“The American university is the quintessential marketplace of ideas. Academic discourse and higher order learning cannot take place in an environment in which individuals are not at liberty to express their thoughts and ideas, however controversial or provocative.”
–University of Denver Statement of Policy and Principles on Freedom of Expression
“Volumes” of hate mail; several death threats; a slew of articles from media outlets including the Washington Free Beacon and Newsmax alleging anti-semitism. Days after speculating that the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and self-radicalization driven by social media each could have motivated the August attack on the author Salman Rushdie on “The Iran Podcast”, University of Denver (DU) Professor Nader Hashemi found himself at the center of a media frenzy.
Response from the university
But far-right media pundits and Benjamin Netanyahu supporters were not the only ones noticing Dr. Hashemi’s comments. Three days after the podcast aired on Aug. 23, the University of Denver issued a statement in which they distanced themselves from Hashemi. The statement, no longer publicly available, was recounted in a letter from the Middle East Studies Association’s (MESA) Committee on Academic Freedom to Chancellor Jeremy Haefner:
“Professor Hashemi spoke as an individual faculty member and does not speak for the university. While we wholeheartedly respect academic freedom and freedom of speech, his comments do not reflect the point of view of the university, nor are we aware of any facts that support his view. The safety of every speaker and every student on our campus, and all campuses, is critical to our society. We condemn the stabbing of Salman Rushdie. And it goes without saying that we remain committed to assuring that the experience of our Jewish students, faculty and staff is safe, supportive, respectful and welcoming.”
Dr. Hashemi, who directs the Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, called the statement “morally obscene,” saying it violated his academic freedom, called into question his reputation as a Middle East scholar and implied that he condoned violence against public academics. Worst of all, he added, “that statement clearly inferred that my presence on campus was a threat to Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
In a letter to Chancellor Haefner concerning the statement, the Association of American Professors (AAUP) Colorado Conference asked: “Why and how was it deemed necessary to publicly distance the university from Dr. Hashemi, knowing full-well that such a statement would unavoidably cast a reputational cloud over Dr. Hashemi and, by implication, over DU’s Center for Middle East Studies?”
Provost Mary Clark denied that the statement implied Dr. Hashemi’s comments were antisemitic. “There is great understanding between myself and Dr. Hashemi, and likewise the chancellor and Dr. Hashemi, that he is not engaging in antisemitism,” she said. “There were expressions of concern from individuals both within the internal DU community and outside, so the chancellor’s remarks were intended to respond to that concern.”
The provost acknowledged that DU receives many calls, emails and other communications from concerned parents, calling them a “prominent feature” in her responsibilities as provost. She also acknowledged that the university rarely issues public statements distancing itself from DU faculty.
Both Dr. Hashemi and the Dean of the Josef Korbel School for International Studies, Fritz Mayer, perceived the chancellor’s office to be under “serious outside pressure” at the time the statement was made. Neither were contacted prior to the release of the statement.
“It was not my statement,” said Dean Mayer in an interview. “I support Professor Hashemi’s right to academic freedom.” The Dean has not issued an official statement concerning the incident.
Departure and demands
After the months-long fallout over his comments and ongoing scrutiny from the administration, Dr. Hashemi has decided to leave DU.
At an on-campus event on academic freedom relating to Israel/Palestine on Apr. 10, Dr. Hashemi demanded a “public, transparent, and open” investigation into the circumstances surrounding the university’s response to his comments. He believed that, if the administration officials involved are confident in their handling of the situation, they should welcome an independent investigation.
The provost recommended pursuing avenues included in DU’s shared-governance structure.
“I know that there are some mechanisms on-campus that are more appropriate for this type of individual grievance than others,” Provost Clark said. “I am very supportive of faculty pursuing their grievances and making sure they’re appropriately addressed.”
But Dr. Hashemi remains resolute that this is more than an individual grievance. He sees his treatment as the latest in a long line of incidents of institutional targeting of academics speaking out in support of Palestinian human rights. Moreover, he sees the chancellor as vulnerable to external and internal pressures that threaten the academic freedom of students, staff and faculty at the University of Denver.
“This entire scandal could have been easily avoided if only the chancellor had the leadership skills to say, ‘thank you very much for your phone call, but at this university we respect academic freedom,’” said Dr. Hashemi.
What exactly did Dr. Hashemi say?
The source of the months-long controversy lay in Dr. Hashemi’s comments concerning an assassination attempt on Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed on stage last August while giving a lecture in Chautauqua, New York. The novelist is known for “The Satanic Verses,” whose satirical depictions of the Prophet Mohammad drew criticism from many Muslims and caused the Supreme Leader of Iran to issue a fatwa demanding the execution of Rushdie in 1989.
The motives of the perpetrator, 24-year-old Hadi Matar, are still unclear. On the “Iran Podcast,” Dr. Hashemi proposed that Matar could have spoken to an IRGC member or a member of the Mossad posing as IRGC, which Dr. Hashemi called “much more likely.” He also speculated that Matar could have been driven to commit the attack through self-radicalization.
The speculations on Mossad involvement drew accusations of antisemitism from American and international media outlets, pro-Israel think tanks and Jewish community organizations from across Colorado. Many of these accusations compared Dr. Hashemi’s comments to the antisemitic tropes of secret Jewish control over everything, old blood libels, and cabals.
CNN’s Jake Tapper also weighed in, describing Hashemi as a “pro-Iranian regime ‘academic’” and accusing him of spreading vile “Jew-hatred” in a since-deleted tweet.
Daniel Bennett, head of DU Hillel, believed the speculation touched on the antisemitic trope that “the Jews are secretly controlling everything.”
“I know that state departments and secret agencies of every country in the world do all sorts of stuff, so it’s not impossible, but for him to say it is likely or probable … was totally irresponsible,” Bennett said.
Bennett, alongside representatives of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), JEWISHcolorado, Jewish Community Relations Council, and Rocky Mountain Rabbis and Cantors issued a statement on Aug. 25 condemning Dr. Hashemi’s comments and what they took to be a softball response by DU.
Dr. Hashemi has since defended his comments by pointing to his academic duty to consider the motivations of every potential actor. In an essay published after the interview, he referenced the correlation between the timing of the stabbing and international efforts to revive the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a deal which allowed international monitoring of the Islamic Republic in Iran’s nuclear program.
Hashemi believed the IRGC and the Israeli government, both of whom opposed the agreement, could have targeted the high-profile and controversial academic to stall JCPOA negotiations.
Public pressure and private fallout
Shortly after calls by right-wing think tanks and news outlets for DU to take action against Dr. Hashemi, the Chancellor’s office issued the above statement on Aug. 23. Dean Mayer perceived the university to be “under heavy outside pressure” at the time the statement was issued; Dr. Hashemi alleges the university took action after outside lobbying by entities who he said “align with the politics of right-wing Zionism and the Republican Party.”
Provost Clark denied that political organizations like the ADL and the American Jewish Committee (AJC) contacted the university. “This statement was motivated by expressions of concern that had come from internal community members and external community, by which I mean surrounding Denver,” she said.
The Provost declined to specify the source and nature of these external concerns.
Neither the Provost nor the Chancellor contacted Dr. Hashemi or the dean prior to the statement’s release. Dr. Hashemi believed his exclusion from these conversations contradicted the administration’s public commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
“When DEI values are actually tested at this university, they disappear very quickly,” the professor said. “[In] all of these conversations directed from the chancellor’s office about this crisis where I was involved, where I was allegedly the key instigator, I was completely excluded.”
Referring to communicating with faculty before issuing statements about their comments, Provost Clark said, “We acknowledged that, yes…it would be helpful moving forward to have that type of outreach.”
This “outreach” is also protected in DU’s “Policies and Procedures Relating to Faculty Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure” alongside academic freedom:
“The University may attempt informal or formal resolution of a faculty member’s failure to conform to the standards of professional behavior and responsibility. Such attempts at resolution shall involve the input of faculty member peers at every level, up to and including the Faculty Senate president, as warranted.”
Dr. Hashemi and the Provost confirmed that, following the statement’s release, they met together with the chancellor and DU AAUP President Aaron Schneider twice. Both times, the administration refused to rescind the initial statement or issue a formal apology to Dr. Hashemi.
Bennett and Dr. Hashemi also met several times. While Bennett hoped to bridge differences through joint events, Dr. Hashemi would not consider collaboration until Bennet had retracted Hillel’s initial statement. Neither budged, and Bennett says Dr. Hashemi eventually stopped responding to his emails.
Apart from taking time away from his teaching and research, the most impactful consequence of the administration’s statement for Dr. Hashemi was having to walk around campus knowing members of the DU community saw him as a potential threat to Jewish students.
Despite the administration’s adamance that their statement did not imply this, Dr. Hashemi described being approached by “senior university officials” imploring him to put on community events centered on fighting anti-semitism to “prove that [CMES] is not engaged in anti-semitism.”
This contributed to a “toxic” work environment at the Josef Korbel School for International Studies, where Dr. Hashemi said he felt pressured to self-censor. “I was walking on eggshells,” he said. “[I knew] that if I ever expressed an objective opinion about an area where I have expertise and there was outside private criticism, the university would do the same thing.”
Academic freedom at DU
Outside the chancellor and provost’s offices, Dr. Hashemi found support from several academic bodies.
In addition to the AAUP Colorado Conference, DU AAUP President Aaron Schneider, MESA and the DU Department of Political Science issued statements or wrote letters in support of Dr. Hashemi’s academic freedom.
The AAUP defines academic freedom as an academic’s right to investigate and speculate on topics in which they have expertise free from interference of institutional entities such as trustees or donors. This differs from the free speech which, protected by the First Amendment, refers to an individual’s right to say or express their true beliefs free from censorship.
DU explicitly protects academic freedom in “Policies and Procedures Relating to Faculty Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure”:
“The University fully supports the academic freedom of its faculty. A bedrock principle upon which the advancement and dissemination of knowledge rests, academic freedom grants faculty members the liberty to teach, pursue, and discuss knowledge …when speaking, writing, or acting as a citizen, a faculty member shall be free from institutional censorship or discipline.”
In their statements regarding the incident, Dr. Schneider and MESA found the chancellor’s statement to be defamatory and in violation of DU’s policy on academic freedom.
The provost confirmed that the University rarely issues statements on political issues, much less on the comments of a specific professor; that Dr. Hashemi’s comments, which both the DU and Colorado AAUP placed well within the scope of academic freedom, were undercut by the university brought DU’s commitment to academic freedom into question for many.
A history of on-campus dissent
This is not the first time DU has faced criticism over potential infringement on freedom to dissent and academic freedom.
Neal Feldman, past president of the DU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), graduated from DU in 2014. Feldman recalled the administration requiring all student organizations to secure administrative approval for slogans and signs to be used during demonstrations. Organizations were also required to sign contracts with the administration before demonstrations and public events.
“The way that the administration is set up is to partly discourage activism in a lot of ways,” said Feldman, remembering bureaucratic approval systems and excessive red tape around bringing outside speakers to campus.
Last summer, CMES co-sponsored an event in Istanbul, Turkey, which included a range of Palestinian and South African anti-apartheid speakers. The event discussed reports by Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem which labeled the Israeli occupation of Occupied Palestine as apartheid. After the event, the Intermountain Jewish News (IJN) and the ADL accused the conference, and DU by association, of antisemitism; Dean Mayer made a public statement explicitly distancing the Korbel School from the conference and CMES.
In response to the controversy, the Center tweeted in defense of their right to sponsor the conference. Email correspondence between the dean and Dr. Hashemi indicates that Rabbi Yossi Serebryanski from Denver Chabad asked Provost Clark to take down these tweets and that the provost subsequently asked the dean to remove them:
“Yesterday Provost Clark forwarded to me an email from Rabbi Serebryanski regarding your tweet of 6/28 in response to the IJN article and social media commentary regarding the conference in Turkey. Yossi has been working with us to help assuage concerns in the local Jewish community and he felt that the tweet was making his position much more difficult,” read Dean Mayer’s email.
The dean went on to request that Dr. Hashemi take down the tweets. Correspondence between the dean and the provost could not be confirmed at the time of publication.
Dean Mayer said the controversy pushed Korbel faculty and the dean’s office to discuss requiring centers to obtain departmental approval to sponsor conferences; Dr. Hashemi spent the rest of the summer sending letters and emails in an attempt to repair CMES’ reputation and relationship with the DU administration.
Rabbi Serebryanski said he did not remember asking the provost to remove tweets. “My emails to the provost were, ‘why is DU not telling its… positive Jewish story?’” he said. “DU is tone deaf to the Jewish community.”
When speaking on its commitment to academic freedom and free speech, DU does not address these past incidents.
To the contrary, Chancellor Haefner’s comments at the SPARK 2023 event called for greater free speech on campus. “Higher ed should take more active steps in encouraging viewpoint diversity,” he said. “We should be curating more diversity of thought on our campuses than what currently exists right now.”
Chancellor Haefner was not available for an interview and referred the author to the provost’s office.
An increasingly anti-semitic environment
All of this comes at a time of rising anti-semitism in the U.S. and Colorado. The year 2022 saw nearly 3,700 anti-semitic incidents reported to the ADL from across the U.S., up from 2,700 in 2021 and 2,000 in 2020.
Just several months ago, three anti-semitic incidents occurred at DU in which perpetrators tore down mezuzot, a Jewish prayer placed in doorways, and glued pork products to the doors of Jewish students.
“Maybe we are overly sensitive,” said Bennett. “But we’re also sensitive for a reason, and that is that we are not free from getting picked on.”
Bennett differentiated anti-semitism and holding Israel to the same standard as other countries like the U.S. or France. Bennett went on to say he has “plenty of criticisms for the state of Israel.”
“I don’t think you have to put kid gloves on and treat Israel perfectly and say that they’re wonderful,” he said. “Say what you need to say, but don’t trot out things that bring those [anti-semitic] motifs to bear.”
Feldman, past SJP president at DU, saw the distinction between anti-semitism and criticism of Israel as key to advocating for justice for Palestine. They called for policymakers to avoid using the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-semitism, which defines criticism of Israel as anti-semitic, in legislation surrounding American-Israeli relations.
Dean Mayer noted that “many of our faculty speak out in favor of Palestinian rights and are very critical of Israel, not just Nader.”
“I completely support their right to [speak out]” he said. “There’s never been any pressure from me to tell [Dr. Hashemi] what to say.”
Looking to the future
While he refused to name his source, Dr. Hashemi said he had “very reliable” information that the chancellor proposed closing the Center for Middle East Studies after the initial blowback. When asked about the potential closure, the provost denied having heard about it.
“Not to my knowledge,” she responded.
Dean Mayer also said he had not heard anything about closing the center. “I would strongly resist a targeted effort to shut down the Center for Middle East Studies,” he said.
The chancellor has not responded to these allegations publicly and CMES leadership after Dr. Hashemi’s departure has not yet been announced.
