UCLA Student Groups Respond to Chancellor's Defense of External Groups Lobbying Student Government

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May 17, 2014
UCLA Student Groups Respond to Chancellor's Defense of External Groups Lobbying Student Government

UCLA Student Groups Respond to Chancellor's Defense of External Groups Lobbying Student Government

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following letter was issued by Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Armenian Student Association at UCLA on 17 May 2014 in response to UCLA Chancellor Gene Block`s recent letter to the UCLA campus. In that letter, the chancellor defended the practice of student government representives accepting in-kind gifts from external groups (e.g., the Anti-Defamation League) with a proven record of Islamaphobic and ant-Arab speech. Chancellor Block`s original letter is reproduced below for refeerence.]

Response to Chancellor Gene D. Block`s "Message on the Importance of Civil Discourse"

We, the undersigned student groups, have taken it upon ourselves to respond directly to the email you recently sent out to the entirety of the campus community. While we appreciate your recognition that drafting and distributing the “Joint Statement on USAC Ethics” falls within the realm of free-speech, we take issue with the fact that the rest of the email is effectively an indictment of the statement that promotes an inaccurate impression of its message and intent.

You write that “just because speech is constitutionally protected doesn`t mean that it is wise, fair or productive,” and then go on to add that you are “troubled that the pledge sought to delegitimize educational trips offered by some organizations but not others,” and that the statement “can reasonably be seen as trying to eliminate selected viewpoints from the discussion."  These claims imply that the point of the statement was to delegitimize groups based on national and/or religious identification, or to attack students who have a certain stance on political issues. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The ethics statement is about holding student leaders accountable. It is about calling on them to become cognizant of their role as representatives for the general student body by disallowing their neutrality to be compromised by gifts and allegiances to off-campus groups, and to realize that their affiliation with the organizations in question is hurtful to various campus communities.   

We are pleased that your message showed sensitivity to the experiences of students on campus, but we cannot help but note the silence in regards to the anti-Arab and Islamophobic speech being promoted by the very groups in question.

While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, Islamophobia is hateful and discriminatory, and it is beyond disheartening for us to have to defend our attempts to remind student leaders why their connection to organizations that host Islamophobic speakers and promote and distribute Islamophobic material marginalizes individuals of UCLA’s Muslim community. Additionally, these groups’ ties to anti-Armenian organizations, active roles in lobbying against US recognition of the Armenian genocide, as well as various other human rights violations alienate Afrikan, Armenian and Palestinian students.  

Furthermore, we are saddened to see that despite the efforts of groups such as SJP and MSA to raise concerns about the hate-speech, threats and intimidation they have experienced on campus, it is only protecting the integrity of off-campus lobbying groups that warrants this type of intervention. This latest development seems the most recent manifestation of the very issue to which we have been attempting to call attention: that off-campus groups with a particular ideological agenda are exerting an unhealthy influence on campus affairs.

If you truly believe that discourse should remain civil, inclusive, and respectful even when disagreements are present, then surely you will take these concerns into account and realize why it is problematic to issue a message upholding the rights of student leaders to receive benefits from organizations tied to Islamophobia and other practices that marginalize various campus communities. If you truly believe that everyone’s belief, opinion and identity should be respected, then you will understand why it is disingenuous to admonish others for their rightful criticism of student leaders’ connections to such groups and remain silent about these groups’ discriminatory practices. If you truly believe in keeping our campus community as open and democratic as possible, you will understand why holding our student leaders accountable for their actions by ensuring their conduct remains unswayed by the influence of off-campus organizations is integral to the preservation of a just and transparent student government.

Finally, while your message claimed that the ethics statement singled out particular views and groups, in fact the statement called on student leaders not to accept free or sponsored trips from any organizations that marginalize campus communities, whether the organization discriminates on the basis of race, religion, color, age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, physical ability, mental ability, marital status, financial status or social status, or engage in any other form of systematic prejudiced oppression. We would think this is a sentiment anyone honestly dedicated to fair and equal treatment should be able to get behind, and we find it unfortunate that your email presents the statement as an attempt to discriminate against others when its purpose was to promote the diminishment of discrimination by demanding more tolerant and respectful practices on behalf of our student government.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA
Jewish Voice for Peace at UCLA
Afrikan Student Union at UCLA
Black Pre-Law Association at UCLA
United Arab Society
Armenian Student Association
Muslim Students Association
MeChA de UCLA

 

Letter from UCLA Chancellor Gene Block Sent to UCLA Students on 16 May 2014

Subject: A Message from Chancellor Block on the Importance of Civil Discourse

 

To the Campus Community:

Over the past week, many of our students, as well as friends off campus, have communicated their concerns over a pledge that candidates for our student government were asked to sign prior to last week’s elections. Heated exchanges have occurred over the issue and have unfortunately left some feeling disrespected or targeted because of their views or affiliations. Certain news reports and other communications through social media have also mischaracterized aspects of the situation, fueling an unhealthy discourse that is harmful to our campus climate. Robust debate is vital to democratic learning, but it can never exclude common sense, civility and tolerance for those who disagree.

First, let me set the record straight on the facts, as we understand them: Students active in student government, who have varying views on Israel–Palestine issues, have participated in the recent past in free trips to the Middle East organized by Jewish groups. Prior to the recent student elections, some student groups asked candidates to sign a pledge promising not to go on such trips. The pledge was not sanctioned, proposed or required by our current student government or the university administration. No one was barred from running for office, participating in the election or serving on the council as a result of not signing the pledge. Some students signed, others did not. Both signatories and non-signatories won offices. The decision to circulate this pledge and the choice to sign it or not fall squarely within the realm of free speech, and free speech is sacrosanct to any university campus.

Second, just because speech is constitutionally protected doesn’t mean that it is wise, fair or productive. I am troubled that the pledge sought to delegitimize educational trips offered by some organizations but not others. I am troubled that the pledge can reasonably be seen as trying to eliminate selected viewpoints from the discussion. I condemn any remarks on social media or elsewhere that are disrespectful or hurtful.

Political speech that stigmatizes or casts aspersions on individuals or particular groups does not promote healthy debate but debases it by trying to intimidate individuals and groups. It does not strengthen the bonds of mutual respect and engagement that sustain a diverse community able to manage differences; it weakens them. If we shut out perspectives, if we silence voices, if we allow innuendo to substitute for reasoned exchange of ideas, if we listen only to those who already share our assumptions, truth gets lost, our intellectual climate is impoverished and our community is diminished.

Passionate debate is to be expected in a civil society, especially in a heated election season, but I am personally concerned any time people feel disrespected, intimidated or unfairly singled out because of their beliefs. Important issues will generate passions, even discomfort — that cannot be avoided. But if the political debate on campus gets more shrill and less nuanced, if hostility replaces empathy, if we see each other as enemies rather than as colleagues trying to figure out how to do the right thing in difficult circumstances, we will all be the lesser for it. It is possible to express strong opinions without belittling others.

Today I am calling on our Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs to explore how to better foster political dialogue that is respectful, productive and focused on understanding rather than division. UCLA faculty, students and staff deserve an open environment that encourages vigorous debate without disparagement.

Sincerely,

Gene D. Block

Chancellor

 

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Jadaliyya Reports By :
Jadaliyya Reports

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