Any honest freelance journalist will admit that rejection is simply part of the job. Every story pitch is basically a swing at bat in which the odds of striking out may be higher or lower but are always present. Sometimes the story’s been done, sometimes it’s just too weak — and sometimes it ruffles the feathers of the publisher who is under investigation by the United States Department of Education (DOE) over allegations of supposed antisemitism.
That last circumstance recently happened to me. While it may sound rare, the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights currently has dozens of such investigations, which are effectively stifling criticism of Israel at schools across the U.S.
The Smart Set is an online publication covering arts and culture published by Pennoni Honors College at Drexel University. I have been contributing to The Smart Set on and off since 2019, writing about everything from growing meat in test tubes to the politics of W.E.B. Du Bois, but focusing primarily on books.
In that vein, and in light of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, my most recent story for The Smart Set was about George Orwell’s perspective on colonization — that it dehumanizes the colonizer, as well as the colonized — and how that perspective endures in journalist Sylvain Cypel’s book, The State of Israel vs. the Jews. After initial interest from The Smart Set’s managing editor, Erica Levi Zelinger, my draft was summarily rejected by the dean of Pennoni Honors College, Paula Marantz Cohen — a first, coming after more than a dozen accepted submissions. By way of explanation, Zelinger directed me to a statement by Drexel’s president regarding an ongoing investigation by the DOE into the university for reported harassment of Jewish students.
Contacted for comment for this article, Drexel denied that there was any connection between the DOE investigation and the rejection of my story.
“[Cohen’s] feeling is not that we can’t publish a piece on the conflict, but that this piece does not present a fair and balanced view of this volatile and complex situation,” said Zelinger, who also serves as director of marketing and media for Pennoni Honors College. “As for the U.S. Department of Education’s investigation into the actions of Drexel University, that has nothing to do with our rejection of the piece and that email was shared with you merely to share a general response from Drexel University.”
Drexel’s denial aside, criticism of Israel being suppressed with allegations of “antisemitism” is so prevalent that it is, ironically, a theme of Cypel’s book: “Israel’s ideological influence has never seemed so visible,” writes Cypel. “It effectively silences its critics by threatening to label them anti-Semitic.”
The episode above would be yet another........