The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott (USACBI) stands in solidarity with our colleague Charlotte Kates, and we condemn her violent detention on November 14, 2024.
Designations of organizations as “terrorist” by the US state and the Israeli state always lack legitimacy and credibility. In both cases, these states have failed to exhibit anything resembling moral constancy in making these designations; instead, they have a consistent track record of using the “terrorist” designation for their own purposes, specifically to smear fully lawful organizations and persons doing the most admirable social justice work. A prime and most obvious example of this is the US government’s designation of Nelson Mandela as a “terrorist,” from 1988 until 2008. This alone should mean that any “terrorist” designation by the United States is recognized as, at once, risible and dangerous.
In recent years, such designations have been especially targeted at the struggle for Palestinian freedom and equality. Back in October, 2021, the Israeli state designated six organizations, including Defense of Children International Palestine, as terrorist organizations and engaged in violent attacks on their offices. These designations were nothing less than an attack on the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality, and dignity.
The most recent such an action, to our knowledge, is the US designation of Samidoun–a designation criticized in a principled statement by Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights.
In addition, on November 14, 2024—acting on the basis of this illegitimate “terrorist” designation by the United States—Canadian authorities subjected Charlotte Kates to violent and fully illegitimate arrest. The Canadian police arrived at Kates’s home in an armored vehicle, in full tactical gear, and smashed windows of her residence before arresting her under the pretext of investigating an “ongoing hate crime.” Having worked with Charlotte Kates on USACBI, we know, with full certainty, that there is no validity to the Canadian allegation of a hate crime.
This violent attack is part of a sweeping move, internationally, to criminalize dissent in relation to the Israeli genocide in Gaza and U.S. complicity in that genocide. The designation of Palestinian rights groups as terrorist organizations is a vengeful distortion of reality, if not a projection. For its part, the Israeli state has inflicted state violence on Palestinians, at the cost of their rights and lives, on every single day of the state’s existence. And the U.S.’s invasion of Iraq and its “forever wars” purportedly against “terrorism” are acts that should rightfully be identified as “terrorist” activities, if the word has any principled meaning.
In this context, we must also sound the alarm about legislation moving through the US congress that would give the Trump administration un-checked power to designate non-profit advocacy groups as “terrorist-affiliated,” in an effort to shut down non-profit organizations the Trump administration does not like. We know that organizations that work in a fully lawful manner for Palestinian freedom are the prime target of such pernicious legislation.
The US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott stands in opposition to all these instances of state “terrorist” designations and objects fully to the state violence inflicted on Charlotte Kates on November 14 and since.
