

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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