When the pro-Palestinian Arab displays and posters arrived on campus, it was clear that there was a lot of money and organization behind them. When SSI students asked who was sponsoring the event, the Young Democratic Student Association (YDSA) claimed that they were only responsible for reserving space for the event. Later, a flyer showed that the YDSA name had been crossed out in connection with the event; written by hand over it was the name “Palestine Solidarity Coalition.” The members of this coalition were not named.

To counter the misinformation and anti-Israel propaganda, the SSI students set up their own booth. They invited conversation and dialogue. Everyone was welcome to exercise their free speech rights there.

When it came time for the panel discussion, Michaelle Browers, the co-director of Wake Forest’s Middle East and South Asia Studies Program, opened by claiming that measures had been passed “to condemn, punish and otherwise burden advocacy for Palestinian Rights,” which she said are troubling from the “academic freedom standpoint.” She said the goal was to target the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS), which she praised as “non-violent.” She neglected to mention that BDS’s mission is to destroy Israel.

She continued, “If we cannot separate criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism, we risk … conflating Jewishness with Zionism and Jewishness with the State of Israel, which sounds an awful lot like the State Department definition of antisemitism.”

She claimed that pro-Israel students created a “hateful mood … and aggressive behavior … that is threatening the ability of us to work for social justice together.”

Barry Trachtenberg, Chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest, followed. “There are many people … who will automatically claim that any speech that’s critical of Israel is inherently antisemitic,” he said. “We get boxed into this situation where we just simply can’t talk about Israel, we’re just not allowed to in any ways that are critical.”

Trachtenberg continued, “There is no reason why we at Wake Forest can’t figure out how … students who support Israel can go on and have their event and that students that are arguing to end the occupation can have their events put [on] without the need for secret police or undercover police, without the need to have marshals, without the need to read a statement beforehand, without the need to have to identify all the speakers, without the need for [a] speaker who wanted to appear on this panel to feel intimidated.” What an impressive exaggeration.

He admitted that the week’s events were “motivated by the student government passing the resolution … fighting antisemitism. … I think the damage lay in the … language used … it kind of does muzzle free speech.”