The University of Southern Maine abruptly revoked access to an on-campus venue days before a conference about Palestine was to take place there, citing the participation in the program of an individual under US sanctions and following pressure from local legislators.
More than 300 participants have registered to attend the “Consequence of Palestine” conference, which was slated to include remote participation from Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, who has been under sanction by the Trump administration since last year.
Conference organizers – with the Maine Coalition for Palestine, Maine Voices for Palestinian Rights and USM’s department of criminology and sociology – are scrambling to find a last-minute venue to hold the event. They told the Guardian they “refuse to be silenced” and are considering legal action against the university, which is part of the University of Maine system.
“We’re a public university; the university system is subject to first amendment laws,” said Abigail Fuller, a sociology professor at USM. “We feel we have a very, very strong case that they are suppressing our free speech.”
Sanctions law prohibits US individuals and entities from exchanging “any goods or services” with sanctioned individuals – with consequences ranging from hefty fines to up to 20 years in prison. But what constitutes a prohibited “service” is not clear, and free speech experts criticize the law as being overly vague and improperly chilling speech that is protected under the US constitution.
Samantha Warren, the University of Maine system’s chief external and governmental affairs officer, wrote in an email to the Guardian that “hosting a conference that is being actively promoted as including a speaker sanctioned by the U.S. government would put our public university in violation of federal law”. She added that organizers should have obtained permission from the treasury department to include the sanctioned speaker.
That position appears to contradict guidance issued by the office of foreign assets control in December, which clarified that featuring sanctioned individuals as speakers at conferences does not amount to providing a prohibited service and does not require prior authorization. OFAC issued the clarification in response to a letter on behalf of the Middle East Studies Association, which was also looking to feature Albanese’s virtual participation in an event.
The US treasury department, which oversees OFAC, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in the letter to MESA the office wrote that “no authorization” was necessary to include Albanese so long as she did not receive an honorarium or expense reimbursement and that she was not provided with any “training or assistance”.
Xiangnong Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute who sought officials’ guidance on MESA’s behalf, told the Guardian that USM’s cancellation of the Palestine conference was a troubling reflection of the sweeping impact of US sanctions. In 2023, the Knight Institute sued the treasury department in a case that challenged the impact of sanctions on the exchange of political ideas, leading to a settlement and the department’s acknowledgment that including sanctioned speakers in events is not prohibited under US law.
Still, the sanctions’ broadness continued to have a widespread chilling impact, Wang noted, extending beyond targeted individuals to scholars, journalists and human rights advocates who fear engaging with them might expose them to legal liability.
“It’s very concerning that sanctions continue to have such a broad deterrent effect on speech that is undoubtedly protected by the first amendment,” he said.
Organizers believe USM administrators responded to outside pressure, including a letter reportedly sent to the chancellor by Republican lawmakers requesting “information on steps the university is taking to ensure the safety and well-being of its Jewish students”.
Fuller, the USM professor, said university officials cited the fear of federal funding cuts in communications with organizers. After they failed to convince the university that no OFAC authorization was required to include Albanese, organizers offered to remove her from the conference program, but were then told that not enough time was left for the university to assess the conference’s “risk”.
The US sanctioned Albanese – a prominent and outspoken advocate for Palestinian rights – last July, accusing her of “unabashed antisemitism, expressed support for terrorism, and open contempt for the United States, Israel, and the West”.
Albanese did not respond to a request for comment but has previously denounced the sanctions against her as a sign of US “guilt” and has consistently rejected antisemitism accusations.
“The US is a country of contradictions, full of ideals and principles and still, plotting against democratic values,” she told the Guardian in an interview last summer.
Fateh Azzam, a career human rights practitioner and member of the Maine Coalition for Palestine, told the Guardian that organizers were determined not to cancel the conference.
“That would mean that they have effectively silenced an open and public debate on the issues,” he said, noting that the ordeal had instead drawn greater interest in the event. “This controversy will probably bring in more people.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
