Mother Jones illustration; photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; Julio Cortez/AP
As congratulations poured in for the recipients of this year’s MacArthur Award, Dr. Ruha Benjamin, a professor of African American studies at Princeton University, should have been celebrating a career-defining achievement. But the full story was a bit more complicated. Around the same time that she had been awarded one of the most prestigious prizes in intellectual circles, Dr. Benjamin was being chastised for pro-Palestine activism by her university.
She explained the context in a thread on X, which gained wide attention:
The thread publicized an ongoing conflict between Benjamin and her employer, which had opened an investigation into her involvement in an April protest in solidarity with pro-Palestinian student demonstrators. According to Benjamin, a “tense” phone call with university officials had taken place shortly before learning she had won a MacArthur grant, thus diluting the joy that comes with such an exceedingly rare achievement.
“Receiving this honor encourages me to continue beating that drum in my teaching, writing, and advocacy—that the many crises we face as people and planet are in part due to the fact that we are living inside the imagination of those who monopolize power and resources to benefit the few at the expense of the many,” she said in a post that included her response to Princeton’s question about the significance of a MacArthur fellowship for her scholarship.
I caught up with Benjamin to discuss Princeton’s investigation into her role in April’s protest, academia’s crackdown on speech, and the problems inside the “genteel” culture at the renowned university. Princeton University declined to comment. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Let’s go back to the protests from the spring. Tell me about the atmosphere at Princeton and what your experience was like at the time.
The biggest thing to understand about what we experienced at Princeton is that many individuals, many people outside of academia and perhaps some inside, are weaponizing Title VI of the federal anti-discrimination law, specifically as it relates to charges of antisemitism. They’re both weaponizing and watering down what antisemitism is in order to apply it to a whole host of speech acts and organizing. In the process of watering it down, it both loses its meaning and, rather ironically, it’s wielded against the very people who the word was intended to protect. The result is that faculty and students of color are being targeted through aggression.
“When I say chilling effect, it’s not just simply that individuals are scared; they’re being interrogated. They’re being punished.”
For example, at Princeton, we had a sit-in at Clio Hall back in April, where I was one of four faculty observers—all of whom were faculty of color—who went with students. Now, the four of us are being investigated by the university and targeted by those outside who don’t want to see anyone speaking up against the genocide or in support of the sanctity of all life, including Palestinian life. So I think that’s really the bigger climate, that anyone can be charged with being antisemitic using Title VI.
The last thing I’ll just point out is that the person who helped draft the definition of antisemitism is Kenneth Stern. He has been saying on the record now in op-eds and interviews, as the person who drafted the definition of antisemitism, that it is being weaponized and is creating a chilling effect on university campuses. I agree with that point: When everything becomes antisemitic, nothing is antisemitic, and it makes it much harder to fight antisemitism. At Princeton, I’ve heard directly from those who’ve been targeted, that students who were involved in April’s protest are being called in for questioning to talk about their friends and roommates. One of my colleagues, in the spring, brought his class on Palestine to the encampment. He has since been put on probation by the university. So when I say chilling effect, it’s not just simply that individuals are scared; they’re being interrogated. They’re being punished.
“Princeton is on the continuum of the way that different universities have approached crackdowns. There’s a lot of choreography where it feels like the institutions all hired the same consulting firm to show them how to approach [dissent].”
Tell me a little more about Princeton’s investigation.
The focus of the investigation, as it was told to me, was specifically about my role during the sit-in. I’ve gone on the record, along with the other faculty observers, in a written statement about what we observed. And what we observed contradicted the lies that the administration had claimed about what students were doing during the demonstration. They were essentially trying to determine if I led the students in. So the line of questioning is around what role I had during the sit-in. But the assumption is that it started with me.
I had a faculty companion with me who was meant to accompany me to balance out the conversation. And very early in the conversation, he had to interject and tell Princeton that they were assuming I was leading the students versus observing and supporting them. In this particular case, the students were arrested. That investigative call from the university happened the day before MacArthur informed me of the award.
Universities have significantly cracked down on dissent since last spring. Some now require registration for protests with student names; others have banned camping on school grounds. How should we view these new restrictions against academic freedom and the history of campus protests?
Princeton is on the continuum of the way that different universities have approached crackdowns. There is certainly a lot of choreography where it feels like the institutions all hired the same consulting firm to show them how to approach dissent. I noticed when we returned from break these signs on some of the green areas on campus, but specifically where the encampment had taken place.
These institutions are trying to balance the expectations of free expression and academic freedom, while also working very hard to make protest non-disruptive to campus life. But the very definition of a protest is that it should disrupt. Otherwise, as we say, it’s a parade. In terms of the history of campus protest, what students have historically done is to try and push universities to put their purse strings in line with their platitudes. That’s the case whether it was South Africa, fossil fuel divestment, etc.
Changes have only happened because students and allies disrupted business as usual. It wasn’t through polite conversation or panels or pure reason; it was because people said, “This is not normal, so we’re not going to act normally.” In some ways, these institutions are saying we don’t want to live up to our ideals, we put order over our ideals.
I feel like a lot of these crackdowns happen under the pretense of so-called neutrality to clamp down on voices that are deemed problematic. But a crackdown on speech is, by its very nature, far from neutral. How should we think about this disconnect?
Absolutely. I also agree that nonaction is a form of action. Not saying anything is implicit support for whatever the dominant narrative and status quo are. And as someone who studies science and technology, fields that really cling to the ideals of neutrality, this is where they get their authority from.
Purely as an academic, I see the way that claims of neutrality and objectivity are wielded in so many different ways. When institutions do it, it’s an extension of this because claims to neutrality are an attempt to maintain authority and power over those who are deemed not neutral. That distinction between claims that protesters are operating on pure passion, you know, it’s so subjective.
It’s called the God trick, right? The philosopher Donna Haraway talks about this God view that science attempts to maintain. That it has an omniscient view of everything. In many ways, the statements rolled out by our institutions are attempting the God trick that it stands above everything. “We’ll let others figure it out but we stand apart.” But that standing apart is a tacit support for whatever the status quo is. In this case, the current investments of our institutions in the war machine. So by saying we’re not getting involved in that, you’re saying we’re going to maintain those investments, regardless of the student opposition for it. And so I think it’s important for us to burst that bubble of insularity that those in authority constantly try to maintain by using neutrality as a power play.
Shifting gears to the thread that went viral this week. What was your initial reaction to realizing that Princeton had chosen not to include your responses in their announcement of your MacArthur award?
The Office of Communications reached out to me in August saying they had received the news from MacArthur and asked if they could interview me. So they sent me those three questions that I put online, and I wrote out my answers. And in writing the answers, I prefaced it by saying I know my answer to one puts you in a tricky position. But I would ask that if you can’t include the full context of that response, please don’t use any quotes from me in writing.
By then, I was 99 percent sure that they weren’t going to publish any of them. So I was not surprised at all that they didn’t. They were generous enough and wrote back after a few days to let me know that they had opted for option two, which is no quotes. And again, I know this wasn’t journalism. This is PR for the homepage of the university, and the point of that is to make the university look good. So I was under no sort of illusion that they were going to want to put anything in there that would cast doubt on the goodness of the university. There was no surprise.
Right. But your responses didn’t seem confrontational, to me, at least.
I think they were the most basic, almost watered-down responses. I mean, I didn’t tell them what I really think. [laughs]
The whole correspondence with them was totally polite. That’s Princeton’s way. They will suspend you—but very politely. Everything is very polite, that’s the thing. It’s not like what we saw at Columbia. If you saw the correspondence I had with them, they were very generous and I was very understanding.
That’s so interesting, your point that their response was unlike Columbia’s. Can you elaborate?
Princeton is known as the southernmost Ivy. It’s widely known to be the school where southern aristocrats sent their children during the antebellum years. It has a very genteel culture.
I was told early on when I got here—and I’ve been here over 10 years—that to get anything done here, you cannot be confrontational. That the university and its officials do not respond well to the way I operate. Like, “How dare you tweet such a mild thing!”
Has Princeton reached out since you tweeted those responses?
No, they have not reached out. I think that that’s typical, their idea to ignore [controversy], that it will go away. It goes back to what I said earlier. That the university believes that they stand above things.
“Such a backlash would be misplaced and perverse. Rather than looking to those who are trying to push the Democratic Party to live up to its ideals, we should be looking to the party itself and its own shortfalls: funding an unpopular war, occupation, and genocide.”
I can’t help but feel that universities—like some in the Democratic Party—seem to treat Gaza supporters like nothing more than a nuisance. Something to be dealt with. How are these attitudes, at the highest levels of academia and government, formed?
There are many ways to diagnose this issue. One way I think about it is that the framing of pro-Palestinian and anti-genocide protests is one single issue. An isolated issue that is unrelated to more domestic and relevant issues. But that is a faulty and even deadly framing. Even this week, with Hurricane Helene in North Carolina, FEMA has come on the record to say they have a shortfall in terms of not having the funds to help people stranded in the mountains of North Carolina—right after we sent $8.7 billion to Israel to continue bombing Lebanon and Gaza.
I believe that all things are connected. One of the most tangible ways they’re connected is the way we allocate money. So one of the things I highlight in my own research is that a budget is not just a budget. It is a moral document that tells us who and what we value.
The budget of a university is a moral document. So the same institutions that give so much lip service to producing young people that go out in the world and benefit society—that same institution has to care about their investments. One of the most basic things pro-Palestinian student protesters are asking for is transparency about where university funds are going. To me, that seems like the most basic obligation. I would like to know if my employer is benefiting from the deaths of tens of thousands of people, which in turn is a question about whether I am benefiting, right?
There’s a looming sense that if the election goes a certain way, grassroots movements that support Gaza are going to receive a ton of backlash. What’s behind that instinct and what would your response be to such an accusation?
Such a backlash is misplaced and perverse. Rather than looking to those who are trying to push the Democratic Party to live up to its ideals, we should be looking to the party itself and its own shortfalls: funding an unpopular war, occupation, and genocide. It’s analogous to say that people who bring up issues of racism are the ones who are creating division, rather than the racism itself.
So many of our social ills come from being angry at the people who are trying to call attention to the ills rather than the ills themselves. When it comes to the election, it’s really going to be misplaced. I think we have to push back and absolutely refuse any kind of blame.
