Letter from Faculty Union at CUNY in Support of Brooklyn College Israel Forum

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Letter from Faculty Union at CUNY in Support of Brooklyn College Israel Forum

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following letter was issued by the CUNY Faculty Union on 5 February 2013.]

Congressman Jerrold Nadler
Congresswoman Yvette Clarke
Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez
Congressman Hakeem Jeffries
NY City Council Speaker Christine Quinn
NY City Comptroller John Liu 
NY City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz
NY State Senator Kevin Parker
NY State Senator Daniel Squadron
NY State Assemblywoman Rhoda Jacobs
NY State Assemblyman Karim Camara
NY State Assemblyman James Brennan
NY State Assemblywoman Joan Millman
NY State Assemblyman Walter Mosley
NY City Councilman Brad Lander
NY City Councilman Stephen Levin
Mr. William Thompson

Dear Elected Officials:

I write as president of the union that represents the faculty and professional staff at the City University of New York—a union whose collective bargaining agreement begins with a commitment to academic freedom. On behalf of the 25,000 professors and staff in the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY, I call on you to retract your call for the Brooklyn College Political Science Department to withdraw its co-sponsorship (which you mis-label “endorsement”) of the forum on Israel scheduled at the College for February 7.  

Your letter attempts to veil a direct challenge to academic freedom as a defense of academic freedom.  Academic freedom, as defined in the most influential statement of the principle, is “the indispensable quality of institutions of higher education. . . . [It is] the free search for truth and its free exposition.” Academic freedom is not “balance”; it is not the requirement that departments support only forums that advocate equally strongly for two “sides,” as you misleadingly put it, of an issue; it is not a requirement that departments insist that student organizers accept “legitimate offers from prominent individuals willing to simultaneously present an alternative view.” Would you demand that a forum on evolution accept an offer from “a prominent individual” to argue for creationism? Would you write a letter insisting that a forum organized by the NRA include an advocate for gun control?  

Academic freedom is precisely the freedom to express a position even when that position is deeply unpopular. By voting to co-sponsor a forum that is expected to advocate for policies that have engendered intense opposition (such as the proposal that Israeli universities be boycotted—a position the PSC is on record as opposing), the Political Science Department is exercising academic freedom and supporting free speech. Neither the College nor the Department has done anything to prevent the organizing of forums expressing opposing points of view. Most dangerous of your distortions is the demand that Brooklyn College “must stand firmly” against the decision of its Political Science Department. It is not clear what is meant by that demand, but any action against the faculty for their exercise of academic freedom would be an assault on the University as a whole and a violation of the contract with the union. The demand should be immediately retracted.

The strategy of your letter is to conflate the views of individual speakers with the views of the Department or the College. You worry that by co-sponsoring the forum, the Department sends “the message . . . to the world that the divisive perspective offered by the organizing groups is Brooklyn College’s official view.”  You suggest, outrageously, that by allowing the forum to be held, the College has decided to “take sides and [refused] to permit all voices to be heard.” The College has done nothing of the kind. In her letter to the Brooklyn College community on January 28, 2013, President Karen L. Gould explicitly refutes the conflation you make:

Unfortunately, some may believe that our steadfast commitment to free speech signals an institutional endorsement of a particular point of view.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Brooklyn College does not endorse the views of the speakers visiting our campus next week, just as it has not endorsed those of previous visitors to our campus with opposing views.

A college president who stands up for academic freedom at CUNY—where academic freedom has come under repeated assault in recent years—should be applauded by “progressive” politicians, not bullied.  We appreciate that many of you have spoken up in the past for resources for CUNY, but the progressive position would be to defend academic freedom at the City University, and defend it fiercely.  Progressive elected officials would insist, as the PSC does, that  CUNY students, no less than students at elite private universities, are entitled to a university where “the indispensable quality of  institutions of higher education”—academic freedom—is maintained.  We invite you to join us in that position; we call on you immediately to withdraw the demands of your letter and to communicate to the Brooklyn College community your support for President Gould`s position.

Yours sincerely,

Dr. Barbara Bowen
President, Professional Staff Congress/CUNY

CC:    
Dr. Karen L. Gould, President, Brooklyn College
Dr. Matthew Goldstein, Chancellor, City University of New York
Dr. Paisley Currah, Chairperson, Political Science Department, Brooklyn College
Dr. Rudy Fichtenbaum, President, American Association of University Professors
Professional Staff Congress/CUNY

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412