Our community, in solidarity with ICSZ

In solidarity with
the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism

First published April 21, 2025

We are organizations of scholars, students, social justice organizers, and funders; all colleagues of the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. We are outraged at the attacks of ICSZ waged by the Anti-Defamation League, Canary Mission, and other smearing and doxxing platforms. 

As we know too well, the ADL and a host of Zionist organizations have been working through and directly with repressive forces from the United States to Palestine. These organizations use smears as a destabilizing attack on those who oppose Zionism and Israel’s genocide. They try to criminalize individuals and organizations by making conspiratorial allegations of antisemitism and “support for terror”. To attack scholars in particular, they claim that researchers have a disqualifying “agenda” when they refuse to be neutral on racism and genocide. In recent weeks, we have seen Zionist organizations’ smears become the primary excuse for a fascist administration to abduct Palestinian, BIPOC, and Muslim students and faculty. Zionist groups have proudly claimed credit for the catastrophic harm they have caused.

The malicious “explainers” on ICSZ that the ADL and Canary Mission have posted are a mixture of baseless insinuations about ICSZ scholars, and efforts to make vices out of virtues like ICSZ’s principled recognition that research is not “neutral.” However, the specifics of such posts are not the attackers’ point. More simply, the posts are transparent efforts to subject ICSZ to the abuses of law, policy, and policing that characterize rising U.S. fascism and to invite violence against ICSZ researchers and organizers. They are clearly a bid to shut down research, teaching, and popular education that uses the basic tools of critical study – study that looks at power – to hold Zionism up to scrutiny.

ICSZ is a highly esteemed and necessary organization that brings together accomplished scholars, students, and community organizers to advance public knowledge. It works directly against the attack strategies that have gutted universities as places of critical inquiry, including the use of donor funds to produce conservative scholarship and the adoption of the “IHRA definition of antisemitism” to punish research on Israeli state violence. Crucially, ICSZ is a cherished partner in our collective efforts to dismantle racism, colonialism, and fascism. 

ICSZ is targeted by groups like the ADL and Canary Mission precisely because of its excellent scholarship and principled refusal of “neutrality.” We stand in partnership with ICSZ against these dangerous attacks.

Signed:

AAUP-AFT Local 6741

Academics for Palestine – Concordia University

Alliance for Water Justice in Palestine

The American Council for Judaism

Arab & Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies Program, San Francisco State University

California Scholars for Academic Freedom

Center for Creative Ecologies – UC Santa Cruz

Coalition for Action in Higher Education

Dutch Scholars for Palestine

Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective

FSJP – George Mason University

FSJP – UC Riverside

FSJP – UNC Charlotte

Historians for Palestine

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

The Jewish Faculty Network (Canada)

Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council

Jewish Voice for Peace Boston

Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council

Jewish Voice for Peace at the Claremont Colleges

Jewish Voice for Peace-Hawai’i

Jewish Voice for Peace at University of Maryland

Jews Against White Supremacy (JAWS)

Judaism On Our Own Terms (JOOOT)

KESSEM – decolonial jewish feminists France

Korea Policy Institute

Labor for Palestine National Network

Liberated Jewish Studies Network

National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine

NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine

Palestine Anti-Repression Network (PARN)

Palestine Center for Public Policy

Right to Reject Zionism

Rutgers University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine

Sarah Lawrence College Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine

Sparkplug Foundation

Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at the University of Hawai’i (SFJP@UH)

Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice

UC Ethnic Studies Council

Virginia Tech Students’ United Front

VT4Palestine

W.E.B. Du Bois Movement School for Abolition & Reconstruction

Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG)

YDSA at Virginia Tech

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