16.09.26
Editorial Note
George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, Washington, DC, will host an event on 25 Years of the War on Terror, on September 17–18, 2026. It will “examine lessons from the War on Terror, explore what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like,” and shall ask “how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished.” The conference will also “hold space to mourn and remember survivors and the millions of victims of the War on Terror, as we continue to demand accountability, justice and reparations.”
This event, titled “When Will This War End: Lessons and Legacies of the War on Terror,” is organized by the Muslim Counterpublics Lab (MCL), a grassroots organization based in Washington, D.C., dedicated to dismantling Islamophobia and challenging state-sponsored oppression. Founded in 2022 by Dr. Maha Hilal, MCL focuses on “empowering Muslim communities to reclaim their narratives and confront systemic injustice.” Hilal is a Muslim Arab American and an expert on institutionalized Islamophobia.
Thirty additional organizations have joined the MCL in sponsoring the event, which plans to examine both “25 years of the Global War on Terror and 250 years of the American empire.” It will analyze “how racialized narratives, Islamophobia, and xenophobia have shaped surveillance, militarization, and national security policies.” The conference is also showing a special exhibition titled “Shattering Justice & Re-Making the Muslim Threat.”
The conference explicitly connects the historical framework of the U.S. Global War on Terror to current geopolitics involving Israel and the Palestinian territories. Organizers and speakers argue that the domestic and international counterterrorism infrastructures developed over the last 25 years are being deployed to justify state violence and suppress advocacy.
Panels and discussions focusing on Israel include:
- “Palestine and the War on Terror: State Repression and (Dis)arming Genocidaires,” a session focusing on the legal, academic, and organizing perspectives regarding the domestic crackdowns faced by individuals speaking out for Palestine, as well as resisting U.S. military and financial aid to Israel.
- “Tracing the Global War on Terror from Past to Present,” an opening plenary connecting historical U.S. post-9/11 military campaigns (such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan) to what organizers describe as the U.S.-Israeli military actions in Gaza and broader escalation toward Iran.
- “Manufacturing Consent for State Violence,” an analysis of corporate media narratives, critiquing how “counterterrorism” frameworks and terminology have been weaponized by states—including the U.S. and Israel—to build public support for military occupations and violence.
The conference organizers note that after 9/11, President George W. Bush spoke to Congress and announced the launch of the War on Terror. He stated: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” The conference leaders found much wrong with the War on Terror, describing the President’s definition as a “dangerously expansive one.” For them, it “quickly evolved into a framework of warfare, draconian immigration policies, mass surveillance, terrorism prosecutions, and detention and torture that has not only endured, but expanded with US wars devastating Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Nigeria among other countries. Some estimates calculate 1 million killed directly from war, with millions more killed from sanctions, starvation, disease, the destruction of sovereign state institutions, and displacement.”
According to the organizers, for twenty-five years, “the architecture of the War on Terror has profoundly reshaped the lives of Muslims, Arabs and other targeted communities in the United States and across the globe.”
Because of these alleged consequences, the conference will “analyze the impacts of the global War on Terror and how the United States and its allies continue to deploy War on Terror frameworks, particularly Islamophobia and xenophobia, to manufacture consent for draconian surveillance and immigration policies, and exorbitant military spending for campaigns of ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation, and extractivism.”
The goal of the conference is to “confront the quarter-century of structural violence that has operated under problematic, violent policies that claim to battle ‘terrorism’.”
The conference would explore “what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like, and ask how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished.”
This conference “will hold space to mourn and remember survivors and the millions of victims of the War on Terror, as we continue to demand accountability, justice and reparations.”
The sessions of the conference include: “From Iraq and Afghanistan to Palestine and Iran”, “The Global War on Terror’s Blueprint (domestically and globally)”, “Immigration and the Carceral State”, “Exposing and Targeting War Profiteers”, “Journalistic Responsibility: Countering State Propaganda”, and “Shattering Justice and Remaking the Muslim Threat,” among others.
The Conference is going to “Interrogate the War on Terror as an enduring system of power that has evolved into a permanent global infrastructure of state violence, shaping law, policy, and public discourse”; “Expose the role of Islamophobia + xenophobia and analyze how racialized narratives have justified surveillance, detention, militarization, and national security policies”; “Center the experiences of impacted communities and highlight the human costs of the War on Terror on Muslim and marginalized communities”; “Critically examine legal and political frameworks that has facilitated ongoing state violence under the guise of ‘counterterrorism’”; “Highlight and learn from resistance movements from grassroots organizing to narrative interventions to policy change”; and “Envision abolitionist futures by fostering collective imagination around dismantling this infrastructure and build systems rooted in justice, care, and collective liberation.”
The overall goal is to “confront the quarter-century of structural violence that has operated under problematic, violent policies that claim to battle ‘terrorism’,” and “what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like, and ask how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished.” The conference would explore “what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like, and ask how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished.”
Finally, the conference “will hold space to mourn and remember survivors and the millions of victims of the War on Terror, as we continue to demand accountability, justice and reparations.”
Those who follow our work in Israel Academia Monitor would notice that the pattern is clear, instead of accusing the radical Islamist terrorists of perpetuating a global terrorist network, these American Muslim scholars and intellectuals use their academic platform to put the blame on the US, Israel, and the West – the terror-stricken countries.
But even by the standards of Israel Academia Monitor case studies, the claims of the MCL activists are egregious. First, they represent a total moral inversion, meaning, they reverse the moral roles of victim and perpetrator. Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda were clear aggressors on 9/11, killing some 3000 people in the Twin Towers. Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which murdered some 1,200, mostly civilians, on October 7, 2023, were also clear aggressors.
The empirical inversion of facts is equally glaring, most notably with regard to the claims that the “millions of people” died in “Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Nigeria among other countries,” because of the United States or the “West.” Civilians died in many countries, especially in the Middle East, when al-Qaeda, which morphed into ISIS, launched attacks in Iraq and Syria before moving to Africa. All this without mentioning that Iran – through its Axis of Resistance: Hezbollah, Popular Mobilization Forces, and the Houthis – killed thousands of people, on top of the Hamas massacre.
Already in April 2024, George Washington University was accused of failing to address antisemitism, when numerous events were recorded, including calls to destroy Israel outside an event with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. The anti-Israel activists protested outside and shouted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and called Thomas-Greenfield a “Zionist Imperial Puppet.” They handed out pamphlets with the writing “Amerikkka” to describe the U.S.
Universities must not allow anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-West, terror apologists among their midst. The war on terror is not over.
REFERENCES:
“The struggle against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
— Milan Kundera
On September 20th, 2001 – nine days after the 9/11 attacks – President George W. Bush gave a speech to Congress announcing the launch of the War on Terror. His definition was a dangerously expansive one: “Our war on terror begins with al Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated.” The War on Terror quickly evolved into a framework of warfare, draconian immigration policies, mass surveillance, terrorism prosecutions, and detention and torture that has not only endured, but expanded with US wars devastating Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Nigeria among other countries. Some estimates calculate 1 million killed directly from war, with millions more killed from sanctions, starvation, disease, the destruction of sovereign state institutions, and displacement. For twenty five years, the architecture of the War on Terror has profoundly reshaped the lives of Muslims, Arabs and other targeted communities in the United States and across the globe.
This conference will analyze the impacts of the global War on Terror and how the United States and its allies continue to deploy War on Terror frameworks, particularly Islamophobia and xenophobia, to manufacture consent for draconian surveillance and immigration policies, and exorbitant military spending for campaigns of ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation, and extractivism.
The goal of this conference is to confront the quarter-century of structural violence that has operated under problematic, violent policies that claim to battle “terrorism” by bringing together scholars, organizers, advocates, survivors, journalists, and community members to examine lessons from the War on Terror, explore what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like, and ask how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished. Finally, this conference will hold space to mourn and remember survivors and the millions of victims of the War on Terror, as we continue to demand accountability, justice and reparations.
What You Can Expect
- Connecting with Conference Speakers and Participants from Diverse Fields: Scholars, Organizers, Advocates, Survivors, Journalists
- 8+ Planeries (ex: Past to Present, From Iraq and Afghanistan to Palestine and Iran, The Global War on Terror’s Blueprint (domestically and globally), Immigration and the Carceral State)
- 4+ Workshops: (ex: Exposing and Targeting War Profiteers, Journalistic Responsibility: Countering State Propaganda)
- Gallery Exhibit for War on Terror Timeline: Shattering Justice and Remaking the Muslim Threat
Conference Goals
- Interrogate the War on Terror as an enduring system of power that has evolved into a permanent global infrastructure of state violence, shaping law, policy, and public discourse.
- Expose the role of Islamophobia + xenophobia and analyze how racialized narratives have justified surveillance, detention, militarization, and national security policies
- Center the experiences of impacted communities and highlight the human costs of the War on Terror on Muslim and marginalized communities.
- Critically examine legal and political frameworks that has facilitated ongoing state violence under the guise of “counterterrorism.”
- Highlight and learn from resistance movements from grassroots organizing to narrative interventions to policy change.
- Envision abolitionist futures by fostering collective imagination around dismantling this infrastructure and build systems rooted in justice, care, and collective liberation.
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Muslim Counterpublics Lab
25 Years of the War on TerrorAbout the event Scholars, organizers, advocates, survivors, journalists, and community members will examine lessons from the War on Terror, explore what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like, and ask how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished. This conference will hold space to mourn and remember survivors and the millions of victims of the War on Terror, as we continue to demand accountability, justice and reparations.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Thursday Sep 17th
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E St NW, Washington, DC 20052
Light Breakfast and Registration
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Reception Area between City View and State Room (7th Floor)
Introductory Remarks
9:30 AM – 9:45 AM
City View Room
Speakers:
Dr. Melani McAlister, Professor of American Studies & International Affairs; Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies
Dr. Maha Hilal, Muslim Counterpublics Lab
Grounding Plenary
TRACING THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR FROM PAST TO PRESENT
9:45 AM – 10:45 AM
City View Room
Speakers: Nazia Kazi·Baher Azmy·Alka Pradhan
Moderator: Dr. Mariam Durrani
Block I for Simultaneous Sessions
Presentation and Discussion:
THE “WORST OF THE WORST”: THE POST 9/11 CARCERAL STATE FROM ENEMY COMBATANTS TO MIGRANT DETAINEES
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
City View Room
Speakers: Aliya Hussain·Hassan Ahmad·Yumna Rizvi·Fahad Mahamud
Moderator: Mikki Charles
Case Study Workshop:
MUSLIM MAJORITY COUNTRIES AND THE INTERNAL ADOPTION OF COUNTERTERRORISM FRAMEWORKS
11:00 AM – 12:30 PM
State Room
Speakers: Suad Abdel Aziz·Niala Mohammad·Habib Battah·Yasmine Taeb
Moderator: Sanaa Ansari Khan
Luncheon Fireside Chat
STATE VIOLENCE BY DESIGN: ANTI-INDIGENOUS RACISM, ANTI-BLACKNESS AND THE HISTORICAL LEGACY OF AMERIKKKA
12:30 PM – 1:30 PM
City View Room
Speakers: Margari Hill·Jen Deerinwater
Moderator: Dr. Irene Calis
Block II for Simultaneous Sessions
Workshop and Discussion:
MANUFACTURING CONSENT FOR STATE VIOLENCE: MEDIA COMPLICITY IN THE WAR ON TERROR
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
State Room
Speakers: Nausheen Husain·Dr. Assal Rad·Sana Saeed
Moderator: Nima Shirazi
Presentation and Discussion:
WHO’S THE TERRORIST? THE DOMESTIC LEGAL BLUEPRINT OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY STATE
1:30 PM – 3:00 PM
City View Room
Speakers: Fatema Ahmad·Arjun Sethi·Steve Downs
Moderator: Fahd Ahmed
Closing Day 1 Panel + Workshop
PALESTINE AND THE WAR ON TERROR: (DIS)ARMING GENOCIDAIRES AND STATE REPRESSION
3:15 PM – 4:45 PM
City View Room
Speakers: Sara Arman·Dr. Irene Calis·Dylan Saba· Shelly Cohen Fudge
Moderator: Tina Al-Khersan
Conference Mixer Onsite
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Friday
Sep 18th
Elliott School of International Affairs
1957 E St NW, Washington, DC 20052
Light Breakfast and Registration
8:30 AM – 9:30 AM
Reception Area between City View and State Room (7th Floor)
Introduction + Plenary
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN MUSLIM: ISLAMOPHOBIA IN THE WAR ON TERROR
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM
City View Room
Speaker: Dr. Maha Hilal
WE REFUSE TO BE SILENT: TESTIMONIES OF SURVIVORS AND POLITICAL PRISONERS POST 9/11
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
City View Room
Speakers: Mansoor Adayfi·Nida Abu Baker· Mariam Abu-Ali · Fadya Risheq
Moderator: Dr. Maha Hilal
Lunch
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM
Block III for Simultaneous Sessions
Workshop and Discussion:
CONFRONTING STATE AND CORPORATE VIOLENCE: FROM ACCOUNTABILITY TO REPARATIONS
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
City View Room
Speakers: Arash Azizzada ·Ramah Kudaimi·Gabi Schubiner
Moderator: Roshni Ahmed
Case Study Workshop:
WHO CAN SAY WHAT? THE TERRORISM PARADIGM AND CRIMINALIZATION OF DISSENT
1:00 PM – 2:30 PM
Lindner Family Commons Room 602 (6th Floor)
Speakers: Sufia Khalid·Nicole Nguyen
Moderator: Sanaa Ansari Khan
Conference Closing Plenary
CONNECTED STRUGGLES, COLLECTIVE FUTURES: BUILDING A WORLD BEYOND STATE VIOLENCE
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM
City View Room
Speakers: Rashida James-Saadiya·Kairi Al-Amin·Kali Rubaii·Roshni Ahmed·Maryam Kashani
Moderator: Loan Tran
Conference Mixer Offsite (Location TBD)
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Institute for Middle East Studies The Institute for Middle East Studies (IMES) was founded in 2007 as part of a broad, university-wide initiative to support academic work on the Middle East. IMES faculty represent a breadth of disciplines from political science to media and public affairs to religion to international business. IMES also sponsors outstanding visiting scholars focused on the Middle East, enriching the institute’s scholarship and academic programs. The Institute hosts both academic and policy-oriented event series that are open to the public, in addition to flagship events such as the IMES Annual Conference and the Annual Kuwait Chair Lecture. IMES also hosts a variety of workshops and professional development events for K-14 teachers on both teaching the Arabic language and on teaching about the Middle East.
IMES is also dedicated to supporting educational programs that focus on the modern Middle East, such as the Elliott School’s B.A. and M.A. programs in Middle East Studies. The Institute serves as the administrative home of these programs, and offers funding to support student research. IMES encourages intellectual collaboration among members of the George Washington University (GWU) community interested in the Middle East, between GWU research institutes, and with other organizations in the Washington area. In promoting and publicizing new work on the Middle East, the IMES aims to deepen understanding of this critical region among scholars, students, and the broader public.
Muslim Counterpublics Lab
Muslim Counterpublics Lab (MCL) is a grassroots, community-building organization that uses the tools of research, writing, and organizing as well as direct, victim-centered support and advocacy campaign programming to challenge systems of oppression rooted in Islamophobia. These structures include state and state-sanctioned violence ranging from widespread surveillance and persecution of Muslim communities by law enforcement and immigration authorities to indefinite detention and torture. We believe that in order to be effective in this work, we must confront the pervasive dehumanization of Muslims head-on and offer support to historically marginalized and oppressed communities.
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4 Sep 2026
25 Years Later, WoT has the “War on Terror” achieved?
Bangkok — In a few days, the world will mark the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The “War on Terror” which followed had a profound impact on Travel & Tourism — increased security measures, visa restrictions, racial profiling, travel disruptions, warfare, draconian immigration policies, mass surveillance, terrorism prosecutions, and detention and torture.
Arguably the worst affected business sector, Travel & Tourism has paid both the price and the costs.
Worse, it is continuing to do so, with no end in sight.
Yet, the topic has never been discussed at any travel industry forum. That gap is now set to be plugged.
Between Sep 17 – 18, 2026 the Institute of Middle East Studies, George Washington University in Washington DC, is co-sponsoring a conference to “analyse the impacts of the global War on Terror and how the United States and its allies continue to deploy War on Terror frameworks, particularly Islamophobia and xenophobia, to manufacture consent for draconian surveillance and immigration policies, and exorbitant military spending for campaigns of ethnic cleansing, genocide, occupation, and extractivism.”
Says the introductory preamble, “Scholars, organizers, advocates, survivors, journalists, and community members will examine lessons from the War on Terror, explore what resistance to this framework of state violence has looked like, and ask how we can imagine a future where infrastructure of the War on Terror is finally abolished. This conference will hold space to mourn and remember survivors and the millions of victims of the War on Terror, as we continue to demand accountability, justice and reparations.”
The conference is being organised by Muslim Counterpublics Lab (MCL), a grassroots, community-building organization whose mission is to “disrupt and subvert dehumanizing narratives that are designed and deployed to justify state violence against Muslims. Its vision is to create a world where Muslims and all marginalized communities have political, social, and economic power to build societies rooted in liberation instead of oppression.”
Travel & Tourism forums will be encouraged to note that the event has attracted a high level of sponsorship support from multiple organisations with shared values. This opens up a clear window of opportunity to build on the conference subject matter and more comprehensively analyse its impact on Travel & Tourism.
The rationale for the conferences notes that the right after 9/11, the “War on Terror quickly evolved into a framework of warfare, draconian immigration policies, mass surveillance, terrorism prosecutions, and detention and torture that has not only endured, but expanded with US wars devastating Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Nigeria among other countries. Some estimates calculate 1 million killed directly from war, with millions more killed from sanctions, starvation, disease, the destruction of sovereign state institutions, and displacement. For twenty five years, the architecture of the War on Terror has profoundly reshaped the lives of Muslims, Arabs and other targeted communities in the United States and across the globe.”
The organisers say they “know that this anniversary – like many anniversaries past will be used to narrate events that justifies the multiple wars and systemic violence of the War on Terror, while also legitimizing the ongoing criminalization and demonization of our communities domestically and across the globe.
“At the twenty-five-year juncture of the catastrophic War on Terror and the infrastructure of state violence it has institutionalized, it is imperative that we hold space for our communities to reflect on this history, our resistance, and how we can pave the path toward our collective liberation.””
The conference will include a striking physical and digital exhibition headlined, “Shattering Justice & Re-Making the Muslim Threat”. Through a meticulous excavation of key events, policies, and laws enacted in the wake of the attacks and the launch of the War on Terror, the exhibit exposes the deep-rooted system of Islamophobia that has shaped U.S. national security policy and normalized the criminalization, surveillance, and dehumanization of Muslim communities.
“A series of bold, visceral poster panels are designed to unsettle, disrupt, and compel critical reflection of what justice and reckoning could and should look like and encourage viewers to look beyond the damage done and commit to the urgent work of solidarity, transformation, and abolition.”
Register for the GWOT Conference https://waronterror25.org/
The full schedule can be found here: https://waronterror25.org/schedule/
The exhibits can be found here: www.shatteringjustice.org
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How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism? — Howard Zinn, HowardZinn.org
#HandsOffVenezuela
Check out the lesson, Whose “Terrorism”? https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/whose-terrorism/
The Zinn Education Project promotes and supports the teaching of people’s history in classrooms across the country. The Zinn Education Project is coordinated by two non-profit organizations, Rethinking Schools and Teaching for Change, that have spent decades developing and providing social justice resources for teachers.
We offer free people’s history lessons and books for middle and high school classrooms; curriculum workshops; online classes with people’s historians; teacher-led study groups; a teacher leader fellowship, and campaigns on Reconstruction, climate justice, and defending the right to teach truthfully.
Since 2008, the Zinn Education Project has introduced students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula. With more than 177,000 people registered, and growing by more than 10,000 new registrants every year, the Zinn Education Project has become a leading resource for teachers and teacher educators.
The empowering potential of studying history is often lost in a textbook-driven trivial pursuit of names and dates. We believe that through taking a more engaging and more honest look at the past, we can help equip students — and all of us — with the analytical tools to make sense of and improve the world today. For a more complete description of our approach, read why teach people’s history.
Our website offers free, downloadable lessons and articles organized by theme, time period, and grade level. Based on the approach to history highlighted in Howard Zinn’s best-selling book A People’s History of the United States, our teaching materials emphasize the role of working people, women, people of color, and organized social movements in shaping history.
Our daily This Day in History posts highlight stories ignored in most textbooks and are shared on social media where we have more than 500,000 followers.
We also produce a regular If We Knew Our History column that features articles by teachers, journalists, and scholars that expose the myths told in corporate curricula and offer ideas for teaching outside the textbook.
We offer professional development workshops in collaboration with school districts, teacher unions, and at teacher conferences. To support teacher leaders, we host the Prentiss Charney Fellowship.
We have several campaigns including Teach Reconstruction, Teach Climate Justice, Teaching for Black Lives, and Abolish Columbus Day. In the spring of 2021, we launched a Teach Truth pledge and we have been active in campaigns to defend teaching honestly in the face of anti-CRT laws and book bans.
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Failure to address antisemitism at George Washington University is a betrayal to students
by Sabrina Soffer, opinion contributor – 04/14/24 4:00 PM
Calls to destroy Israel throbbed outside the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs last Thursday. Members of GW Student Coalition for Palestine (GWSCP) protested an event with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, shouting militant chants such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and calling Thomas-Greenfield a “Zionist Imperial Puppet.” They even hung a dozen-foot-long Palestinian flag over the building and handed out pamphlets that used the spelling “Amerikkka” to describe the U.S. amid claiming that “imperialism in blackface is not progress,” referencing zionism.
With campus culture increasingly toxic in the wake of Hamas’s massacre of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, the school administration promised to take steps to “strengthen our community in challenging times.” Receiving a generous “C” grade according to the new Anti-Defamation League (ADF) campus antisemitism report card, GW is failing to live up to its commitments.
Strains on GW’s community became evident on Oct. 25, when members of GW’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJPGWU) projected slogans lauding violence, such as “glory to our martyrs,” on the exterior of Gelman Library. GW’s administration enacted a 90-day suspension of SJPGWU for violating university policy to which the group responded by reconstituting itself as GWSCP, detached from formal university affiliation.
Following continued anti-Israel disruptions that violated policy and pressure from donors, parents, alumni, students and beyond, the school administration created a three-pronged plan to “foster productive dialogue,” “strengthen partnerships and support,” and “renew policies and procedures” to protect Jewish students and pave the path toward a more harmonious community. The Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities also began disciplinary proceedings for specific students engaging in severe, frequent and pervasive breaches of the student code of conduct, including but not limited to tearing down posters from the inside of GW’s Hillel building. Around three months later, GW has failed to enforce its new plan and policies while emboldening a loud, fringe minority.
While imperfect, the plan did institute new clear policies and reinforce existing ones. Such policies would ensure that students engaging in “community disturbance,” making “excessive noise either inside or outside a building, including but not limited to shouting, pounding objects or surfaces, or playing music or other electronics at a loud volume in a manner that disturbs others,” are prohibited from occurring in the first place.
GW has a long history of antisemitism and has been under fire before for allowing it to fester. Last April, the U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation into GW after the university failed to address Jewish-Israeli students’ concerns over alleged antisemitic harassment by psychology professor Lara Sheehi — who recently left GW and now teaches in Doha, Qatar.
Thursday’s protest violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance — which, as of 2019, includes antisemitism by executive order.
Amid the demonstrations, students complained that they were “unable to focus” on their studies and even quizzes due to the raucous and sheer shock. This clearly violates GW’s discriminatory harassment policies, whereby behaviors “in any context” even without the “intent to harm” that “unreasonably interfere with, limit, or deprive an individual of participating or benefiting from the university’s educational…experience” breach the code.
GW’s administration certainly seeks to avoid another Title VI investigation and the prospect of a lawsuit as many other universities, like The Ohio State University, have recently incurred. An easy first step to averting this would be addressing issues of student organizations masterfully skirting around accountability. If the same behaviors are occurring on the same premises, with the same students, and leading to the same breaches of the student code of conduct, there should be no reason that school policy does not apply.
Abiding by policy is a duty. Eradicating the hypocrisy and moral rot occurring inside our institution is imperative. If GW seeks to regain the trust of its Jewish and Israeli students and remain true to its values of diversity, equity and inclusion, it must enforce its new plan and add deterrence measures.
In a disappointing move, GW’s Fall 2023-Spring 2024 Student Association administration decided to discontinue the antisemitism task force instituted by former Student Association President Christian Zidouemba last March. The university administration has failed to institute a task force linked to the school administration even after various requests from parents and students in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. While task forces’ efficacy is contested due to concerns of mere performativity, one could have helped address antisemitic behaviors from the onset, before they escalated. Failing to form an antisemitism task force demonstrates GW’s lack of seriousness when it comes to protecting all students.
Jewish students not only deal with hostility in the campus public square, but they frequently contend with professors propagating distortions about Israel and anti-Zionism. Teaching with bias is even more problematic due to the inherent power imbalance in the student-professor relationship, where the student often regards the professor as an expert intellectual authority. Students with limited knowledge of the Middle East are thus inclined to join in the inflammatory activism of their GWSCP peers.
Inside the esteemed Elliott School of International Affairs sits the Institute of Middle East Studies (IMES), whose many scholars are professors at GW. IMES also hosts the DC Arabic Teacher’s Council, which is sponsored by Qatari Foundation International (QFI). QFI’s mark on IMES has been clear in the programming biased against Israel that it has presented before, and most notably, after Oct. 7.
On Oct. 16, IMES facilitated a panel of Middle East experts who did not have not a single firmly pro-Israel perspective; on Oct. 18, IMES hosted the screening of “Israelism,” a film containing distorted facts and anti-Israel propaganda; and on Dec. 4, three IMES professors spoke at a GW Medical School panel that ignored Hamas atrocities and defended its attack on Israel as a “right of resistance.”
Fast forward to this week: On April 19, IMES will hold its annual conference titled “Middle East Knowledge Production In the Aftermath of October 7.” The array of scholars chairing the panels—many of whom spoke at the panel on Oct. 1—and language of “decoloniz[ing] academic knowledge production in Middle East Studies,” “Palestine/Israel Studies in the shadow of a genocide,” and “knowledge-production amidst dehumanization” with zero reference to the hostages or condemnation of Hamas on their website, paired with IMES’s past programming, make clear the conference will not be balanced.
According to GW’s Faculty Code of Conduct, academics must defend “intellectual honesty, freedom of inquiry and instruction, and the free expression of ideas.”
If GW is truly committed to values of diversity and the principle that “academic institutions exist for the transmission of knowledge, the pursuit of truth, the development of students, and the general well-being of society” where “free inquiry and free expression are indispensable to the attainment of these goals,” it must also review the integrity of the curriculum and institute hiring practices that include pro-Israel Jewish faculty members and ideally, those who can present all narratives of conflict with historical fact. Enrollment in an institution as prestigious as GW must guarantee that all students are afforded true academic freedom—that of academic diversity, the inclusion of all perspectives in their learning, and the equal opportunity to learn in peace alongside their peers.
Shallow excuses for failing to enforce school policy do not suffice. Above all, GW and all academic institutions have the fiduciary duty to protect all its students—including Jewish-Israeli and Zionist students. With lawsuits looming, and reputational damage imminent, the failure to do so may result in serious penalties for GW and its community.
Sabrina Soffer is the former commissioner of GW’s Antisemitism Task Force and a 2023-2024 fellow at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA)
israel-academia-monitor.com 