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Pro-Palestine Speakers at Brooklyn College Attract Protests Outside
Tensions were evident everywhere as two pro-Palestinian speakers arrived Thursday night at Brooklyn College. Protesters began gathering across the street from the student center, where the college-sponsored talk was scheduled, more than an hour before the event was to start. And police officers were stationed at the entrance to the building, searching bags and checking attendees’ names and identifications against an approved list.
Controversy had grown over the past week at the Midwood college, where nearly a fifth of the undergraduate population is Jewish, over the event organized by a student group, Students for Justice in Palestine. The college’s political science department agreed to co-sponsor the speakers along with more than two dozen other groups.
Jewish leaders on and off campus had criticized the college and its president, Karen L. Gould, for sponsoring the talk, which they said helped legitimize the B.D.S. movement, which refers to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. Its goal is to pressure Israel to restore disputed territories and grant equal rights to Palestinians.
Throughout the week, the right to academic freedom served as the backbone to arguments in favor of the college’s sponsorship of the event.
And inside the student center, a crowd of hundreds — faculty and community members, as well as students — clapped as a speaker thanked those who supported the event, which drew so much attention a waiting list was required.
“Your being here this evening confirms your right to form and communicate an autonomous judgment to determine why you think something is true or not. And you should be free to do this without coercion and fear,” said the speaker, Judith Butler, a philosopher teaching at Columbia University.
Ms. Butler called the attendees’ participation in the discussion their right to education and free speech.
The other speaker, Omar Barghouti, a commentator and activist, began his lecture by calling on the group to celebrate their victory against “racist, hate-mongering, bullying attempts to shut down this event.”
Invoking the South African anti-apartheid movement, he went on to compare the Palestinian struggle to that of colonially oppressed people throughout history and to urge listeners to fight the racism he said was rising within Israel — similar, he said, to the anti-Semitism in Europe in the 1930s. He garnered a standing ovation.
Ms. Butler spoke more directly to the criticisms they had faced, pointing out that many Jews — including herself — opposed Israel’s policies. B.D.S. could only be seen as anti-Semitic if Israel represented all Jewish people, she said. “Honestly, what can really be said about the Jewish people as a whole?”
With a wry smile, she noted the crowd outside the building. Some Jews are, she acknowledged, “as you can hear, unconditional supporters of Israel.”
The sound of chanting was faintly audible in the room as she paused.
Outside, about 150 protesters waved signs and chanted behind a police barricade. They ranged from a few who came in solidarity with the speakers to staunch supporters of Israel.
David Haies, 33, a social worker from Brooklyn, came to protest the speech and said the experience was so invigorating he didn’t need to zip his jacket in the freezing cold. “Jews should be able to live wherever they want to live,” he said. “This feels good.”
Mr. Barghouti is no stranger to protests. He has been one of the most public faces of the B.D.S. movement, traveling from campus to campus to spread his message in the United States. Over the past few years, he has spoken at Rutgers, New York University and Harvard. In the three days before arriving at Brooklyn College, he appeared at the University of California, Irvine, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale.
At several of those campuses, Mr. Barghouti’s arrival was preceded by complaints from Jewish leaders and students. But most of his previous appearances were not sponsored by the university, and few attracted the kind of controversy that Brooklyn College’s event did.
The college president, Ms. Gould, has said she does not personally agree with B.D.S.’s views, but felt the speakers had a right to talk on campus. This week, she announced that the college would host future events featuring other views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
But pro-Israel elected officials and alumni continued to clamor for the event’s cancellation or, like the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, for the university to withdraw its sponsorship.
Mr. Barghouti signaled on Thursday that he was prepared to continue battling at Brooklyn College and beyond.
Referring to Mr. Dershowitz as “a certain Harvard professor,” he told the audience, “I think we ought to send him a box of chocolates.”
Vivian Yee
The New York Times