Protecting academic freedom and solidarity with Dr. Lara Sheehi  

Editor’s Note: The following letter was sent by Israeli academicians in the organization Academia for Equality to the leadership of George Washington University in support of Dr. Lara Sheehi. Mondoweiss occasionally publishes press releases and statements from organizations in an effort to draw attention to overlooked issues.

To: Mark Wrighton, President
Christopher Alan Bracey, Provost
Paul Wahlbeck, Dean of Columbia College of Arts & Science
Kimberly Gross, Communications Dean
Chad Heap, Dean of Graduate Studies
Loring Ingraham, Director of the Professional Psychology Program

From: The Executive Board, Academia for Equality  

Re: Protecting Academic Freedom and Solidarity with Dr. Lara Sheehi  

We are writing to you as Academia for Equality, an Israeli organization of over 700 academics, holding positions of all ranks in universities and colleges in Israel and around the world. We work together to promote democratization, equality and access to higher education, and struggle against silencing of critical voices and complicity with injustices in Academia.  

We were alarmed to learn of the Title VI complaint filed with the US Department of Education on  January 12, 2023 by the right-wing “pro-Israel” organization StandWithUs, against The George Washington University. The said complaint states that Jewish and Israeli students in the Professional  Psychology Department at GWU were subjected to “antisemitic discrimination and retaliation” and “deprived of the opportunity to define their own identity”. Despite the fact that the complaint alleges antisemitism against GWU, all names in it were redacted save the name of Dr. Lara Sheehi, an academic of Lebanese descent who teaches in the Professional Psychology Department. 

As early as 2015, the organization Jewish Voice for Peace specifically criticized StandWithUs,  highlighting their methods for silencing dissent, which they name as “…filing complaints with the federal government that campuses are ‘hostile environments’ for Jewish students; conflating some Jewish  students’ emotional discomfort with targeted harassment; contacting administrators in an effort to have  events canceled and speakers disinvited; blacklisting professors; and launching public campaigns around faculty hires.” As Israeli academics, we condemn these tactics and the very definitions of antisemitism that groups like StandWithUs rely on to slander those who stand up for the rights of Palestinians and other oppressed peoples. It is noteworthy that the US Department of Education has rejected the broad definitions of antisemitism that groups like StandWithUs use to attack anyone who voices criticism of  Israel and/or solidarity with the Palestinian people.  

Dr. Sheehi, a faculty member at the George Washington University Professional Psychology Program, is an internationally recognized clinician, scholar, activist, writer and teacher. Her work is on decolonial struggles as well as power, race, class and gender constructs and dynamics within psychoanalysis. Last year saw the release of her award-winning co-authored book with Stephen Sheehi, Psychoanalysis Under Occupation: Theory and Practice in Palestine (Routledge). Furthermore, and to attest to how highly she is regarded in the field at large, Dr. Sheehi holds important positions in two of the major psychoanalytic psychology organizations in the U.S. She is President and former Secretary of the Society for  Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Psychology (Division 39 of the American Psychological Association) and she is the Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s Teachers’ Academy. She is on the editorial boards of the Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (JAPA) and Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society (PCS), is a contributing editor at Parapraxis, and is on the advisory board to the  USA-Palestine Mental Health Network and Psychoanalysis for Pride.  

Dr. Sheehi is just the latest of far too many professors and clinicians to become the victim of these tactics, which dovetail with a wider, programmatic attempt by pro-Israeli lobbies to influence the activities of the Department of Education. Dr. Sheehi has been singled out in this complaint as creating an environment hostile for her Jewish students precisely because she stands in solidarity with Palestinians. 

We are particularly alarmed by the strong possibility that Dr. Sheehi’s personal identity as an Arab woman contributed to StandWithUs’ decision to target her. She is not the first Arab clinician or academic in recent years to be personally targeted in this way.  

As part of what seems to be a concerted effort to silence and intimidate Dr. Sheehi, her personal information has been made public, with the effect that she and her family members have now received death threats, and her colleagues have been subjected to Islamophobic harassment. We unequivocally condemn threats of violence and any forms of harassment against Dr. Sheehi, her family, or her colleagues.  

Criticism of Israel in the name of justice should not be conflated with antisemitism, a practice that hurts everyone. In the face of such brutal personal assaults, it is the ethical obligation of every academic to uphold the value of academic freedom and to urge protection for our colleagues’ rights and safety. We stand with Dr. Sheehi, and urge you to do the same.  

Sincerely,  

The Executive Board  
Academia for Equality