Bowdoin’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion is wrapping up another “season” of its much-publicized “Viewpoint Exchange” series. And it’s been tough to watch.

Let’s be clear: we are not condemning the individual speakers. While we may disagree with some of them, they have a right to speak at Bowdoin, and the Bowdoin community has a right to hear what they have to say. We stand for academic freedom.

But this is precisely why the “Viewpoint Series” has failed. Under the guise of an “exchange,” a college that loves to claim neutrality has taken a political side. And it’s particularly galling that the instrument in this operation is an office created to promote diversity and inclusion.

Denying genocide

The avowed purpose of the series is to facilitate dialogue about controversial topics. The website promises “a campus-wide series on contemporary challenging topics that will include talks and interactive sessions to encourage respectful engagement on issues, including the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.” Given the use of the singular, it’s clear what “conflict” they are alluding to: Gaza.

One would have hoped, then, that this “Viewpoint Exchange” would finally see the College open space for frank discussions around the calamity that is the Gaza genocide, which has ripped apart college campuses and public life across the country—and which is the ultimate reason for this series in the first place.

Yet this series does the opposite. It makes no mention of a genocide that has been recognized and denounced by every major human rights organization in the world (including at least two Israeli human rights organizations), multiple U.N. special rapporteurs and numerous genocide and international law scholars. Nor does it tackle any of the major questions that the genocide has prompted—not least of which is the complicity of U.S. universities and threats to academic freedom.

To pretend to open space for “the ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” and then to ignore the largest moral atrocity in recent history, which is happening in said Middle East, is more than just shameful. It is, in effect, if not intent, genocide denial.

Distorting the issue

The series has not only erased the Israeli state’s genocide; it has willfully distorted the very terms of the debate.

Of the many viewpoints on the Israeli state, there are two major ones. Although they come in many shades, these two can be generalized as follows.

A Zionist viewpoint that defends an explicitly Jewish nation-state in Palestine, which was historically established by dispossessing and ethnically cleansing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, and which continues to elevate Jews over non-Jews. And an anti-Zionist one, which argues that by promoting the supremacy of one group over another, this nation-state is in its essence incompatible with freedom and equality, especially the freedom and equality of the Palestinians whom it has tormented since before its foundation.

The College, however, has replaced this central debate between Zionism and anti-Zionism (in all its many variations) with a more amorphous discussion about Jews and Muslims. Although related, the two pairs are distinct. Zionism is not the same as Jewish people or Judaism. Many Jews are anti-Zionists, and the great majority of Zionists in the world today are not Jewish. As for anti-Zionism, this is not really about Muslims or Islam. It’s about anticolonialism.

Having made this about Jews and Muslims, Bowdoin suggests that the crux of the problem is Islamophobia and antisemitism. These are pressing topics, but replacing Zionism/anti-Zionism with Islamophobia/antisemitism is problematic. It falsely implies that anti-Zionists condemn Israel because of Judaism. In truth, anti-Zionists condemn Israel not because it is a Jewish state but because it is a settler colony whose existence is dependent on inequality, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

As the political scientist Dov Waxman explained in his talk at Bowdoin last year, although anti-Zionism can sometimes become antisemitic, there is no intrinsic relationship between the two terms. To suggest otherwise is to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, which is itself antisemitic. To ascribe a singular political belief to a global diaspora of Jewish people, some of whom are opposed to the Zionist project, is prejudice.

Likewise, Zionism can sometimes become Islamophobic, but there is no intrinsic relationship between them. The Israeli state has murdered so many Palestinians not necessarily because they are Muslim (in fact, many Palestinians are Christian), but because the former is a settler colonial entity and the latter are Indigenous peoples who must be removed and controlled for that colonial entity to exist. Again, the heart of the struggle between Zionism and anti-Zionism is a colonial one.

When Bowdoin reduces Zionism and anti-Zionism to Jews and Muslims, it transforms a fundamentally political question about colonialism into an issue about essentialized religious identity.

Taking a side

It gets worse. In addition to reframing the terms of the debate, Bowdoin has abandoned even the pretense of “balance.”

Of the speakers that might address issues around “the ongoing conflict in the Middle East,” not one is Palestinian—and this at a time when Palestinians are still being murdered by U.S. weapons.

Although one speaker is Muslim, they were invited to speak only about Islam and Islamophobia in America. Bowdoin hasn’t informed us if there will be another installment of this series, but the lineup of “Season Two (2025–2026)” perpetuates the idea that Muslims cannot go beyond this designated topic. They can speak from their lived experience, they can speak about their religion, they can be spoken about (are they antisemitic when they are anti-Zionist?), but they cannot give (or have?) any expertise on colonialism, anticolonialism, international law, geopolitical conflict and certainly not Zionism.

Worst of all, not one of the speakers asked to talk about this key issue is an explicit anti-Zionist. In other words, one of the two major viewpoints in the debate has been eliminated altogether. That this has happened in a series allegedly dedicated to an exchange of viewpoints is damning.

Whereas anti-Zionism is totally absent, Zionism is well-represented. It’s not just that two speakers are overtly Zionist. The College has positioned Zionists as neutral experts above the debate between Zionism and anti-Zionism when they are in actuality participants who have actively taken a side in that very debate. For example, Kenneth Stern, who was invited as an expert on the “Israel/Palestine Campus Debate,” and invited us to overcome “binary thinking,” admits he’s already on one side. As he declared in The Guardian: “I’m a Zionist.” This is the definition of normalization: A partisan of one side speaks as an expert on the terms of the debate while the other side is disappeared.

As we reflect on the “Viewpoint Exchange” series, we cannot help but feel that there is something deeply callous and dangerous about putting together a series under the guise of a “dialogue” about the “Middle East conflict” and then hiding the reality of genocide, distorting the issue into a question of religious identity, failing to invite even one Palestinian and stacking the series with Zionist speakers as a genocide is carried out in the name of Zionism.

For inquiries, please contact bowdoinfsjp@proton.me.

– Bowdoin Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP).

FSJP was founded in 2024.