International students, free speech attacked on 
campus

October 11 -- Despite platitudes about "speaking 
out against bigotry" from President Bush and 
university administrators around the country, 
verbal harassment and physical attacks on college 
students of Middle Eastern and Central Asian 
descent have apparently increased.

In Santa Barbara, California, for example, two men 
assaulted a 21 year-old Saudi Arabian student, 
slamming his head into a car and cutting him.(1) 
Armed security guards at the University of 
Southern California taunted Middle eastern 
students during the week after the September 11 
attack.(2) Also at Santa Barbara, a psychology 
professor told the several hundred students in his 
class that Amerika "should annihilate those rat 
bastards," which many students took to mean 
Afghans in general.

Professor Sami Al-Arian of the University of South 
Florida received death threats after he spoke on 
Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly Factor." Al-Arian 
defended a 1988 speech in which he said, "Death to 
Israel," explaining, "When you say 'Death to 
Israel,' you mean death to occupation, death to 
apartheid, death to oppression," but not death to 
any human being. The university suspended Al-Arian 
"for security reasons" -- but whether to protect 
his safety or the university's reputation is not 
clear. "Clearly, the presence of Dr. Al-Arian on 
the campus at this time adversely affects the 
operation of the university," stated the 
university's president.(3)

Some universities -- supposed bastions of "free 
speech" -- have squelched critiques of Amerika's 
drive towards war. The University of California at 
Los Angeles suspended librarian Jonnie Hargis on 
September 17 for a week without pay for responding 
to a mass e-mail sent by a co-worker. His response 
-- to the now ubiquitous essay "America: The Good 
Neighbor" by Gordon Sinclair -- cited "apartheid-
like policies in Israel" and ended with the 
question, "so, who are the 'terrorists' anyway?" 
Library administrators suspended Hargis under a 
policy -- created the day he sent the e-mail --
banning "unsolicited e-mails containing political, 
religious or patriotic messages." The worker who 
sent the original e-mail was not reprimanded or 
suspended.(4)

The Daily Bruin correctly called for the 
university to apologize to Hargis, reimburse him, 
and rescind the new policy, which it called a 
"direct attack on... workers' right to free 
speech."(5)

But, on the other hand, as the Bruin article 
indicates, university students, faculty and staff 
have begun to organize against these attacks.

At the University of California at Santa Barbara, 
the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League passed 
out the MIM Notes special edition on the 11 
September attacks as well as several essays 
written by UCSB students, exposing Amerika's role 
in creating many of the conflicts in the Middle 
East and Central Asia.(6) RAIL also created a 
"hate-free zone," where people could go to learn 
more about the war and speak out against it.

The psychology professor who made the "rat 
bastard" remarks also publicly apologized for them 
-- perhaps after learning of a petition RAIL 
comrades and others were circulating, demanding a 
retraction.

A rally at the University of Southern California 
made the connection between the policies of former 
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the 
current war.(7) Students and faculty also sent the 
university president a letter asking he state 
publicly that USC will respect the privacy of 
international students' records. Government agents 
have asked dozens of colleges and universities 
across the U$ for records of foreign students 
since September 11 -- in some cases asking for 
records on all foreign students, or all Middle 
Eastern students.(8) Many students MIM talked to 
agree that these requests do nothing to improve 
"security," while they do expose international 
students to legal and extra-lega harassment.

MIM launched similar petition campaigns at several 
schools in Michigan, opposing increased 
surveillance on international students, as well as 
Senator Dianne Feinstein's proposed six-month 
moratorium on student visas.

Notes: 
1. Daily Nexus, 20 Sep 2001. 
2. KCRW, 24 
Sep 2001. 
3. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1 
Oct 2001. 
4. Daily Bruin, 4 Oct 2001. 5. Daily 
Bruin, 5 Oct 2001. 
6. www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/cal. 
7. www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/cal/MAD.PDF. 
8. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/sept112001/te
xt.php?mimfile=uspies.txt