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mccarthyism
University Officials Welcome the Genocide Apologists and Condemn the Protesters
A protest and its aftermath at the University of California, San Diego illustrates the moral myopia of administrators.
Jul 03, 2025
Evidencing America’s profound moral depravity is the targeting of campus protesters rather than the genocidal actions of America’s closest ally Israel. President Donald Trump, members of Congress, Christian and Jewish nationalists, and university task forces on antisemitism all charge campus protesters with widespread antisemitism through singling out and demonizing Israel. Ominously, these accusations have prompted universities to impose far-reaching restrictions on campus speech and assembly which match or exceed the crackdowns of the McCarthy era. Consequently, while Israel’s genocide endures, to the silence or approval of leading political, media, and university leaders, it is the protesters who have been substantially silenced.
Granted, within the surge of campus protests in 2023-2024, a few protesters crossed the line into crude antisemitism or other offensive behavior. The partisan university task force reports on antisemitism at places like Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA have seized upon these scattered instances and lumped them with controversial but defensible chants, such as “Globalize the intifada,” to paint a manufactured picture of rampant hostility toward Jews. Conveniently, neither the task forces nor university officials address the cause of these protests: the ongoing destruction of Gaza, judged to be genocide by Amnesty International and other human rights groups, and the complicity of many U.S. universities. To illustrate this moral myopia, I review a recent tempest at UC San Diego.
On May 19, the Murray Galinson San Diego Israel Initiative (MGSDII) collaborated with UCSD’s School of Global Policy and Strategy (GPS) to host a lecture by Ido Aharoni, a leading Israeli propagandist. In response, the UCSD Faculty Defense Group, GPS students, and the San Diego chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) converged in waging a vigorous protest. While the first two groups featured silent protests, SJP recited, with the help of amplification, multiple chants, including “Israel is an apartheid state. Genocide you celebrate” and “UCSD, you can’t hide. You’re supporting genocide.” Although the atmosphere was heated and a few participants yelled out “baby killer,” “Zionists not welcome here,” and personal insults at attendees entering the lecture hall, the protesters avoided direct altercations and did not try to shut down the talk.
Ironically, in her rebuke of the protests, Dean Freund urged that UCSD continue “to uphold the values that define our community: curiosity, compassion, and a shared commitment to a more peaceful and just world.” The protesters did just that.
An irate MGSDII staff accused the demonstrators of hurling “dangerous antisemitic slurs” and asked for punitive action. Obligingly, the UCSD chancellor and the faculty senate chair issued a joint message that curiously declared anti-genocide protests “an affront to the mission of our university” and promised an investigation for violation of university rules. Dean Caroline Freund apologized for “the disappointment and discomfort this caused for many in attendance, as well as for others in our broader community.”
Following a familiar pattern of selective outrage, Dean Freund and the chancellor ignored the circumstances prompting the dissent. Most importantly, the event was a university platforming of a professional propagandist who founded the government’s “Brand Israel” program. The MGSDII, which funds visiting teaching positions by Israelis, sponsored the talk as part of its mission to exert “a significant potential impact on the image of Israel that is different to, but on par with or exceeding, results of pro-Israel advocacy organizations.” “[M]ore than ever,” it proclaimed in an email blast after October 7, “we need to bring Modern Israel studies to our university classrooms to counteract the hate and biased education being taught by too many faculty.”
The MGSDII chose well in sponsoring Aharoni. Just two months earlier at San Diego State, he boasted of Israeli accomplishments, praised the U.S.-Israeli alliance, defended Israel’s assault on Gaza, and attacked campus protesters. For good measure, Aharoni quipped “I hope he’s deported to Gaza” in reference to the then-detained Columbia graduating student Mahmoud Khalil. As a skilled diplomat, Aharoni evaded the one critical question he received. The MGSDII was right to see the UCSD event as another propaganda opportunity, this time where the dean was lending prestige by introducing the speaker.
A second important dynamic ignored by Dean Freund and the chancellor was the chilling of Israel-related protests for the past year. In spring 2024, UCSD had become a hotspot for Gaza protests. On May 1, a coalition led by the campus chapters of SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) assembled an encampment that grew to several hundred participants. The organizers avoided violent altercations with counterprotesters and facilitated cultural, educational, and religious activities, including an anti-Zionist Jewish Shabbat service, that attracted many visitors. This remarkable display of community activism ended abruptly on May 6 when the chancellor authorized police in riot gear to demolish the encampment and arrest resisters.
Although the city has not filed criminal charges, UCSD has disbanded the SJP and JVP chapters, withheld diplomas from graduating students, and consigned continuing students to a prolonged academic probation while they await completion of investigations. In the fall of 2024, the UC and Cal State systems released revised time, place, and manner regulations, which prohibit encampments, establish new restrictions on protests, and impose harsher sanctions. Combined with the draconian moves from the Trump administration, UCSD’s crackdown has had the intended effect. As professor Gary Fields, a faculty mentor to many UCSD protesters reflected, “What happened in the aftermath of the encampment is that there is still on our campus a climate of surveillance and fear—and self-censorship.”
The UCSD protest of Aharoni marks a courageous effort to revive anti-genocide protests. I would have preferred a more disciplined message that did not insult attendees. Moving forward, protesters would be well advised to devote more planning in coordination with faculty and veteran protesters to wage effective protests. The Faculty Defense Group got the balance right in its press statement: “Our aim in this protest is not to cancel or censor the speech of Ambassador Aharoni. Instead, we want to call attention to the one-sidedness of the event at a time when speech on our campus, and campuses everywhere, decrying the genocide perpetrated by Israel and enabled by the U.S., is being censored and criminalized.”
Above all, students are right to be angry. These frightening times demand robust protest, including the dreaded “disruption” that panics so many university officials. As of June 25, the official death toll in Gaza has surpassed 56,000. Having just joined Israel in a lawless attack on Iran, the U.S. continues to bestow Israel complete impunity to wreak destruction throughout Gaza and the West Bank. Ironically, in her rebuke of the protests, Dean Freund urged that UCSD continue “to uphold the values that define our community: curiosity, compassion, and a shared commitment to a more peaceful and just world.” The protesters did just that. Let us hope that Dean Freund and campus officials across the country absorb the lessons from the brave students on what moral responsibility demands.
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As Lies Abound and Divisions Deepen, Democracy Is Calling
Democracy requires our determination to create a more widely shared understanding of the dangers we face.
Jun 03, 2025
I have a story to tell that feels eerily relevant to our dire political moment.
It’s 1953, and I’m 9 years old in Fort Worth, Texas. I hear a knock at the door, and I rush to say hello. A stern man looks down at me: “I’m from the FBI, and I need to speak with your parents.”
Hmmm… must be important, I thought, calling out: “Mommy, daddy, someone’s come to see us!”
Yes, indeed, it was grave—totally unexpected and life changing.
Since none of today’s mighty challenges—from climate chaos to virtually unprecedented economic inequity—can be addressed without democracy, our calling is clear.
“I’m with the FBI,” he said. My dad invited him in, and they sat talking. I had no idea what was going on. But later my folks explained that the FBI was investigating us because my parents had co-founded the first Unitarian Church in our city. Somehow that made us suspect—as communists or sympathizers.
My parents were not arrested. But word spread quickly of the FBI probe, and some of my best friends’ dads lost their jobs solely by virtue of association with it. The trauma in our community was great.
Our family escaped the harm others suffered likely because my dad’s work as a forecaster in the U.S. Weather Bureau was essential. He soon accepted a two-year “hardship” post on a tiny island in the Pacific, which later I came to assume was an attempt to evade this suppression.
For most of my life, I have assumed our church was targeted because the FBI believed Unitarians were atheists, which at the time was associated with communism. Only many decades later when I gained access to FBI archival material did I discover that I was wrong. Our church was targeted because it was integrated when Fort Worth was strictly segregated.
This awful time came to be called “McCarthyism”—triggered by the leadership of the junior senator from Wisconsin—Joseph R. McCarthy who in 1950 alleged that he had a list of 205 suspected communists who were working in the government.
Eventually, it led to a period of fear, limiting freedom of speech and thought. As happened in Fort Worth, many were blacklisted, lost jobs, or faced persecution. And many more hesitated to express dissenting opinions for fear of being labeled a communist. Such self-censoring no doubt led to stifling intellectual and artistic life.
Now in our current moment, I find myself asking: Are Donald Trump’s tactics just as dangerous to democracy?
For one, both rest on false premises. About 10 months ago, NPR produced an analysis called “162 Lies and Distortions in a News Conference: NPR Fact-Checks Former President Trump.” It found that he uttered “more than two a minute.” Late last year New York Times columnist Peter Baker decried that “Trump’s Wild Claims, Conspiracies, and Falsehoods Redefine Presidential Bounds.” Perhaps most destructive to democracy was his lie that he was the real winner of the 2020 election.
Yet, today lies continue to undermine democracy, and, just as in the McCarthy era, they are not without consequence.
Immigration has been one of the clearest areas where lies abound. Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, and they complement rather than compete in jobs while adding to our GDP and taxes. Yet, Trump has cracked down on the border.
In an opinion piece published in late April, I argued that the removal of migrants without due-process—and particularly the targeting of those who had been advocates for causes contrary to Trump’s agenda—posed a deep threat to key democratic principles including free speech.
It hasn’t stopped with migrants: Without constitutional power, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-N.J.). Charged with a crime for going to an ICE facility to oversee its action, which she described as “my job and my lawful right as a member of Congress.” When ICE moved to arrest Mayor Baraka, colleagues encircled him, but ICE pushed through and arrested the mayor.
Many of us have heard the refrain that “democracy dies in darkness,” the slogan officially adopted by The Washington Post (now ironically owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos). It feels right. Fact-based exchange is democracy’s life blood.
I began with my memories of the lives devastated by lies in the 1950s. And, as the cliché goes, those who do not learn from history will repeat its errors.
Today, most of us would likely agree that democracy cannot survive without fact-based interchange, as history offers strong evidence—from Hitler to Stalin to Mao Zedong whose lies divided their people.
And, since none of today’s mighty challenges—from climate chaos to virtually unprecedented economic inequity—can be addressed without democracy, our calling is clear. Democracy requires our determination to create a more widely shared understanding of the dangers we face.
Remember every one of us is an influencer. So, we can fact-check the many charges so dividing our nation and speak up in conversations with friends, family, and coworkers. We can support citizen organizations such as Democracy Forward “using legal strategies to challenge anti-democratic actions and advance democratic values” and Protect Democracy working to “defend elections, the rule of law, and fact-based political debate against authoritarian threat.” Another is Common Cause fighting for “the democracy we deserve” via transparency, accountability, and campaign finance reform.
When so much is at stake, democracy itself is our moral calling.
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Push Back Against Sen. Cotton’s McCarthyite Lies About CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family.
Mar 27, 2025
On Tuesday, in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on global threats with the five heads of intelligence agencies of the U.S. government, Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton accused on national TV a group I have worked with for over 20 years, CODEPINK: Women for Peace, of being funded by the Communist Party of China.
During the hearing CODEPINK activist Tighe Barry stood up following the presentation of the Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard’s lengthy statement about global threats to U.S. national security and yelled, “Stop Funding Israel,” since neither Intelligence Committee Chair Cotton nor Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) had mentioned Israel in their opening statement, nor had Gabbard mentioned the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza in her statement either.
As Capitol police were taking Barry out of the hearing room, in the horrific style of the McCarthy hearings in the 1950s, Cotton maliciously said that Barry was a “CODEPINK lunatic that was funded by the Communist Party of China.” Cotton then said if anyone had something to say to do so.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014.
Refusing to buckle or be intimidated by Cotton’s lies about the funding of CODEPINK, I stood up and yelled, “I’m a retired Army colonel and former diplomat. I work with CODEPINK, and it is not funded by Communist China.” I too was hauled out of the hearing room by Capitol police and arrested.
After I was taken out of the hearing room, Cotton libelously continued his McCarthyite lie: “The fact that Communist China funds CODEPINK, which interrupts a hearing about Israel, illustrates Director Gabbard’s point that China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are working together in greater concert than they ever had before.”
Sen. Cotton does not appreciate the responsibility he has in his one-month-old elevation to the chair of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Cotton does not seem to care that his untruthful statements in a U.S. congressional hearing aired around the world can have immediate and dangerous consequences for those he lies about, their friends, and family. In today’s polarized political environment, we know that the words of senior leaders can rile supporters into frenzies as we saw on January 6, 2021, with President Donald Trump’s loyal supporters injuring many Capitol police and destroying parts of the nation’s Capitol building in their attempt to stop the presidential election proceedings.
CODEPINK members have been challenging in the U.S. Congress the war policies of five presidential administrations, beginning in 2001 with the Bush wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, long before Sen. Cotton was elected as a U.S. Senator in 2014. We have been in the U.S. Senate offices and halls twice as long as he has. We have nonviolently protested the war policies of former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Trump, Joe Biden, and now Trump again.
After getting out of the Capitol Hill police station, a CODEPINK delegation went to Sen. Cotton’s office in the Russell Senate Office building and made a complaint to his office staff.
We are also submitting a complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee over the untrue and libelous statements Sen. Cotton made in the hearing.
The abduction and deportation of international students who joined protests against U.S. complicity in the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, the scathing treatment of visitors who have wanted to enter our country, and now the McCarthyite intimidating tactics used by Sen. Cotton in a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing of telling lies about individuals and organizations that challenge the policies of the U.S. government, particularly its complicity in the Israeli genocide of Gaza, must be called out and pushed back against.
And we must push back against U.S. senators who actually receive funding from front groups for other countries. Sen. Cotton has received $1,197,989 from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to advocate for the genocidal policies of the State of Israel.
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