Petition Against Firing of Barbara Van Dyck (Catholic University of Leuven)

[Barbara Van Dyck. Image from www.kuleuven.be] [Barbara Van Dyck. Image from www.kuleuven.be]

Petition Against Firing of Barbara Van Dyck (Catholic University of Leuven)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following petition has been circulating on various academic listserves. Click here to sign the petition.]

On Friday June 3th 2011, the Catholic University of Leuven sacked researcher Barbara Van Dyck because of her public support for the actions of Field Liberation Movement (FLM) in the context of an action against a genetically modified potato field in Wetteren, Belgium on Sunday May 29th. Whether one agrees with the aim and tactic of this action or not, the sanction is disproportionate and a breach of academic freedom and freedom of speech. We appeal to academics worldwide to resist this dismissal and to sign this open letter.

The Petition:

No dismissal for reseacher Barbara Van Dyck!

On Friday June 3th we learned that Barbara Van Dyck was sacked because of her solidarity with the activists of the Field Liberation Movement in the context of an action against a test field with Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), in this case potatoes, in Wetteren on May 29th. We are shocked by this sanction, because it is disproportionate and a breach of labour law and the principle of academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Barbara Van Dyck participated in the action in Wetteren during her private time (on a Sunday) and not during service. Moreover she is not discharged for committed actions or trespassing, but because of her solidarity with the activists and her public support for their actions. We question the reasons of the University to dismiss her.

With this disproportionate sanction, which boils down to Berufsverbot, the University breaches one of the core values that are central in her own mission statements: academic freedom. We like to remind the authorities that academic freedom does not only imply the possibility to do independent research, but also the individual freedom of the academic to ‘take a critical stance towards certain tendencies or parts of society. This individual freedom is the corner stone of our academic identity’ (rector speech opening academic year 2003[i]). A similar reasoning we find in the UNESCO recommendations, par. 26: ‘all higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy freedom of thought, conscience (…) They should not be hindered or impeded in exercising their civil rights as citizens, including the right to contribute to social change through freely expressing their opinion (…). They should not suffer any penalties simply because of the exercise of such rights.’[ii]

Moreover the university breaches the democratic basic right that is foundational to our society: freedom of speech. By discharging a researcher for her sympathies with this action, the K.U/Leuven inscribes itself in a new climate of criminalisation of activism and even the criminalisation of sympathy for activism. She is sanctioned for her open sympathies and solidarity with the Field Liberation front, not for her deeds.

One has not to agree with the target and tactics of the action to recognize its broader social relevance: what is socially just and ecologically sustainable agriculture? Which role gmo’s play in this and how do we spread research finances in a equitable way over different options? The narrowing down of this action as a deed of violence, shifts the attention from a most necessary social debate. The presence of scientists in both camps proves that also within the scientific community there is no consensus on the necessity and value of gmo’s.

We call on the university authorities to keep its trust in critical reflection and the social commitment of its researchers. We request this dismissal to be withdrawn. We call upon the personnel of the KULeuven and the international academic community tot protest against this discharge. This case has ramifications that surpass the individual case of Barbara Van Dijck, as it is about the future of science (and its link with industry), the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech.


[i] Rector Oosterlinck Opening speech 2003-2004
[ii] Recommendation concerning the Status of Higher-Education Teaching Personnel, UNESCO, 11/11/97

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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