censorship

( Foreign Policy in Focus ) – Jesters once had considerably more leeway than the average person to make fun of the king. If otherwise loyal subjects made light of their leader, they could lose their head. Jesters, however, could test the limits of the possible with relative impunity—until they crossed the line and lost […]

Academic Freedom

Protesting UC Berkeley handing Names of Faculty and Students to Dept. of Education

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association of North America | – Letter to UC Berkeley regarding the university’s submission to the Department of Education of 160 names of persons associated with allegations of antisemitism President James B. Milliken Office of the President University of California president@ucop.edu Chancellor Rich Lyons Office of […]

Authoritarianism

Stephen Colbert: “We are all Jimmy Kimmel”

contributors

The Late Show: “We Are All Jimmy Kimmel | The Easy Way Or The Hard Way | Trump Urges NBC To Cancel Fallon And Mey…”

censorship

Israeli Forces’ Attack on Sanaa kills Journalists

Human Rights Watch

Israel, Yemen Authorities Targeting Media Workers Niku Jafarnia Bahrain and Yemen Researcher, Middle East and North Africa Division ( Human Rights Watch ) – A new report by Human Rights Watch documents attacks by all the warring parties in Yemen on journalists. An attack on a media center in Sanaa, the capital, by Israeli forces […]

censorship

Protesting Claremont Colleges Library Censorship of “Policing Palestine”

Committee on Academic Freedom

Committee on Academic Freedom | Middle East Studies Association of North America | – Letter to the Claremont Colleges library condemning the censorship of the title and abstract of Professor Bilal Nasir’s scheduled lecture in the Claremont Discourse series Katie Kohn STEM Librarian Chair, Claremont Discourse series committee The Claremont Colleges Library Katie.Kohn@claremont.edu Janet […]

censorship

Yemen: Journalists under Assault

Human Rights Watch

Warring Parties’ Systematic Violations Against Media Freedom Yemen’s warring parties – particularly the Houthis, the Southern Transitional Council, and the Yemeni government – have committed serious human rights violations against journalists in Yemen. Targeting journalists and media institutions has encroached on freedom of expression. Many journalists have fled the country and those who remained have […]

censorship

Host, Bully, Hypocrite: The US’s Shameful Gatekeeping of the United Nations

Middle East Monitor

by Ranjan Solomon ( Middle East Monitor ) – The United States is once again demonstrating that it is unfit to serve as host of the United Nations Headquarters. Reports that Washington may deny a visa to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for an upcoming UN encounter evoke bitter memories of 1988, when Yasser Arafat […]

Academic Freedom

The Silence of the Scholars: How leading Academics gave Cover to Genocide in Gaza

Shamai Leibowitz

Silver Spring, Md. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – The true measure of a scholar is not the number of books they publish or the titles they hold. It is whether they speak when human beings are starved, bombed, and erased as a people. By that measure, some of America’s most visible academics have failed. […]

Authoritarianism

Saudi Arabia: Executions Surge in bid to Crush Dissent (HRW)

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch – (Beirut) – Saudi authorities have been carrying out an unprecedented surge in executions in 2025 without apparent due process, Human Rights Watch and the Middle East Democracy Center said today. The June 14 execution of Turki al-Jasser, a journalist known for exposing corruption within the Saudi royal family, raises concerns that the […]