California Scholars for Academic Freedom Letter in Support of Arab American Studies and Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum in California

California Scholars for Academic Freedom Letter in Support of Arab American Studies and Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum in California

California Scholars for Academic Freedom Letter in Support of Arab American Studies and Model Ethnic Studies Curriculum in California

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following letter was produced by California Scholars for Academic Freedom to express support for the California Ethnic Studies Model Cirriculum which has recently come under attack by the California Department of Education.]

July 5, 2020
California Department of Education
1430 N Street
Sacramento, CA 95814-5901

Dear California Department of Education:

We write on behalf of the California Scholars for Academic Freedom with regard to the attacks on the California Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) draft. California Scholars for Academic Freedom is a group of over 200 scholars throughout California committed to fighting all forms of racism, xenophobia, and antisemitism.[1] We are scholars, teachers, researchers, and organizers. Many of us are housed in Ethnic Studies departments across California’s campuses. We are committed to the critical study of race and ethnicity not only on our own campuses, but also in K-12 classrooms, as the histories of race, colonialism, and empire within U.S. borders and within its imperial reach are necessary for all of us to collectively understand the inequalities of the present moment. Additionally, research has shown that the kind of culturally relevant and meaningful curriculum that critical ethnic studies provides empowers students to be more engaged in school and thus more likely to graduate.[2]

We unequivocally support the inclusion of Arab American Studies in the ESMC. The current draft includes Arab American Studies under the rubric of Asian American studies, one of the four recognized mainstays of ethnic studies as a field formation. The National Board of Directors of the Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS) has publicly applauded this inclusion. While Arab American Studies is indeed its own field, with categories that include Arab American, Arab, Muslim, Muslim American, South West Asian, North African, and Middle Eastern, AAAS’s letter of support shows that Arab American studies has also long been part of Asian American studies as a field. In addition to shared frameworks, methods, and topics across Indigenous, African, African American, Jewish American, Latinx, and critical American Studies, Arab American studies and Asian American studies have long shared both overlapping geographies and a dialogue about racialized surveillance and the afterlife of war. Central to Asian American studies is the study of war, diaspora, exile, and militarization; and central to Arab American studies is the study of militarism, empire, pre- and post-9/11/2001 Islamophobia, and the shared and unequally distributed effects of the “war on terror.” For these reasons, the AAAS Board of Directors has reiterated their support for the ESMC.

The January 2020 AAAS letter was drafted in response to the attacks on the ESMC launched by groups that describe themselves as civil rights organizations but are far from advocating for justice-centered knowledge production. In fact, these groups are explicitly right-wing pro-Israel groups, often racist, and with organizing mandates to silence Palestinian voices on U.S. campuses. In a letter to the Department of Education titled “83 Organizations Urge Safeguards Against Political Indoctrination in ESMC,” the authors express their alarm that California students would be required to take ethnic studies courses, falsely accusing the ESMC of antisemitism because of its inclusion of Arab American Studies and for highlighting Palestinian histories and narratives that have been erased in the curriculum. This letter claims that the proposed ESMC is equivalent to political indoctrination on Palestine. In fact, the current K-12 curriculum is already politicized to delegitimize Palestinian histories and narratives. As Beshara Kehdi rightly asserts, the Arab American studies curriculum in ESMC introduces diverse histories of Arab American experiences, including those of Palestinian Americans. Kehdi notes that, in the existing History- Social Science framework that is currently taught in California public schools, Arabs are portrayed in a racist manner: as warring, patriarchal, and homogenous relics of history and/or Cold War and post- 9/11/2001 terrorists “exacerbating the West’s relative decline.”

In the current curriculum for K-12 students, Palestinians are only mentioned twice: as refugees, with no mention of why they became refugees, and as associated with “the recurrent use of terrorism.” Israeli occupation and Israeli settlements are not mentioned; nor is U.S. foreign policy or the U.S. financial and military aid that sustains Israeli state practice. The Nakba, or catastrophe, that resulted from Zionist paramilitary forces planned and executed expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, which explains how most Palestinians became refugees, is absent from the current textbooks. Likewise, solidarities between Palestinians and other colonized and racially marginalized groups – a central part of the history of ethnic studies – is missing from the current K-12 curriculum. Here, the ESMC is far from politicizing a politically neutral curriculum; it is providing an historical corrective to the simultaneous absence and caricature of Arab Americans, Palestinians included, that already exists in the curriculum.

Equally concerning is this letter’s characterization of these 83 organizations as civil rights organizations. The signatories include, among others, the AMCHA Initiative, the Zionist Organization of America, Hasbara Fellowships, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, American Jewish Committee, and the Lawfare Project. Each of these groups has actively sought to silence scholars, students, and public intellectuals who research, teach, and advocate for justice in and for Palestine as part of the indivisibility of justice. The AMCHA Initiative, is, in fact, well known for harassing Palestinian students, attacking and falsely accusing Palestinian professors of antisemitism and terrorism, and otherwise working to silence Palestinian perspectives on California campuses. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, Executive Director and co- founder of AMCHA, has a long history of racism on California campuses, particularly in the Bay Area. Benjamin has long demonized Muslim student groups and falsely labeled Students for Justice in Palestine as a terrorist organization. Benjamin has launched smear campaigns against professors who support Palestinian rights. The Zionist Organization of America and Hasbara Fellowships fund trips to Israel that encourage youth groups to support the occupation, see colonial settlements as legitimate, and smear Jewish groups that oppose the occupation as traitors. The Zionist Organization of America has even launched campaigns against children’s books that center Palestine and Palestinians. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, whose Museum of Tolerance was built atop the ruins of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, has habitually launched attacks on Palestine solidarity networks, including campaigns against Palestinian Christians organizing against the occupation of their land. Lastly, The Lawfare Project denies the existence of Palestinians and routinely attempts to blacklist and intimidate Palestine solidarity activists and students. And these are only 5 organizations of the 83 listed.[3]

Mainstream newspapers, like the San Francisco Chronicle, have provided a platform for the racist agenda of AMCHA and Rossman-Benjamin, underlining the need for the critical perspective of the ESMC. In an open editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle, Benjamin distorted the inclusion of Palestinian history by referring to it as “highly controversial” and legitimized the false equation between anti-Zionism, the opposition to a colonial apparatus and a political ideology, and antisemitism, a discourse of ethnic-racial superiority that must be vehemently rejected by advocates for justice in/for Palestine. This conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been roundly debunked by leading scholars in the fields of Jewish studies, philosophy, and critical theory and, most recently, decried by the Jews of Color Sephardi/Mizrahi Caucus (JOCSM), in partnership with Jewish Voice for Peace, in response to the statement released by Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA). In their response, Caucus members Michal David and Shahar Zaken argue that “Conflating the various moral, political, and religious positions of anti-Zionism with antisemitism – born in Christian Europe, and modernized and secularized through Western race science – is not only incorrect, but also reduces our ability to combat true antisemitism, which is intrinsically connected to white supremacy.” Ethnic studies curricula, like that proposed in the ESMC, in combination with broad learning in fields of history and social studies, provide tools and methods through which students can recognize and resist racialized violence caused by racism and antisemitism.

We note that this letter is not the first time these actors, and groups affiliated with them, have attacked Ethnic Studies departments and programs that center Arab American studies in their curriculum; Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Studies (AMED) at San Francisco State University has long faced campaigns launched by AMCHA that attempted to discredit its work. In October 2018, a federal judge permanently dismissed a 2017 lawsuit filed by The Lawfare Project against both Professor Rabab Abdulhadi of AMED and SFSU that attempted to compel the university to restrict the freedom of speech and academic freedom of students and faculty who support Palestinian freedom. And, as recently as October 2019, StandWithUs, another right-wing pro-Israel group, launched an additional campaign against Dr. Abdulhadi for her lecture in UCLA Professor Kyeyoung Park’s class on race and racism, an attack that was roundly criticized by twenty groups including Council on American-Islamic Relations, Palestine Legal, Jewish Voice for Peace, National Women’s Studies Association, National Students for Justice in Palestine, National Black Education Agenda, the Asian American Studies Department at SFSU, and ourselves – California Scholars for Academic Freedom, among other civil rights organizations dedicated to ensuring that all individuals are equally able to assert their rights and express their views.

As we have written elsewhere, California Scholars for Academic Freedom firmly believes that criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights is not tantamount to antisemitism.[4] Indeed, labeling Palestine solidarity as antisemitism is an attempt to make it impossible to teach, research, or even to speak about Palestine on university campuses. Such a situation undermines the academic freedom that is vital to higher education. It also diverts attention and resources from serious efforts to combat actual antisemitism.

Ultimately, this appears to be the goal of the Zionist organizations that repeatedly seek to suppress the academic freedom to discuss, teach, and do research on Palestinian rights with false claims of antisemitism: to impede scholarship and activism that addresses the condition of Palestinian people and to condemn scholars and educators who do this work.

For all of these reasons, we urge the California Department of Education to reject the mischaracterizations, threats, and pressures by Israel lobby groups determined to deny California students critical knowledge by seeking to keep ethnic studies, Arab American studies, and the study of Palestinian narratives out of our public schools. As educators, we are committed to and fully supportive of the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum draft. We affirm that Arab American studies is not disposable, that Arab American studies belongs within ethnic studies, and that the study of Palestine and the affirmation of Palestinian rights is not antisemitic.

On behalf of California Scholars for Academic Freedom,

Rabab Abdulhadi
Director and Senior Scholar
Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies San Francisco State University
ria55@sfsu.edu

Walid Afifi
Professor, Department of Communication Director, Center for Middle East Studies Member, Campus Climate Council University of California at Santa Barbara w-afifi@ucsb.edu

Neda Atanasoski
Professor, Feminist Studies Department and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Co-Director, Center for Racial Justice
University of California, Santa Cruz
natanaso@ucsc.edu

Judith Butler
Maxine Elliot Professor
Department of Comparative Literature University of California, Berkeley jpbutler@berkeley.edu

Keith P. Feldman
Associate Professor
Department of Ethnic Studies University of California Berkeley kpfeldman@berkeley.edu

Sondra Hale
Professor Emerita
Departments of Anthropology and Gender Studies University of California, Los Angeles Sonhale@ucla.edu

Mahmood Ibrahim
Professor, History Department
California State Polytechnic University Pomona mibrahim@cpp.edu

Robin D. G. Kelley
Distinguished Professor and Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History University of California, Los Angeles
rdkelley@history.ucla.edu

Dennis Kortheuer
Department of History, Emeritus California State University, Long Beach dkortheu@gmail.com

Kyeyoung Park
Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies University of California, Los Angeles kpark@anthro.ucla.edu

David Pellow
Department Chair, Professor, and Dehlsen Chair, Environmental Studies Program Director, Global Environmental Justice Project
University of California, Santa Barbara
pellow@es.ucsb.edu

Dylan Rodríguez
President-Elect, American Studies Association
Chair of the Academic Senate
Professor, Department of Media and Cultural Studies University of California at Riverside Dylan.rodriguez@ucr.edu

Lisa Rofel
Professor Emerita and Research Professor Department of Anthropology
University of California, Santa Cruz LROFEL@ucsc.edu

Vida Samiian
Visiting Researcher, Linguistics, UCLA Professor of Linguistics and Dean Emerita Former Director of Middle East Studies Program College of Arts and Humanities
California State University, Fresno vidas@mail.fresnostate.edu

Setsu Shigematsu
Associate Professor
Department of Media and Cultural Studies University of California, Riverside setsu.shigematsu@ucr.edu

Susan Slyomovics
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Near Eastern Languages & Cultures University of California, Los Angeles
ssly@anthro.ucla.edu



[1] California Scholars for Academic Freedom is a group of scholars committed to academic freedom and rights to education of faculty and students not only in California and the United States but internationally as well. We recognize that violations of academic freedom anywhere are threats to academic freedom everywhere. CS4AF investigates legislative and administrative infringements on freedom of speech and assembly, and it raises the consciousness of politicians, university regents and administrators, faculty, students, and the public at large through open letters, press releases, petitions, statements, and articles.

[2] See FAQ, Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, California Department of Education.

[3] For a comprehensive analysis of the attacks launched by these organizations, see Palestine Legal, “The Palestine Exception” and International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, “The Business of Backlash.”

[4] See our February 2020 letter to Andrew Hamilton, President, NYU re: the investigation of New York University launched in November 2019 by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

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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