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'The Genocide Gentry': Weapon Execs Sit on Boards of Universities, Institutions
"This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions," said one campaigner.
Sep 18, 2024
A trio of human rights groups on Wednesday announced a new interactive initiative exposing what the coalition is calling a "Genocide Gentry" of weapons company executives and board members and "54 museums, cultural organizations, universities, and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles."
The coalition—which consists of the Adalah Justice Project, LittleSis, and Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE)—published a map and database detailing the "educational and cultural ties to board members of six defense corporations" amid Israel's ongoing annihilation of Gaza, for which the U.S.-backed country is on trial for genocide at the International Court of Justice.
" Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza and nearly 200 cultural heritage sites since October 2023, using bombs and weapons manufactured by the companies included in the Genocide Gentry research," the coalition said. "As of April, these attacks have killed more than 5,479 students and 261 teachers and destroyed or critically damaged nearly 90% of all school buildings in Gaza."
"Universities across the country including the likes of Columbia University, Harvard University, the University of Southern California, and New York University have remained largely silent on Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza," the groups added. "Behind closed doors, these same universities are hosting executives and board members of the companies manufacturing the weapons used in these attacks as board members, trustees, and fellows."
Members of the Genocide Gentry include:
- Jeh Johnson, Lockheed Martin board of directors: Johnson is currently a Columbia University trustee, and sits on the board of directors at MetLife and U.S. Steel. Columbia University notably shut down student protests demanding divestment from weapons companies like Lockheed Martin.
- Brian C. Rogers, RTX board of directors: Rogers is currently a trustee of the Harvard Management Company, tasked with managing the $50 billion endowment. Notably Harvard administrators have cracked down on students demanding divestment from weapons companies like RTX, formerly Raytheon.
- Catherine B. Reynolds, General Dynamics board of directors: Reynolds is a trustee of the Kennedy Center and sponsors a fellowship at New York University, which has also cracked down on anti-genocide protests and recently enacted a policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
"Students on university campuses across the country have not only been demanding divestment, but transparency," said Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project. "Transparency about their institutions' investments, partnerships, donors, and decision-makers, and their connections to individuals and companies directly enabling and profiting off war and genocide."
"This research helps provide some of this transparency by illuminating just how embedded the interests of the weapons industry are within our institutions, so we can begin chipping away at the power and influence that they wield," she added.
ACRE campaign director Ramah Kudaimi noted that "as part of its genocide since October 2023, Israel has targeted universities and cultural centers across Gaza, destroying campuses, museums, libraries, and more."
"That this is all backed by the United States means U.S. educational and cultural institutions have a responsibility to consider what their role is in helping end these war crimes, and that starts with reconsidering their connections with the weapons companies profiting from the destruction," Kudaimi said.
Munira Lokhandwala, director of the Tech and Training program at LittleSis, said: "This research provides a view into just how embedded the corporate, profit-fueled war machine is in our higher education and cultural institutions. Through this research, we show how the defense industry shapes and influences our civic and cultural institutions, and as a result, their silence around war and genocide."
"We must ask our institutions: What role are you playing in whitewashing war and destruction by inviting those who profit from manufacturing weapons onto your boards and into your galas?" she added.
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Columbia President Resigns After Violent Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Student Protests
"She finally got the memo," said Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine. "Any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body's overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did."
Aug 15, 2024
The president of Columbia University announced her resignation late Wednesday, months after she authorized a violent police crackdown on student demonstrators urging the school to divest from Israel over the country's devastating assault on the Gaza Strip.
Minouche Shafik said in her announcement that recent months have been "a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community." Dozens of Columbia students were arrested and injured during a Shafik-approved police raid of a campus building in late April.
"This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community," said Shafik, whose resignation was effective immediately. "Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead."
Pro-Palestine student organizers at Columbia—a university at the center of the protest movement that swept the country earlier this year—celebrated Shafik's departure but vowed to continue pressuring the institution's leadership to divest from Israel. Students specifically demanded that Columbia drop its Tel-Aviv Global Center project, which also drew backlash from faculty members when it was announced last year.
Shafik was adamant that Columbia "will not divest from Israel."
Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said in response to Shafik's resignation that "after months of chanting 'Minouche Shafik you can't hide,' she finally got the memo."
"To be clear," the group added, "any future president who does not pay heed to the Columbia student body's overwhelming demand for divestment will end up exactly as President Shafik did."
The Columbia chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace wrote on social media that students "will never forget the sheer violence unleashed upon us by Minouche Shafik, and we will not be placated by her removal as the university's repression of the pro-Palestinian student movement continues."
🇵🇸 Protesters erupt in cheers after WOL announced that Columbia President Nemat ‘minouche’ Shafik resigned after a year of repressing and arresting Columbia University students protesting the genocide of Palestinians. pic.twitter.com/hx4VBnXK4R
— Within Our Lifetime (@WOLPalestine) August 15, 2024
Mahmoud Khalil, a student negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, toldThe New York Times on Wednesday that "regardless of who leads Columbia, the students will continue their activism and actions until Columbia divests from Israeli apartheid."
"We want the president to be a president for Columbia students, answering to their needs and demands, rather than answering to political pressure from outside the university," said Khalil.
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'What Are They Afraid Of?': Columbia Law Review Board Shuts Down Website Over Nakba Article
The author of the 106-page piece said the suppression attempt is "reflective of a pervasive and alarming Palestine exception to academic freedom."
Jun 05, 2024
The Columbia Law Review's board of directors temporarily shut down the prestigious legal journal's website on Monday following its publication of an article arguing for the establishment of the Nakba—the ethnic cleansing of Arabs from Palestine to establish and expand the state of Israel—as a novel legal concept.
The Interceptreported that Rabea Eghbariah, a Palestinian human rights lawyer and Harvard Law School student, initially tried to publish an article in the Harvard Law Review on the Nakba as a legal concept amid the backdrop of Israel's Gaza genocide and apartheid in the illegally occupied West Bank of Palestine. The piece was fully edited and ready for publication when it was canceled. The Nationpublished the essay in November.
Students from the Columbia Law Review (CLR) subsequently reached out to Eghbariah to solicit a new article on the topic. He said he worked with editors for five months on the 106-page piece, entitled "Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept," which was published early Monday morning. The article—which is dedicated to the "victims and survivors of the ongoing Nakba"—"proposes to distinguish apartheid, genocide, and Nakba as different, yet overlapping, modalities of crimes against humanity."
CLR's board of directors—which consists of Columbia Law School faculty and prominent alumni—quickly shut down the entire website over the article. By later Monday morning, the CLR homepage was but a simple, specious message: "Website is under maintenance." The site was still offline on Wednesday afternoon.
"The attempts to silence legal scholarship on the Nakba by subjecting it to an unusual and discriminatory process are not only reflective of a pervasive and alarming Palestine exception to academic freedom, but are also a testament to a deplorable culture of Nakba denialism," Eghbariah told The Intercept on Monday.
Seven editors who worked on the article told The Intercept that board members pressured them to delay or cancel its publication. Some CLR staff toldThe Associated Press that a small group of students said they feared for their careers and even their safety if the article was published.
CLR's board of directors told The Intercept Monday that "we spoke to certain members of the student leadership to ask that they delay publication for a few days so that, at a minimum, the manuscript could be shared with all student editors, to provide them with a chance to read it and respond."
"Nevertheless, we learned this morning that the manuscript had been made public," the board continued. "In order to provide time for the Law Review to determine how to proceed, we have temporarily suspended its website."
The directors said there has been no final decision on whether to publish the article.
Critics contend that Eghbariah's piece is being suppressed as part of a wider silencing of Palestinian voices and denial of not only Israel's genocide in Gaza but also of the indisputable Nakba and occupation.
"By attempting to erase the Nakba, they have, in fact, made it clearer."
"I don't suspect that they would have asserted this kind of control had the piece been about Tibet, Kashmir, Puerto Rico, or other contested political sites," Columbia Law School professor Katherine Frank told The Intercept.
The Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) called the CLR board's action "a shameful attempt to silence groundbreaking legal scholarship shining light on the catastrophe of Zionism and the ways in which is fragments, displaces, and disempowers Palestinian society."
Others linked the incident to Columbia University's recent violent crackdown on nonviolent pro-Palestine protesters.
"At Columbia, if you publish a law review article about Palestine, they will take down the entire law review website," Jonathan Ben-Menachem, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia, said Monday on social media. "If you protest for Palestine, they will shut down the entire campus and direct police to hospitalize you."
In a Wednesday interview on Democracy Now!, Eghbariah lamented "the extent to which the board of directors is willing to go to shut down and silence Palestinian scholarship."
"What are they afraid of? What are they afraid of, of Palestinians narrating their own reality, speaking their own truth?" he asked. "Whose interests is the board of directors serving, going against their students, editors, going against its own staff, throwing them under the bus, manufacturing a controversy about some internal processes?"
"By attempting to silence and censor my scholarship, these two law reviews have actually amplified it," Eghbariah continued. "And by attempting to erase the Nakba, they have, in fact, made it clearer. And still, despite this irony, it feels quite offensive and unprofessional and discriminatory to be faced with such repression."
"I think this repression is really a testament to the Palestine exception to free speech and to academic freedom," he added. "And it's a microcosm of, you know, the broader authoritarian repression we've been witnessing on American campuses in this country."
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