Atlanta’s Emory University targeted by anti-Palestinian group: ‘It’s scary’

Students and faculty at Atlanta ’s Emory University have been targeted by an outside group posting and handing out flyers labeling 14 of their colleagues “anti-Israel”. The flyer, titled “Security Alert”, included the names, ages and mugshot-style photos of each of them, arranged under the word “Arrested”.

Campus Reform, a national group of conservative students, put its logo on the flyer, which refers to arrests made during last April’s protests seeking Emory divestment from Israel. Charges for most of that day’s 28 arrests remain unresolved and awaiting trial, after several faculty leaders have been unsuccessful in efforts to get Emory president Gregory Fenves to ask prosecutors to drop them.

The flyers were distributed on Monday as classes began again and have left several faculty members and 11 students – and others who supported last year’s protests – concerned for their own safety and awaiting a response from the school’s administration, according to interviews with the Guardian.

Campus Reform’s past efforts have led to faculty on campuses across the nation receiving “threats of harm” – including violence or death, according to research by the American Association of University Professors. The Leadership Institute, funded by the Koch family and others, runs the group.

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The flyers, which students and the school’s Open Expression team have now removed from campus, appeared only days before the new school year’s first protest on divestment from Israel, part of a nationwide Walkout for Palestine scheduled for Thursday.

One of the students who appears on the flyer spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity, due to safety concerns. She recounted how she approached the campus quad or central plaza on the morning of 25 April to observe last semester’s protest, then only several hours old. “I was there two minutes […] when a police officer came up behind me, grabbed my hands and put zip ties on me,” she said.

On Monday afternoon, friends began sending her messages about the flyer. “It’s scary,” she said. “I don’t want to be targeted. I’m scared someone will see the flyer, see me, feel afraid and call the cops on me.”

Emil’ Keme, a professor in the Native American and Indigenous Studies program, was also on the flyer. An Indigenous K’iche’ Maya scholar and one of only two Indigenous tenured faculty members at Emory, Keme told the Guardian that he came to the US as a teenager from Guatemala, escaping “a civil war against my people … involving the Guatemalan army, who received training from Israelis”.

Keme went to observe the protest 25 April and saw “police immediately began to force people to move. I felt like I was in a war zone, with all the police and their weapons, the rubber bullets … I held on to one of my students. Police took the student next to me, pushed an older lady nearby and then pushed me.”

After seeing the flyers this week, he said: “I feel uncomfortable and disoriented.” As with others who spoke to the Guardian, Keme said he wants to see Emory respond to Monday’s events.

Noëlle McAfee, chairperson of Emory’s philosophy department and also featured on the flyer, sent an email Tuesday afternoon to Brad Slutsky, Emory’s general counsel, asking what the university “will do to notify the [Campus Reform] organization that it is has violated our rules and, absent any invitation from any member of the campus community, is not welcome here”.

McAfee said the flyer is defaming students and faculty mentioned by calling them “anti-Israel” and claiming that all those arrested were involved in “setting up an encampment”. “There’s no evidence [of this],” she said. “The whole thing is lies.”

Spokesperson Laura Diamond did not reply to a query from the Guardian about whether the school’s administration will be making a statement or taking any action in response to the flyers but wrote in an email: “Emory condemns any attempt to publicly harass and intimidate members of our community.”

Related: US students arrested in Gaza campus protests face academic and legal woes

Meanwhile, Ibrahim, a Muslim Emory student who was not on the flyer but did not want his last name used, said “my biggest fear … is that people from outside the university will come onto campus and harm us”, referring to Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students. “This [flyer] was an indication of the very real possibility that could happen.”

“If you go around handing out flyers with people’s names and pictures, drawing negative attention to them,” he said, “it’s very clear you want to cause harm to them – physically, emotionally or psychologically.”

Speaking of the protest planned for Thursday, he said: “There are a lot of heightened tensions. There’s a tense climate. Still, we’re not going to stop protesting – but we have to be very vigilant.”