Penn faculty group supporting Palestinians sues to stop transfer of documents to Congress

Two University of Pennsylvania faculty members and the recently formed Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine are suing Penn in federal court to stop the transfer of documents about faculty and students to a congressional committee investigating complaints of antisemitism on campus.

The lawsuit warns of a new “McCarthyism” taking hold and likened the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which is investigating colleges’ handling of antisemitism complaints, to the House Un-American Activities Committee, which investigated citizens for alleged communist ties in the 1950s.

“The House is, exactly as HUAC did in the 1950s, reaching out to chill, threaten and punish Americans whose views it disapproves,” the lawsuit said.

“The committee has eagerly joined billionaire donors, pro-Israel groups, other litigants, and segments of the media in accusing Penn of being a pervasively anti-Semitic environment (which it is not).”

The university should not provide the documents, the lawsuit said, asserting that turning them over could put at risk faculty and students who are exercising their right to speak out in support of Palestinians and who already have been doxxed and threatened.

The committee, it said, is seeking documents concerning student and faculty activities around “anti-Israel” protests on campus, including findings and results of any disciplinary processes for faculty and students and sources of funding and activities of student groups at Penn that have been critical of Israel and in support of Palestinians.

» READ MORE: Congressional committee opens investigation into Penn following president’s testimony on antisemitism

The faculty group bringing the action was formed earlier this year and is made up of faculty, staff and graduate students. It held a “die-in” vigil on campus in January to recognize the lives lost in Gaza.

» READ MORE: New Penn faculty group hold ‘die-in’ in support of Palestinians killed in war

Shay Negron, the group’s lawyer, said the suit filed Monday seeks an injunction from the court to prevent Penn from providing the documents to the committee with information about the plaintiffs.

A Penn spokesperson declined comment on the lawsuit and said the university had not yet been served.

The House committee also declined to comment.

Penn began providing documents to the congressional committee in February. The university declined comment on that process. The committee already has subpoenaed Harvard for documents it said the university has not provided.

The committee launched its investigation into Penn, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology after a December hearing it held on colleges’ response to antisemitism complaints on campuses. At the hearing, then-Penn president Liz Magill testified during questioning that it was a “context-dependent decision” on whether calling for the genocide of Jewish people violated the university’s code of conduct.

A bipartisan backlash to Magill’s comments ensued and she resigned days later. Harvard’s former president Claudine Gay also resigned, in January, facing similar criticism for her testimony as well as accusations of plagiarism.

» READ MORE: Penn president Liz Magill has resigned following backlash over her testimony about antisemitism

Magill’s answer to the committee, the lawsuit said, “was in fact a good-faith and honorable answer pursuant to the First Amendment and Penn’s commitments regarding academic freedom.”

The suit says that student files and documents related to the Palestine Writes Literature Festival are also being sought by the committee, but that this information is protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which limits access to students’ education records. The festival was held on campus in September. Critics say the festival included speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks, while supporters said it was a celebration of Palestinian art.

Penn was roiled in controversy over the festival, which only grew after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Bringing the lawsuit against Penn is Huda Fakhreddine, an associate professor of Arabic literature who co-organized the festival, and Eve M. Troutt Powell, a professor of history and Africana Studies. Both are tenured professors “who have been threatened, accused, and doxxed for the subject matter they teach, and their First Amendment protected criticism of Israel and their advocacy for Palestinians and the people of Gaza,” the suit said.

Troutt Powell said in a news release: “As the monstrous onslaught of Israel’s instrumentalist attacks continue to kill thousands and thousands of Gazans, we have continued to confront not only our despair but also being demonized as antisemites while Palestinian lives are discounted as half as valuable as Israeli lives, and that is when they are counted at all.”

Troutt Powell has received hundreds of threatening and hateful emails, the suit said.

“Fakhreddine has been excluded from faculty meetings, her emails to the members of her department censored, and co-sponsorship of events canceled,” the suit said.

Fakhreddine, who is identified in the lawsuit as an Arab American, said in the news release that the reaction to the literature festival “caught Penn by surprise” and that the university “failed to acknowledge how the onslaught of anti-intellectual anger endangered the festival organizers and its mission as a university.”