‘Hey, LU, shame on you!’ Around fifty demonstrators, some carrying Palestinian flags, are shouting in front of the Wijnhaven building on Monday afternoon. Their protest signs contain both accusations (‘Leiden, where freedom is selective’) and expletives of distress (‘What the fuck Leiden!!!’) as well as a few clever head-scratchers (‘Praesidium Libertatis, Palestinium exceptionalis’).
The reason for this is because the university refused to allow a panel discussion on Palestine to take place. According to the Executive Board, the moderator is ‘not impartial’.
The demonstrators do not sit idly by. They keep chanting slogans for an hour. Then, they head for Spuiplein, where a tall wall has been placed with a small doorway guarded by armed agents: an Israeli roadblock. A strict woman with a fake gun points to a QR code: ‘Scan this!’ Those who are identified as ‘Palestinians’ have the misfortune of not being allowed to pass.
UNEXPECTED NEWS
The action is part of the so-called Israeli Apartheid Week. At seven Dutch universities, students are organising events related to apartheid and occupation in Israel, Palestine and the rest of the world. The plan was to do so in Leiden as well.
However, last week, the organisation Students for Palestine received some unexpected news. The students had asked two lecturers to reserve a room in the Wijnhaven building for their panel discussion with various academics from the Netherlands and abroad. That request was forwarded to the university’s Security Department, which subsequently informed the lecturers that the panel could not take place on account of the university’s ‘house rules’. According to the Executive Board, ‘the moderator’s profile lacked the impartiality needed to facilitate a balanced debate in which every member of the community can participate and feel safe’. No substantiation was provided to prove that the intended moderator was not impartial.
The moderator in question is Dina Zbeidy, a Palestinian anthropologist who obtained her PhD at the University of Amsterdam with a thesis on marriage practices among Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Jordan and who is now doing research on access to justice at the University of Applied Sciences Leiden. She says she has no idea about what could be wrong with her profile. ‘When the organisers told me I wouldn’t be impartial, I sent an e-mail to the university asking for an explanation.’
Initially, the university refused to respond: the anthropologist is supposedly not a member of the academic community. Only after persistent insistence, a partial explanation was given.
Zbeidy: ‘They wrote that they’d be happy to have me as a panel member, but as moderator, I have a distinct profile. They didn’t explain what this meant, but the university would be unable to guarantee the safety of all the participants if I were to be the moderator.’
The fact that she has repeatedly expressed critical views on the human rights situation in Palestine should not prevent her from acting as moderator, says the anthropologist. ‘As a panel member, I would talk about my own research and opinions. But in the role of moderator, which I have a lot of experience with, I have to guide the discussion. Especially when you act as a moderator, it’s important that you’re an expert on the subject. I also made it clear that we want to involve everyone, and that we explicitly do not tolerate racism, sexism or anti-Semitism.’
Even after the e-mail exchange with the university, it remained unclear to her why she was not considered to be impartial, says Zbeidy. ‘Finding a moderator with whom all members of the community feel safe, like the university wants, seems almost impossible to me. I am also a woman. Maybe there are men out there who feel uncomfortable with that?’, she says half-jokingly.
BREAKTHROUGH
The university, however, remains steadfast in its demand: Students for Palestine must find a new moderator who is truly impartial, otherwise the event at the Wijnhaven is off the table. The students refuse to let Zbeidy down and start looking for an alternative location.
For a moment, there seems to be a breakthrough. On Friday, Dean Mark Rutgers offers to facilitate the panel discussion at the Faculty of Humanities. The relief is short-lived, however, because not long afterwards, word gets out that Rutgers has been overruled by the Executive Board and the event is cancelled after all. The students decline a final offer by Rutgers to act as moderator himself: replacing a Palestinian woman with extensive knowledge with a Dutch man without specific expertise (Rutgers is a professor of Social Philosophy) is not an option for the organisation.
The students also turn down an invitation from the Executive Board to participate in a later meeting in which Israeli and Palestinian students would be able to engage in discussion. ‘At the time of Apartheid in South Africa, you wouldn’t let black and white students enter into a discussion with each other like that either’, says Evalien (21, International Studies) from Students for Palestine.
The university’s inflexible attitude leads to a storm of criticism on social media. Especially the lack of substantiation for Zbeidy’s supposed lack of impartiality is criticised. Many call the decision a restriction of academic freedom that lies in stark contrast with the university’s motto praesidium libertatis, bastion of freedom. Some also point out the striking contrast between the decision to cancel the panel discussion and the university’s generous approach to facilitating events related to Ukraine and Chinese human rights violations. Critical responses keep flooding in to a series of tweets by Rector Hester Bijl (who posted a statement on the university website on Monday evening). On Instagram, furious comments and the hashtag #freepalestine can be found underneath all the recent photos posted by the university.
‘Institutional racism on full display’ says @Samerabdelnour on Twitter. ‘Is there any reason for the current chair not being suitable for this position other than the fact that she’s a Palestinian?’, @kenancruz asks. Employees and students have launched a petition to express their support for the organisation. The petition has now been signed more than 1600 times.
‘NOT AN ISOLATED EVENT’
On Monday afternoon, this sense of dissatisfaction was voiced in front of the entrance to the Wijnhaven building, the original location of the panel discussion. Security guards are prominently positioned in front of the entrance. Inside, all visitors have to show their LU-Card.
Judith Naeff, assistant professor at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, climbs onto a planter with a megaphone in her hand. ‘We need empathy and integrity, not impartiality. If freedom doesn’t apply to everyone, it’s not freedom at all.’ ‘I was always told that my freedom comes at the expense of the Palestinian’s freedom’, says the Jewish-Israeli student Itaï van der Wal. ‘I refuse to believe that.’ He calls on other Jewish students to ‘speak up against Israeli apartheid’.
‘This is not an isolated event, but an expression of institutional racism’, shouts a Palestinian student. ‘The university supports arbitrary abuse of power. The security officer took issue with the gender and Palestinian background of the chair.’
There is more criticism about the prejudice of Chief Security Officer Leo Harskamp. This is partly due to an argument on Twitter last June, in which he responded to a lecturer who had tweeted critically about the Israeli army. ‘Every pogrom ever was preceded by malicious lies like these. How do you want the (Jewish) students under your care to feel’, Harskamp tweeted from a since-deleted account. The lecturer in question is one of the two people who had booked the room for Students for Palestine.
Mare asked Harskamp whether he would be able to make an unbiased decision about a subject on which he has expressed strong views in the past. Although he was initially willing to answer questions himself, he later referred them to the communications department. Spokesperson Caroline van Overbeeke stresses that the decisions about the panel discussion were not made by just one person. Nor does she doubt Harskamp’s impartiality: ‘Every employee has personal views, of course; but in a professional environment, we are expected to separate our views from the work itself. That also applies to the Chief Security Officer.’
When asked why the university apparently does not expect the same kind of professionalism from moderator Zbeidy, she says ‘that is putting it in terms that are too black and white’. ‘We don’t want to claim that people with strong political views can’t be moderators, but in this case, the combination of multiple signals complicated matters.’
According to her, the moderator’s impartiality was not the only deciding factor. It was also unclear to the university exactly which students were behind the organisation and there had been signals from students who did not feel comfortable about the event. The spokesperson does not want to specify which students this concerns. ‘All in all, there were too many alarm bells. The nature of the event, the moderator’s profile, signals regarding the safety of students and the lack of contact with the organisation all further complicated the decision.’
Despite the cancellation, the organisation managed to find an alternative location at the Koorenhuis in the Hague at the last minute (see box). ‘And’, moderator Dina Zbeidy said to the audience at the end of the panel discussion on Monday afternoon: ‘Did you all feel safe?’ The audience responded with a resounding ‘Yes!’.
The room in the Koorenhuis on Prinsegracht in The Hague is packed when Dina Zbeidy opens the meeting. Although everyone is interested in the programme, a slight tension pervades the room. Everyone present is aware of the events that preceded the meeting.
Thus, Zbeidy starts by pointing out the elephant in the room: ‘It wasn’t easy, making this happen today. There has been a lot of discussion about my ability to be impartial. But I wonder whether someone who claims to be impartial when it comes to gross human rights violations is truly impartial.'
The first speaker describes daily life in Hebron under Israeli occupation. ‘Welcome to Apartheid street’ is written on one of the photos shown by the Palestinian researcher Kahlil Bitar, who lives in Germany. Images of streets divided by ethnicity are strongly reminiscent of pre-1994 South Africa. Thandiwe Matthews, a South African lawyer, also draws this connection when talking about how international sanctions and solidarity contributed to the end of the apartheid regime in her native country.
Striking parallels are drawn between recent geopolitical events and the university’s response to the panel discussion. Middle East analyst Mouin Rabbani compares the global reaction to the occupation of Ukraine and the way the university encourages discussions and events concerning Ukraine with the lack of response to Israel’s occupation of Palestine and how Leiden is also trying to thwart the panel discussion. According to him, Rector Hester Bijl therefore serves as ‘a useful idiot’ to the broader effort to stifle Palestinian voices.
With the exception of that one swipe at the university, it is a friendly and open discussion between academics with an attentive and relaxed audience. The only real opposition comes from the sound system. Because of the hasty relocation, the organisation has not had time to hire technicians. A few volunteers bravely try to keep the microphones working without disturbing the discussions.
Written with cooperation from Oscar van Putten