Why we as linguists support the Block the Ban at MIT petition

 December 23, 2024

Why we as linguists support the Block the Ban at MIT petition

The petition linked here is in support of Prahlad Iyengar, a 2nd year Ph.D. student at MIT, and Professor Michel DeGraff of the MIT Linguistics department. 

We take support for Prahlad Iyengar to be straightforward, his rights of freedom of speech having been blatantly violated (see here).

Support for Professor DeGraff has become less straightforward, however, due to massive back and forth correspondence made public, extensive published material, and personalized accusations, which have shifted the focus away from the core of the matter to issues of procedure, questions of appropriate and inappropriate speech, and others. In considering whether to support DeGraff and sign the Block the Ban at MIT petition, we made every effort to abstract away from all this, and determine, based on the evidence available to us, whether denying DeGraff’s request to teach a Linguistics Department Special Topics seminar entitled Decolonization & Liberation Struggles in Haiti, Palestine & Israel, is a case of the Palestine Exception.

We have come to believe that it is, since we can otherwise make no sense of why MIT Linguistics would decide to reject this course. We also believe that this decision provides another example of the systematic suppression of free speech on matters of Palestinian rights and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, suppression that would be unthinkable in other cases of oppression, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in the US and abroad.

DeGraff’s competence to teach this seminar has been questioned, as he supposedly lacks expertise on the “weaponization of language”. This is false: 

• he has taught similar classes at the interface of linguistics and the politics of privilege, e.g. here and here,

• he has published extensively on “the weaponization of language”: how language is used for societal oppression and racialization in places where Creole languages are spoken and in movements elsewhere, including in #BlackLivesMatter. Some representative examples of this published scholarly and outreach work are here, here, here, here and here.

DeGraff’s course content has also come under extraordinary scrutiny:

• An Ad Hoc Review Committee was brought in to review his seminar, a first in the Linguistics Department, as far as we know.

• His course format has been challenged based on (1) the number of invited speakers, (2) a syllabus with some details still to be filled in, (3) his content area falling outside the department's regular curriculum. However, if (1) and (2) were compelling reasons to reject a course, then other Linguistics Department courses should also have been rejected, but were not (see here and here.) And (3) is also not a valid reason to reject the course, since BY DEFINITION Special Topics seminars fall outside a department’s regular curriculum.

We find the questioning of DeGraff’s expertise in the face of his accomplishments demeaning and condescending; the exaggerated scrutiny that the Department has given his course is disingenuous. And these actions have a particular irony given the praise he has received by the department, not only for his scholarship but also for his activism:

In 2022, DeGraff was elected as a fellow of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA), which Professor Fox celebrated, “It is good to see a professional organization like the LSA promoting scientists not just for their research, but also for the kind of activism that might accompany it: battling prevalent misconceptions about the nature of the world, identifying their detrimental consequences, and fighting for change. Michel has been involved in all these activities,” (see here). 

DeGraff’s course exactly answers the call to linguists by John Rickford in his 2016 LSA keynote address: “more of us need to get out of our offices, labs, or libraries and make a difference in the world.” (Rickford and King, 2016). 

Finally, we also fail to understand why Professor Fox, Chair of Linguistics, did not recuse himself from the Ad Hoc Review Committee after heated disagreements between him and Professor DeGraff on matters relating to the politics of the Middle East (reported by DeGraff, not denied by Fox).

In conclusion, we believe that preventing DeGraff from teaching this course was indeed a case of a Palestine Exception. It is for this reason that we have signed Block the Ban petition and we call on more members of the linguistics community (as well as academia in general) to step forward in support of Michel DeGraff’s academic rights and dignity.

Signatures

Elsa Auerbach, Professor Emerita of English and Applied Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Boston

Hagit Borer, Professor of Linguistics, Queen Mary University of London, FLSA, FBA, MIT Alumna

Joyce Bruhn de Garavito, Emerita Professor of Hispanic Studies and Linguistics, University of Western Ontario

Anna Cardinaletti, Professore di Linguistica, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia

Eugenia Casielles, Associate Professor of Spanish & Linguistics, Wayne State University

Lisa Cheng, Professor of General Linguistics, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics

Hamida Demirdache, Professor of Linguistics, Nantes Université/CNRS

Renauld Govain, Professeur de linguistique, Université d’État d’Haïti

Tania Granadillo, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics, University of Western Ontario

David Heap, Associate Professor, French & Linguistics, University of Western Ontario

Jeffrey Heinz, Professor of Linguistics, University of Stony Brook

Anders Holmberg, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Newcastle University 

Uri Horesh, Linguist, Lecturer in Arabic, University of St. Andrews 

Draško Kašćelan, Lecturer in Language and Communication Sciences, University of Essex

Stephanie Kelly, Assistant Professor (retired), Linguistics, University of Western Ontario 

Asher (Robert) Kirchner, Associate Professor of Linguistics (retired), University of Alberta

Jo Anne Kleifgen, Professor Emerita, Linguistics and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Utpal Lahiri, Associate Professor of Linguistics & Contemporary English, the English and Foreign Languages University

Rita Manzini, Professor of Linguistics, University of Florence

Máire Noonan, Chargée de cours in Linguistics, Université de Montréal

Phoevos Panagiotidis, Professor of Theoretical Linguistics, University of Cyprus

Karen Pennesi, Associate Professor of Anthropology & Linguistics, University of Western Ontario

Pierre Pica, Associated Professor, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte / CNRS

Glyne Piggott, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, McGill University

Philippe Prévost, Professor of Linguistics, Université de Tours

Ljiljana Provogac, Professor of Linguistics, Wayne State University

Janet Randall, Professor Emerita, Linguistics & English, Northeastern University

John Rickford, Professor of Linguistics and the Humanities, Stanford University

Anna Roussou, Professor of Linguistics, University of Patras, Greece

Isabelle Roy, Professeure en Sciences du Langage, Université de Nantes

Ur Shlonsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Université de Genève

Rint Sybesma, Professor of Chinese Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden

Jeff Tennant, Associate Professor, French Studies & Linguistics, University of Western Ontario 

Arhonto Terzi, Professor of Linguistics, University of Patras 

Esther Torrego, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Boston

  Laurie Tuller, Professor Emerita of Linguistics, Université de Tours

Guido Vanden Wyngaerd, Professor of Linguistics, KU Leuven

Georges Daniel Véronique, Professor Emeritus of French Linguistics and Creole Studies, Aix Marseille Université

Eric Wehrli, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Université de Genève

Walter Wolfram, Endowed Professor of Linguistics, Department of English, North Carolina State University