Academic censorship In 2020, the
University of Toronto Faculty of Law initially withdrew an employment offer to scholar Valentina Azarova following external pressure from a donor related to their work on Palestinian human rights. The rescinding of the offer led to widespread academic protest and boycotts headed by the
Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), eventually leading to the university re-offering employment to Azarova, who declined. hours after its publication of
Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept by
Rabea Eghbariah. The website was reinstated after a 20-5 majority of staff editors voted to strike.|300x300px The term was also used by a
Harvard Law Review editor to describe the retraction of an essay by
Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar
Rabea Eghbariah discussing the use of "
Nakba" as a
legal term, following an intervention by Harvard Law Review president
Apsara Iyer. Eghbariah used the term himself to describe the censorship of
Toward Nakba as a Legal Concept, an expanded version of the HLR essay published in the
Columbia Law Review.
Media Many pro-Palestinian activists cite
western media coverage as demonstrating patterns of the Palestinian exception. Notable examples include different news networks' policies restricting the use of the term "Palestine", such as with the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and
The New York Times. In one incident, CBC
Current guest anchor Duncan McCue was required to issue a
public apology for referring to Palestine during an interview.
FAIR provided two examples from May 2025. In the first instance, it contrasted the
New York Times high-profile coverage of
Greta Thunberg's climate justice activism with its silence about her presence aboard the
June 2025 Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which was aiming "to bring in some aid and raise 'international awareness' over the ongoing
humanitarian crisis". In the second instance, FAIR mentioned that an op-ed by the
New York Times publisher,
A.G. Sulzberger, "decried attacks on the freedom of the press around the world, but omitted that the biggest killer of journalists in the world today is the
Israeli government".
University campus protests Since the onset of the Gaza war, "Palestine exception" was frequently used to describe documented patterns of disproportionate institutional reactions to pro-Palestinian protests compared to other
social justice movements on university campuses. Pro-Palestinian protesters and their allies have criticized the disposition of many university administrations as perpetuating a "Palestine exception" to academic freedom. Pro-Palestinian students and their allies have raised concerns about
anti-Palestinianism and
Islamophobia. Investigations by the
U.S. Department of Education have been opened at Columbia, Emory University, the University of North Carolina, and at Umass Amherst over their administrations' response to student protests and advocacy since the start of the war. A
comparative analysis of different
Harvard University approaches to student protests noted that the administration held measured responses to
anti-Apartheid encampments in 1986,
Occupy Movement encampments and access restrictions in 2011, and
environmental activist blockades in 2015 with minimal punishments for students involved. In contrast to prior temporary disruptions, pro-Palestinian encampments on Harvard campus faced threats of
mass suspensions, stricter enforcement of rules and restrictions, and what was described as a shift away from dialogue and protest as part of academic discourse, necessary to protect academic freedom. Several pro-Palestinian advocates have also described the Harvard administration as implementing the Palestine exception for preventing thirteen undergraduates from collecting their diplomas at the
annual commencement ceremony as a consequence for participation in pro-Palestinian protests. Nearly 500 Harvard faculty and students criticized the sanctions as disproportionate, unprecedented, and designed to stifle open discourse, while others identified it as an example of the "Palestine exception" to free speech. == Responses ==