The Duke Conservative Union issued a statement Monday calling for the University to defend its decision to allow the Palestine Solitary Movement to hold its controversial annual conference at Duke, scheduled for Oct. 15 to 17. Other campus groups have objected to the content of the conference, but so far DCU is the first to publicly challenge the University�s decision.
The Duke Conservative Union issued a statement Monday calling for the University to defend its decision to allow the Palestine Solitary Movement to hold its controversial annual conference at Duke, scheduled for Oct. 15 to 17. Other campus groups have objected to the content of the conference, but so far DCU is the first to publicly challenge the University’s decision.
In an open letter to President Richard Brodhead that was published as an advertisement today in The Chronicle, DCU quotes incendiary comments from speakers and organizers of past PSM conferences. DCU points to these statements, PSM’s refusal to condemn suicide bombings and the group’s official refusal to condemn “the murder of innocent civilians” as reasons the University should deny space to the conference. (For the full text of the letter, see the group’s advertisement on page 5.)
“It seems unfathomable that this would be anything other than an absolute hate-fest that condones violent acts,” said Nathan Carleton, president of DCU. “We don’t understand that if President Brodhead has done the research as he’s claimed, that he would allow this to happen on our campus.”
Duke agreed to host the conference after the student group Hiwar registered the event through official channels. Even before the University accepted the conference, it received a national petition encouraging Duke to reject the event on grounds that PSM supported militant activity.
Officials said the University investigated any potential ties to extremist groups and major safety threats before it confirmed Hiwar’s right to host the conference. Since then, Duke has not exerted any control over the content of the conference, noting universities’ role as havens for discussion of all kinds.
“The deepest principle involved is not even the principle of free speech,” Brodhead said. “It’s the principle of education through dialogue.”
The Freeman Center for Jewish Life called for students to use the conference as an educational opportunity and supported Duke’s decision to host the event. Last week a coalition of pro-Israeli groups on campus challenged PSM and Hiwar to “condemn the murder of innocent civilians,” “support a two-state solution” and “engage in respectful debate.” The coalition argued that these three principles were a necessary foundation for discussion.
PSM officials supported the call for debate but did not support the other two provisions. Rann Bar-on, a local spokesperson for PSM and a graduate student in mathematics, said the movement’s goal was solidarity with the Palestinian people and therefore it was not within its authority to dictate any solution to the conflict or to condemn any action.
Emily Antoon, president of Hiwar, said Hiwar does “condemn all violence against civilians” and supports the third tenet. The group, however, cannot support a two-state solution because it does not necessarily conform to the principle of self-determination for the Israeli and Palestinian people, she said.
Hiwar is a distinct group from PSM, Antoon said, and as such it does not subscribe to the exact same principles—specifically, members within Hiwar disagree about the extent to which PSM’s guiding principles should be followed. PSM officials have said the guiding principles dictate PSM’s official response to the statement.
Hiwar supports PSM because it subscribes to PSM’s “points of unity,” Antoon said. Thus, Hiwar joins PSM in calling for an end to the “Israeli occupation,” equality of people, opposition to racism and all oppression and the “right of return for Palestinian refugees.” The movement also supports divestment, or the selling off of stocks, from all companies with any involvement in the Israeli military as a non-violent strategy to these ends.
“The reason we are holding this conference is that we abhor violence and suffering caused to all civilians,” Antoon said. “This conference helps that because it allows students to come together to develop tools towards ending the occupation and thus ending violence.”
Fayyad Sbaihat, a national spokesperson for PSM, said the criticisms of DCU were a “filibuster” meant to redirect discussion away from the issue of divestment.
The DCU advertisement alleges that PSM has a history of advocating violence and is not supportive of free speech. It quotes six affiliates of PSM who either organized or spoke at previous conferences. The sources are cited at the bottom of the letter.
Many of the criticisms DCU levies against PSM are invalid, and many quotes are misrepresented, Sbaihat said. “Almost all the statements—the true ones—are taken out of context,” he said.
He noted that words have alternate meanings that would be understood by the full context of the quotes. The word intifada, for example, means “intellectual uprising” in Arabic, but in English it has connotations of militant activity, he said.
Even though Monday DCU could not produce the full text of the documents it quoted and The Chronicle could not find the full source for two of the citations, Carleton attested to the validity of the sources. “I definitely stand by everything in the ad,” he said. “We stand by everything we quoted.”
Bar-on explained that PSM chooses speakers on the basis of their authority on a particular topic rather than their general political views. “We don’t do extensive background checks on our speakers because it’s irrelevant to our conference,” he said. If participants do become involved in legal issues, they do so as individuals, he said, noting that “everyone is innocent in this country until proven guilty.”
He encouraged people to disregard “ad hominem attacks from unreliable sources” and to discuss the conflict between the Israeli and Palestinian people and means to solve it.
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