Podcast Ep 73: Fighting the lobby’s racism, with Lara Sheehi

Nora Barrows-Friedman The Electronic Intifada Podcast 22 February 2023

On episode 73, we speak to Lara Sheehi, assistant professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University in Washington DC, who has been at the center of recent Israel lobby attacks.

Sheehi is joined by her lawyer Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, to talk about how she is resisting the smear campaign and collusion by her university.

Last fall, she invited a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship, who is also a professor at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to speak at a lunch event about mental and public health initiatives. Following the invitation, anti-Palestinian students took over Sheehi’s class and made a series of racist statements.

StandWithUs, a right-wing Israel lobby group notorious for its harassment and targeting of students and scholars who support Palestinian rights, stepped up the smear campaign by filing a complaint to the US Department of Education in January.

The lobby group claimed that first-year Jewish and Israeli students in the professional psychology program at George Washington University experienced “anti-Semitic discrimination and retaliation,” and accused Sheehi of “anti-Semitism.”

Civil Rights group Palestine Legal recently filed its own complaint to the Department of Education, demanding that the government investigate numerous instances of anti-Palestinian racism and harassment at George Washington University.

Included amongst the many examples of racism on campus are the unfounded attacks against Sheehi.

Part of the bad faith efforts of these lobby organizations, Sheehi tells us, ” is that there’s a complete and utter misrepresentation of my classroom.”

Her class on diversity, she explains, “has no explicit Palestine content in it, it is not a class about Palestine. And so it already brings to bear who they target, how they target, and how they collapse one’s scholarship, whether or not that scholarship is in the classroom, with what happens in the classroom.”

Sheehi discusses how these right-wing groups use racism and sexism to mobilize against scholars, and how universities like George Washington capitulate to their demands.

“Not only do I have the responsibility to prove – as an Arab woman – that I am not an anti-Semite as a precondition to any conversation, which is what GW had me do throughout, but also in the public eye,” she explains.

Underlining the pervasive racist climate on campus, Ayoub says that these smear tactics by Israel advocacy groups are meant to scare professors into silence.

“But you have to push back,” he says.

“That’s what we’re doing here, we’re pushing back against this … Because this goes beyond just this one classroom, or this one event, there is a climate on that campus that needs to be addressed.”

Articles we discussed

Video production by Tamara Nassar

Theme music by Sharif Zakout

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Full transcript

Lightly edited for clarity.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: We continue our focus on the targeting by Israel lobby groups of scholars, students and activists who support Palestinian rights. In January, the right-wing lobby group StandWithUs filed a complaint to the US Department of Education alleging that an assistant professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University, Lara Sheehi, quote “discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students” by refusing to accept the lobby’s skewed and weaponized definition of anti-Jewish bigotry. StandWithUs has, for years, targeted academics and students over their support for Palestinian rights and has pressured university administrations to censure and punish those who criticize Israel.

In an op-ed published in Counterpunch, Lara Sheehi writes: “StandWithUs’ contrived complaint is a textbook example of how right-wing advocacy groups take advantage of today’s political climate with impunity. They released the complaint to a third-rate Breitbart-wannabe rag before the complaint was filed with the Department of Education. They redacted all names at the university save mine. This unambiguously showed their intention: not to advocate for students, but to manufacture controversy about my scholarship and activism around Palestine.”

Joining us to talk about the situation at George Washington University and how academics and students are being targeted is Dr. Lara Sheehi, along with her lawyer, Abed Ayoub, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Lara Sheehi: Thank you so much for having us and making the time.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: Thank you for being with us. Lara, let’s start with you. Talk about your work at George Washington in Washington, DC and what started happening once StandWithUs started feeding their Department of Education complaint to right-wing media. This is standard practice, as we know and as we’ve documented for a long time, for Israel lobby groups to work hand-in-glove with far-right publications in order to launch vicious and dangerous smear campaigns against someone they want to silence. You’re also being pressured to resign from your position as the head of the American Psychological Association, Division 39. Walk us through what happened in January.

Lara Sheehi: Sure, thank you so much. So I think my position at GW is actually really important. I’m an assistant professor of clinical psychology in a doctorate psychology program. And what that means is, I’m training clinical psychology students. And so part of their – the bad faith efforts of their complaint also is that they entirely erode and completely come up against the ethics of our field, an ethics code that I’m not the one who authored, right? So part of what we teach our students is how do you ethically engage in the world, not in terms of the biases of the people that come in, those are things that most people who are coming into the field are very well aware of and attuned to, but in fact, our ethical duty to attend to our own biases that are molded by the world that we live in to trouble our own identifications, and so that is part of the class that is at the heart of this – is a diversity class that all students have to take. It’s a three-tiered class, which I teach.

And the heart of that is we talk about structural issues, we talk about conditions of oppression. And so that is at the heart of it. I think it’s really important. That’s part of what I do at the program. In fact, that’s what I was hired to do is to revamp the way that we think about these things. As a movement of the entire field, the field is moving very much in a direction of being in alignment with what our ethical duties for social justice are. In fact, that’s one of our aspirational values is integrity and justice. So that is part of what I do at the program.

And in January, I, you know, got an email from The Washington Free Beacon and recognized that StandWithUs, who I know as the, it’s like you said, it’s textbook, had filed – had released the complaint that they had filed with the Department of Education to them before it was even filed, and so that tells us the first thing we need to know is that they had released it to a right-wing media source before even filing with the Department of Education. And had done so with the intention of whipping up what they needed to be whipped up by the time this hit the news, quote unquote, the next day.

And so it was very quick, it was very swift, it was something I have seen countless times before with other academics with whom I work alongside and have advocated for myself. And it was swift and violent immediately. So as soon as it hit the right-wing blogosphere, as you noted, everybody’s name was redacted except mine, which is another key element that happens – this complaint was against George Washington University. So in the context of things, if they didn’t have the intention of creating a smear campaign against me, my name would have been redacted as well, because the complaint is actually against George Washington University, not Dr. Lara Sheehi. But releasing my name is key. It’s opportunistic, it’s exploitative. I happen to be an Arab woman who works in the United States whose work is on race, and settler-colonialism. And part of that is, of course, my own taking up issue with the settler-colonial apartheid regime of Israel and the oppression of Palestinians.

This is not a field I invented. In fact, I count myself to be a good scholar in doing my due diligence and keeping up with the scholarship of the time. That said, I think one thing that I really want to hone in on is part of the bad faith effort is that there’s a complete and utter misrepresentation of my classroom, right? That class, diversity class, has no explicit Palestine content on it, it is not a class about Palestine. And so it already brings to bear who they target, how they target, and how they collapse one’s scholarship, whether or not that scholarship is in the classroom, with what happens in the classroom, right?

And so I would say that’s part of it. Now, of course, there were students in there that I – that had brought to my attention that day, their discomfort with the brown bag [event], a voluntary brown bag that was held off of site of our program, which they didn’t have to come to, but they did. And they had brought that up to me – what the complaint notes is that I immediately shut them down, I targeted them. What I believe is a, you know, secret recording, which StandWithUs also does, teaches students how to do that. I didn’t realize that at the time after reading the complaint, I believe that was the case. They entirely cherry picked from that. And they completely misrepresented what happened in the classroom, how I attended to the students. And, unfortunately, what actually happened was the aggression that happened in that class that led to one of many things that unfolded over the course of a semester.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: And as you know, it’s a constant and standard response, to weaponize anti-Jewish bigotry to make it fit into a definition that serves to protect Israel at all costs, conflating Judaism and Zionism, which is, of course, a dangerous and malicious claim. Let’s talk about StandWithUs’ complaint a little bit more and how you’re fighting it with Abed, your lawyer. Just last month, the Department of Education rebuffed demands by the Israel lobby to use this conflation and redefine anti-Jewish bigotry to include criticism of Israel. But, of course, these right-wing groups are not going quietly into the night and just accepting it. They’re continuing to pressure the Department of Education. Abed, can you talk about this complaint and how you’re defending Lara against it?

Abed Ayoub: Sure, thank you. And thank you for having us on. And I want to commend Lara for, you know, handling this really in a very effective way. And, you know, she’s very strong and very determined to, you know, get the truth out there. And we appreciate that in her as a client, but more importantly, as an advocate, and as somebody from the community that’s doing an incredible job. And, you know, the storm she’s going through right now, they’re aggressive, and, you know, it’s not necessarily just the complaint that was filed with the Department of Education, that is a problem, but it’s also the response to that complaint from GW which you know, even – they put her through this rigorous process in the fall and interviews and intakes and back and forth, to find nothing, and, you know, a few weeks ago, maybe at some point in January, they come back and say, well, we want a third party independent investigation, which is, you know, it’s unheard of.

And speaking to many colleagues in the legal profession, many colleagues, you know, in DC who handled cases, you know, with GW, that this rarely happens. So the fact that they took this unsubstantiated, bogus claim and complaint that they’re filing with the Department of Education, and use that as a basis to fight, you know, to open this third party investigation, it’s very, very problematic. And it tells us there’s an agenda there, there’s folks that within that building, and there’s a climate within that building at GW, within the campus at GW that needs to be addressed. I have no doubt that whatever the Department of Education decides to go through, it’s going to find out Lara was right, nothing’s wrong, and it’s a baseless claim. And it’s part of just the tactic, they’re doing this as part of their regular process.

And, you know, you will have some professors, some individuals that say, you know, I don’t want to deal with this headache right now. And they’ll cave in. But you have to push back, that’s what we’re doing here, we’re pushing back against this, let the school – you know, they are going through the third party investigation. But what we’ve requested as you’re investigating, they need to investigate all claims made, you know, by Lara and by other students, as well. And by the campus as well, because this goes beyond just this one classroom, or this one event, there is a climate on that campus that needs to be addressed.

There’s an anti-Arab, anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic climate, and there’s an anti-Black climate, that, you know, we’re hearing about as we start doing our own conversations and intakes with folks, you know, related to that campus or have worked on that campus, there’s a lot of issues. And you know, what we’re trying to do right now, we’re going through the process, we are, you know, note-taking, we’re dictating, were doing what we can to get through this interview that’s coming up and to get through the investigation. And then we’ll look at what options we have. And we’ll look at, we’re giving them the benefit of the doubt that, hey, you know, if you’re going to do this investigation, do it the right way, there’s nothing to hide, I think they’re going to be rather surprised at all the evidence and all the proof that, you know, Lara’s put together, that we have.

And then we’re gonna, you know, look at what options she has, without giving out too many, you know, too much of the strategy, but she’s gonna have some legal options, I would hope that are available for her. But you know, if she needs to use those and go down that route, we’re going to keep escalating this, because again, we have to push back. They rely on people, you know, being scared, being shaken, or who don’t have the resources, to eventually give up. But this time, we’re not going to do that.

Lara Sheehi: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And I’ve been so appreciative of the support, and the ADC, particularly around this issue. And I think one thing to say is that I was a graduate student of GW. And so this story is not new, right?Actually, part of the reason why I came back to GW is committing myself to creating and uplifting the environment that I would want to see on a campus particularly as an Arab woman, and the number of Arab students that have come in afterwards, feeling like they had a space and recognizing – and/or students of color in general, I want to know also that I have taught this class for over six years.

This has never – and, of course, I’ve had Jewish students. So the concept that this is happening now – without StandWithUs, this would not be a story, right? And that’s the thing I think that we’re talking about. And in fact, that GW themselves admitted they knew who StandWithUs is, they understand that it’s an advocacy group. And so this is part of what’s on the table right now. I mean, one of the things you had asked before about how is this happening in my professional career, too, which is why we can’t back down is that, number one, it’s being talked about as though it’s a lawsuit. There is no lawsuit, it’s a filing with the Department of Education, GW moved before the Department of Education did anything. And so it’s created an air as though I’m already guilty, right?

Not only do I have the responsibility to prove as an Arab woman that I am not an anti-Semite as a precondition to any conversation, which is what GW had me do throughout, but also in the public eye. And this is what’s happening also in my professional sphere. I have been so moved by colleagues who have come forward, not the least of which have been over 200 Jewish colleagues who have stood behind me and recognized themselves that they – the collapse between these claims that anybody who’s critical of the state of Israel is, you know, de facto anti-Semitic, but also attending to the work they have seen me done over the past decade in the field, and how I, along with every other force of oppression, fight anti-Semitism right alongside them, because why wouldn’t we, right?

But I think this is where the racism and definitely the sexism comes in and how StandWithUs mobilizes these sorts of things, to make it seem, right – to close down any sense of support. We have seen a great deal of support come in. And I think that that just shows the level of bad faith of this complaint of this filing, but also in the way that GW has handled it since then. And I think that is what most academics and colleagues are really mortified by, right? It sets the real dangerous precedent.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, just talking a little bit more about the context in which StandWithUs is launching this smear campaign and this complaint. I mean, this is the same, you know, George Washington University is the same university that closed an entire trauma center for students because Israel lobby groups got upset that Palestinian students were receiving care after Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2021. It’s also the same university where the Israeli government, using an app that they’ve developed and funded, encouraged its supporters to engage in a cyberbullying campaign against students after they voted to divest from companies that profit from Israel’s crimes in 2018.

What does this say about like, why, you know, what is happening at George Washington University, specifically? And how is it really just a microcosm of what’s happening across the country, across Canada and Europe as well?

Lara Sheehi: Yeah. I mean, you said it, right? This is – I think this ties into the things that I am responsible to teach my students as ethical clinicians and global citizens of the world. These are conditions, they’re structural issues that we see repeated over and over again, it is on GW campus, because it is in the fabric of the United States, particularly post-9/11. But, of course, we understand what it means to be allied with Israel as a country and what it means to sort of have that be a part of the cultural aspects of what we grow up in.

As Arabs, we understand what that means, we understand what it’s like to constantly be targeted on these campuses, as we’re growing up in our communities, let alone under surveillance of that. So, on the one hand, there’s a banality to it, right? And that is why you had talked about how StandWithUs like it’s textbook, and every major letter that has come out in support has named that this is not new – Jewish Voice for Peace Healthcare Advisory Council, specifically wrote a letter, an urgent letter in support of me saying, we know this group, and this is how it happens and and they list it out. This is the textbook, right? This is what they follow. So we understand that’s the case.

On one hand, what’s happened at GW is banal, on the other hand, there are particularities that are really important for us to really pay attention to. In my case, setting a precedent on academic freedom by pre-empting the Department of Education? That is concerning. In terms of the students, shutting down a trauma support group? That is concerning. I have not heard of another campus that has done that. And I think that that sets a very specific message to our students. We were very concerned with that. Myself and my students, I just launched a psychoanalysis in the Arab world lab around students not being able to get mental healthcare, they are clinicians in training and many of our students, not just Arabs, were very distraught about the fact that there would be people who would not have access to care based on who they are.

And in this case, they happen to be Arabs or Palestinians, who had a real urgent need for care, and the university did not allow that to happen. And so I think there’s a way in which our students are really reading this as a larger structural issue. They’re seeing the writing on the wall, and they’re becoming very concerned that the spaces for them are closing down very, very quickly.

Abed Ayoub: Look, GW has some major issues – and to us, it’s one of the more hostile campuses towards Arab, Palestinian students, and I think there needs to be a real look from our communities and – as to whether or not, you know, how we engage with GW in the future and whether or not it’s even a safe, you know, campus for our community members to be employed at or to even attend classes at. And the irony of it is, the irony of it is GW really does depend a lot on the international students coming to pay, you know, their cash tuitions.

And I think, you know, there has to be a close look and examination as to how we handle GW and their attack not just on academic freedom, but the overall atmosphere and climate on that campus. And it is – it’s hostile. It’s a place that we’ve received many complaints about, even though, you know, going back to the trauma center and other issues in the years past, there’s a problem there. And this is just exposing that, and our hope is all of it will be out there in the public to read about soon.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: Yeah. Lara, I want to take a step back and talk about your specific body of scholarly work. And what you talk about when you wrote in your Counterpunch article, quote, “I have long resisted the fetishizing glances of a trauma industry, ready to contour me slash us as mere victims worthy of care and support only through the legibility of our suffering. I’m resentful of the coercive tactics of StandWithUs and all those who wielded their power to demand my narrative, my story, my trauma as fodder for their racist fantasies.” Can you talk about what you meant there and what you’ve worked on for so long? And how this is really like, coming up against everything that you’ve resisted?

Lara Sheehi: Absolutely, thank you for asking that question, for giving me a space to talk about that. I think there’s something really, you know, disturbing about watching one’s work in this particular way, unfold in front of one’s eyes, right? I’ve been working for a long time – again, I’m a scholar of race within psychoanalysis, meaning what are the sort of conscious and unconscious processes that are both structural and internal that get lodged within us? And how do you watch these processes come to light? How do they, how do you watch them become animated in group spaces, in institutional spaces and in instructional spaces specifically – that my work being also about the pedagogy of the field.

And so in many ways, what I saw happen immediately, not only was the sort of – a sort of outburst and the lifting up of Islamophobic, racist, anti-Arab tropes, immediately what we might call things that are unconscious, but also very conscious in the United States that immediately came to light and started to be mobilized in a particular way to prove my guilt immediately. But also, I was seeing just violent sexism. And these are on professional listservs as well. People calling for not only me to step down, that I’m a humiliation to the entire field, and then with that, people starting to note their fantasies of how our entire field has been taken over by “these people.” These are words that are being said, by psychologists and psychoanalysts in the real world who have real patients. And that has been what my work has been, is really taking a critical eye in the field and saying, how are the ways in which racism, sexism, ableism, all those structures of oppression, really pour into our field? And then I was seeing it being mobilized against me, immediately.

And with me linking up any person who dared say, we need to actually take a look at what’s happening here and this – Lara being the face of this currently, but what does this mean structurally? And how is this being mobilized? The level of vitriol not only that I’m an embarrassment to the field, but that I’m a Hizballah agent, I’m an ISIS agent, I’m an Ayatollahist – one of the weirdest things that was said, I’m an Iranian spy, I should be ousted from everything that I’m working on, I’m a reputational liability – I mean, just the immediacy of it. And then the piece that I was saying about my resenting that you need to lay yourself out in a particular way just to be seen, just to be worthy of care – Were the people who might be well-meaning, many of them were not, many of them were explicitly racist and sexist, but those who might also, in their innocence, and we know how innocence plays out too, particularly in issues of whiteness and white supremacy, asking for me to explain myself, to – going back to my tweets, quote, unquote, which were unethically cherry picked as well, which we understand happens.

And, quite frankly, a part of me, you know, in my Counterpunch piece, I listed how the unethical way in which it’s cherry picked is also representative of something larger. That when when oppressive forces go after you in this way, they also miss out on very important details that those of us who have been under the eye in the crush of oppression for so long understand is central to our fight, a timestamp that would tell you I’m responding on August 4 of 2020, the Beirut blast and perhaps that my anger is actually justified in that moment when an occupying force, just like it’s doing now in Turkey, right, saying that it’s sending aid to Lebanon, after it has been the source of so much destruction in my lifetime and before I was even born. The same thing it’s doing in Turkey now, mobilizing these aid efforts as part of their larger propagandists and to displace what is actually happening on the ground in Palestine, right?

So that – that is part of how this whole thing came together. And so my Counterpunch piece, which was so difficult to write, because there’s so much packed into there, right? But at the heart of it is how the forces come together to put the onus and the task on us to explain why we might be feeling the way we are. That’s a racist act. And it’s a parallel act to what I have been asked over and over and over again, to prove myself before I even begin to speak – that only happens to folks who are presumed guilty.

And oftentimes, those who are presumed guilty are a minority in some way or another. We know the history of this country. This is not a new story, right? My dear colleague, Carter Carter, wrote a piece also saying this is not a new story for the United States. So it’s a long history. And again, one that, you know, I have history with studying. So it’s been, it’s been so disturbing to watch it happen in such a close way.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: Yeah. Absolutely. Finally, Abed, can you talk about, you mentioned the next steps and the various means of defense, and, and also, you know, resistance against this complaint, but also, you know, if things escalate what could happen? How, how important is it to mobilize right now, in defense of Lara and other academics, other students, who are facing this kind of relentless, racist, bigoted smear campaigns. And what is your advice to people who are facing these, this, what Lara’s facing right now?

Abed Ayoub: Thank you. Mobilizing is very important. I think the, you know, victims that are going through this, the individuals that are going through this, and this goes across all, you know, the work we do, particularly whether it’s victims of hate crimes, or individuals that are being discriminated against work, they need to see support, right? And you know, let them know that we are, you know, we understand what they’re going through. But at the same time, in a case like this, if you don’t see the support, it could be overwhelming. And a lot of individuals would sit back and say, well, it may or may not be worth me fighting this, I don’t have anybody behind me, no one is speaking up for me. And it looks like such a daunting task, to go through everything. And we have to remember and keep in mind, they have a game plan, they have a blueprint on how to do this, and they’re going through it now.

And they try to turn and switch every lever at their disposal to stress folks out, to put pressure and ultimately think you’re gonna back down. We have to show support, we have to come out, you know, with statements, with letters has been, you know, as is happening in this case, but we also need to support and get, you know, legal representation and attorneys to a lot of these individuals. You know, our office and other nonprofits out there, we can’t handle every single case. But the more attorneys we have volunteering and stepping forward, the harder we can push back, because going into this thing alone, again, it’s going to be, you know, overwhelming, it’s going to be daunting, but we have to get represented, we have to do what we can, you know, to get the individuals the representation.

And then once all of this is done, we can’t stop, we have to take a close look at the, you know, these groups [StandWithUs], StopAntiSemitism.org. They’re not immune to any laws, they’re not immune, they can’t go out there and practice freely and do freely what they’re doing. Ultimately, their time is coming. But we have to put our minds together as legal scholars, as attorneys to see how could we push back against these guys one final time, and, you know, put them in their place. This is what we’re going to have to do.

And this is, these are the conversations happening behind the scenes with many attorneys that are involved, because it cannot continue like this. It cannot continue where you just file meaningless claims, make somebody go through this whole process. They have to be held accountable for what they’re doing. And that’s what the second phase of this will look like.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: And finally, Lara, what’s your advice to other – to your students who are facing this, to your colleagues and to people who, you know, who really value speaking up against Israel’s crimes and the crimes of, you know, Western-led imperialism you know, more broadly speaking right now? And how do you talk to your colleagues who are facing this kind of attack?

Lara Sheehi: Yeah, I would say what so many folks have said to me, is that you’re not alone. And I think that part of these attacks are meant to atomize us and make us feel isolated. And they can feel very isolating. And what I would say is that to remember that, like I do with my students all the time, is teach them about structures. Structures are meant to make you feel alone, because when you feel alone, you self-discipline, you have silenced yourself, you start to forget that there are actually networks of care, and solidarity struggles that are there to help you not have to do this by yourself, right? That can feel abstract or sound abstract, but it’s not.

And I know that for a fact, the way that folks come together, from small notes of solidarity to big mobilizing campaigns, people, you know, working tirelessly with their own lives, we do this for each other, because we believe in the just world that we’re fighting for, right? And with that just world, of course, comes these struggles. And that is why we, you know, I think about abolitionists, for example, somebody like Ruth Wilson Gilmore, who always talks about rehearsal – that we rehearse for these moments, we build, we make community with each other. And so even if you’re feeling entirely alone, that’s what I tell my students all the time, you have a community, and we build on communal bonds.

And we say if larger structures in the state and – is not taking care of us, what do we need to take care of each other? And what are the ways in which we want to enact the world that we want to see? And I really see that come back tenfold. And I’m committed to doing that again, myself, and continue to uplift everybody who’s doing this heroic, from you all to everybody behind the scenes at ADC and every legal representative that is also donating time and just really putting their hearts in this. I think there’s a global movement right now the USACBI letter that was written on my behalf has over 2,500 signatures. This is – I’m not so arrogant to say this is just about me, right? Of course, I’m at the heart of this, but this is a larger issue and we’re all fighting for a world that’s free of oppression, from Palestine to Turtle Island.

Nora Barrows-Friedman: Dr. Lara Sheehi at George Washington University and her lawyer Abed Ayoub, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and we will have links to both the adc.org on our podcast post that accompanies this episode, as well as letters of support. You mentioned USACBI, the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, that has a petition that is gathering many signatures as you mentioned, we’ll have a link to that and other ways that you can support Lara as we move forward in this process of defense and offense at the same time. Lara and Abed, thank you so much for all that you do and for being with us on The Electronic Intifada Podcast.

Lara Sheehi: Thank you so much.

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Nora Barrows-Friedman

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Nora Barrows-Friedman is a staff writer and associate editor at The Electronic Intifada, and is the author of In Our Power: US Students Organize for Justice in Palestine (Just World Books, 2014).