Students and faculty at Emory University in Atlanta have been targeted by an outside group that distributed and posted flyers labeling 14 of their colleagues as “anti-Israel.” The flyer, titled “Security Alert,” included each student’s name, age, and mugshot-style photo, listed under the word “Arrested.”
Campus Reform, a national conservative student group, put its logo on the flyer, which references arrests made during protests last April that sought Emory’s divestment from Israel. Charges for most of the 28 arrests from that day remain unresolved and awaiting trial after several faculty leaders failed to get Emory President Gregory Fenves to ask prosecutors to drop them.
The flyers, handed out as classes resumed on Monday, left several teachers and 11 students – and others who supported last year’s protests – worried for their own safety and waiting for a response from school officials, according to interviews with the Guardian.
Campus Reform’s past efforts have resulted in faculty on campuses across the country facing “threats of harm” — including violence or death, according to research by the American Association of University Professors. The Leadership Institute, funded by the Koch family and others, runs the group.
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The flyers, which have since been removed from campus by students and the school’s Open Expression team, appeared just days before the first protest against divestment from Israel of the new school year, part of a nationwide Walkout for Palestine scheduled for Thursday.
One of the students featured on the flyer, who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, told how she walked to the campus quad or central plaza on the morning of April 25 to observe last semester’s protest, which was only a few hours old at the time. “I was there for two minutes […] “Then a police officer came up behind me, grabbed my hands and tied me up with cable ties,” she said.
On Monday afternoon, friends began messaging her about the flyer. “It’s scary,” she said. “I don’t want to be a target. I’m afraid someone will see the flyer, see me, get scared and call the police.”
Emil’ Keme, a professor in the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, was also on the flyer. An indigenous K’iche’ Maya scholar and one of two indigenous tenured faculty members at Emory, Keme told the Guardian that he came to the US from Guatemala as a teenager, fleeing “a civil war against my people … involving the Guatemalan army, which was trained by Israelis.”
Keme went to the protest on April 25 and saw that “the police were immediately forcing people to leave. I felt like I was in a war zone, with all the police and their guns, the rubber bullets… I was holding one of my students. The police took the student next to me, pushed an elderly lady nearby, and then pushed me.”
After seeing the flyers this week, he said, “I feel uneasy and disoriented.” Like others who spoke to the Guardian, Keme said he wants to see how Emory responds to Monday’s events.
Noëlle McAfee, chair of Emory’s philosophy department and also listed on the flyer, sent an email Tuesday afternoon to Brad Slutsky, Emory’s general counsel, asking what the university “will do to address the [Campus Reform] organization that has violated our rules and, without an invitation from a member of the campus community, is not welcome here.”
McAfee said the flyer defames the students and teachers named by calling them “anti-Israel” and claiming that all those arrested were involved in “setting up a camp.” “There is no evidence [of this]”, she said. “It’s all lies.”
Spokesperson Laura Diamond did not respond to a question from the Guardian about whether the school board would issue a statement or take action in response to the flyers, but wrote in an email: “Emory condemns any attempt to publicly harass and intimidate members of our community.”
Related: US students arrested during Gaza campus protests face academic and legal problems
Meanwhile, Ibrahim, a Muslim Emory student who was not listed on the flyer but did not want his last name used, said “my biggest fear … is that people from outside the university will come to campus and do us harm,” referring to Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students. “This [flyer] was an indication of the very real possibility that this could happen.”
“When you hand out flyers with people’s names and pictures on them, and you draw negative attention to them,” he said, “it’s very clear that you want to harm them — physically, emotionally or psychologically.”
Speaking about the protest planned for Thursday, he said: “There are a lot of heightened tensions. There is a tense atmosphere. However, we are not going to stop protesting – but we have to be very vigilant.”
