
The executive committee of the Alliance for Academic Freedom has published an exposé, in Tablet, of “the fear-mongering, McCarthyesque agenda of Canary Mission, a misguided organization that ‘documents the people and groups that are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on college campuses in North America’.” This statement was collectively authored by David Greenberg, Rebecca Lesses, Jeffry V. Mallow, Deborah Dash Moore, Sharon Ann Musher, Cary Nelson, Kenneth S. Stern, and Irene Tucker. As of today, Tablet has permitted us to republish their article in full, “The Blacklist in the Coal Mine“:
In the spring of 2015 an anonymous group of people established a website announcing the formation of an organization they called Canary Mission. They began posting photos of college student activists working on behalf of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, along with brief accounts of their activities. They described the website as a database “created to document the people and groups that are promoting hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on college campuses in North America.” A smaller number of pro-BDS faculty were also documented on the site. From about 50 dossiers in the spring, the site grew to 150 by fall 2015. Canary Mission also began tweeting notices about BDS advocacy and organizing, along with tweets about the people the site was highlighting. As of mid-October 2016, there are 63 faculty members and 602 “individuals,” mostly students, identified on the site.
The purpose behind the large student database, it is clear, is not merely documentation. The introductory video on the Canary Mission website concludes with a call to action based on the organization’s mission. It fills the screen in capital letters: ensure that today’s radicals are not tomorrow’s employees. The video details a series of claims and warnings:
The canary in the coal mine has long been a metaphor for the persecution of a minority that subsequently spreads to the general populace. Today college campuses are filled with anti-Semitic and anti-American radicals waving Palestinian flags and placards and screaming “Apartheid” and “Murderer.” A few years later these individuals are applying for jobs within your company. There’s no record of their membership of [sic] radical organizations. No one remembers their yelling profanities on campus or attending Jew-hating conferences and anti-American rallies. All evidence has been eradicated, and soon they will be part of your team. We are Canary Mission, an organization dedicated to documenting these acts of hate, exposing them, and holding these individuals accountable.