Censorship is creeping through academic institutions in Europe over expressions of support for Palestine and legitimate critiques of Israel and Zionism. Dr. Brendan Ciarán Browne calls it "the Palestine exception to free speech". In his words: "Attempts to intimidate both professors and students, or silence them outright, are becoming normalized in a blatant attack on the values that underpin academic freedom. This goes well beyond the question of Palestine and Israel to the fundamental ability of a university to foster free inquiry and debate. As scholars, we must remain vigilant and poised to push back publicly against attempts to silence or censor us over our speech on Palestine."
This is an attempt to systematically collect stories of censorship, harassment and discipline that have occurred on Swedish higher education institutions since October 2023. The purpose is to create comprehensive data of the incidents, with the possibility to submit a coordinated notification to the Parliamentary Ombudsmen (JO). The initiative comes from the informal networks formed to bring together academics, public officials, and students at Swedish universities in solidarity with the Palestinian people. There is currently no involvement of unions (including student unions) in the initiative.
The information collected is anonymized. All information added to the survey about occurred incidents will be cross-checked. We ask you who submit answers to confirm this information through secure channels. We are reachable via [email protected] (or personal Signal). Files can be uploaded and sent to our email securely via
send.vis.ee - an end-to-end encrypted file-sending service. The data will be stored on an encrypted cloud service (Proton). Is the incident documented in any public records? Traditional media outlets, social media, staff communiqués etc.