselves politically once more, Muslims and Arabs are prepared to send a message to Democrats, even if it means putting Donald Trump back into the White House.

Although Trump would be worse for the Arab and Muslim communities in the short run (especially on the issue of Palestine), Muslims and Arabs perceive that Democrats’ loss will be a just punishment, forcing the party to recalibrate its views and adopt a more pro-Palestinian stance in the future.

Source: The Hill