CUNY Community Statement: Support Our Palestinian Colleagues, Reject Israeli Measures Against Academic Freedom

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Apr 25, 2022 Palestine
CUNY Community Statement: Support Our Palestinian Colleagues, Reject Israeli Measures Against Academic Freedom

CUNY Community Statement: Support Our Palestinian Colleagues, Reject Israeli Measures Against Academic Freedom

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following statement was issued by CUNY for Palestine and Cross CUNY Working Group Against Racism and Colonialism on 15 April 2022. Individuals and groups can endorse the statement here.]

We, as members of the City University of New York community, express our strong opposition to Israel’s most recent attempt to restrict Palestinian rights to education and to undermine the academic freedom and autonomy of Palestinian institutions of higher education. A new Israeli military order scheduled to take effect in May 2022, “Procedure for Entry and Residency of Foreigners in Judea and Samaria Region,” places Palestinian universities further under siege as it divests them of basic control over determining the needs and visions of their academic institutions. We understand this latest assault on Palestinian rights to education and academic freedom to be embedded in the broader project of settler colonialism that has targeted Palestinian identity, land, life, and sovereignty in a myriad of ways. 

This law grants the Israeli military absolute power to select which international faculty, academic researchers, and students can be admitted to teach or study at Palestinian universities. Under the directive, Israeli military officials determine the criteria for which international researchers may be granted visas; which academic disciplines international faculty may be hired in; and which fields of study are permissible for international students. Only academics that an Israeli military official considers to be “accomplished” and who will contribute to “regional cooperation and peace” according to Israeli military officials will be granted visas. Quotas are placed on the number of internationals in Palestinian universities (100 for faculty and 150 for students, per year), and large financial bonds may be imposed as a condition for obtaining a visa. The duration of employment for international professors is limited to 5 non-consecutive years (with a requirement to leave for at least 9 months within those 5 years).  

“Foreigners” affected by this law include Palestinians whose residency rights have not been recognized by Israel. Many Palestinian students, faculty, and academic researchers currently working and studying in Palestinian universities will thus be immediately affected by this directive; some may lose their jobs and their access to education, and will be forced to uproot their lives.

We declare our support for thecall to action issued by Birzeit University, and our intent to stand in solidarity with our Palestinian colleagues “to defend the Palestinian people’s right to education, free from duress, intervention, and political persecution.” We encourage everyone committed to educational and social justice to join us in heeding their call to “Work with us to break the siege that these regulations impose on Birzeit and other Palestinian universities. Accept our invitation to teach and learn in Palestine. Help us exercise our basic right to education and to preserve the institutional autonomy that we built over the decades despite all obstacles.” 

At the heart of this new directive is the settler colonial drive of Indigenous erasure, as reflected in its use of “Judea and Samaria” in place of Palestine, or even the West Bank, in the title. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated under international law to refrain from impeding or harming Palestinian educational development. We call on Israel to abide by international law to both protect and facilitate the functioning of Palestinian civil institutions, including higher education. We urge Israeli authorities to repeal this destructive policy and instead adopt and implement a clearly documented and transparent policy enabling full access and presence to foreign nationals intending to work, study, or educate students at Palestinian universities in the occupied Palestinian territories. This is the bare minimum needed to ensure Palestinians’ right to education, and to secure for our Palestinian colleagues the forms of academic freedom that we so value for ourselves. 

With little faith in Israel as an occupying power to uphold its obligations under international law, we call on CUNY, together with other US universities, to join us in our demands that Israel 1) repeal the new “Procedure for Entry and Residency of Foreigners;” 2) end its restrictions on entry based on political speech and Palestinian heritage; and 3) adopt policies granting visas for exchanges and work permits to Palestinian universities that are  fully equalitable with those applied to Israeli universities. These demands are linked to our broader call on CUNY to endorse the Palestinian-led call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), including the boycott of Israeli cultural and academic institutions. Specifically, and as part of our broader support for implementing BDS at CUNY, we demand that CUNY suspend allstudy abroad programs in Israel and other forms of institutional collaboration with Israeli institutions, as well as divest from contracts with all companies that aid in or profit from Israeli colonization, occupation, and war crimes.[1]

We condemn Israel’s ongoing efforts to limit Palestinians’ academic freedom and join our Palestinian colleagues in asserting the right to education with dignity and autonomy. As our colleagues at Birzeit write, “This moment is dangerous for the future of Palestinian higher education, but it is also a moment to join together for justice, freedom, and equality. Palestinian universities, like all universities, are places of knowledge production that connect scholars and students across the globe and inspire them to imagine and build a better future for all.”

We invite individuals and organizations to endorse this statement. To endorse, please click here.

Want to do more? Please read and sign on to the “CUNY Community Statement of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.”

Signatories 


Organizations:

U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI)

ICAHD-USA

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network

Bayonet Records

Academics for Palestine - Concordia University

Jews for Palestinian Right of Return

Labor for Palestine

Green Mountain Solidarity With Palestine

Jewish Voice for Peace

Ithaca CJP/JVP

Northern New Jersey Jewish Voice for Peace

Palestine Solidarity Alliance of Hunter College
 

Individuals:

Anthony Alessandrini, CUNY Faculty 

Christopher Stone, CUNY Faculty

thayer hastings, CUNY PhD Worker

Corinna Mullin, CUNY Faculty

Elizabeth Oram, CUNY Faculty

Naomi Schiller, CUNY Faculty

Alex Wolf, CUNY Faculty

Stuart Chen-Hayes, CUNY Faculty

Thomas Volscho, CUNY Faculty

Satish Kolluri, Pace University Faculty

Sofya Aptekar, CUNY Faculty

Sarah Schulman, CUNY Faculty

Nic Nicoludis, CUNY Faculty

Ozlem Goner, CUNY Faculty

Jean Halley, CUNY Faculty

Jeremy Randall, CUNY Grad Student

Fatima Tariq, CUNY Faculty

Jeannette Graulau, CUNY Faculty 

Dana Francisco Miranda, U Mass Faculty

Tami Kashia Gold, CUNY Faculty 

Jane Guskin,  CUNY Faculty 

Christopher Santiago, CUNY Faculty 

Britt Munro, CUNY Grad Student and Graduate Teaching Fellow

Kylie Broderick, UNC Chapel Hill Graduate Student Worker

Gerry Martini, CUNY Staff

Bruce Robbins, Columbia University Faculty

Susan Buck-Morss, CUNY Faculty 

Benjamin Krusling, CUNY Grad Student

Oscar Aponte, CUNY Grad Student

Matthew Martin, CUNY

Janan Shouhayib, CUNY Grad Student

Zoe Griffith, CUNY Faculty

Hilarie Ashton, CUNY Grad Student

Patricia E Cipollitti Rodríguez, CUNY Grad Student

Ammiel Alcalay, CUNY Faculty

Sam Friedman, AIDS researcher; poet; socialist

Eric Dean Wilson, CUNY Grad Student

Elizabeth Bidwell Goetz,  CUNY Faculty 

Morgan Richards-Melamdir, CUNY Grad Student

Sheehan Moore, CUNY Grad Student

Martin Aagaard Jensen, CUNY Grad Student

Frank E. Deale, CUNY Faculty

Trude Bennett, UNC Chapel Hill Faculty, emerita

Jodi Lynn Melamed, non-CUNY Faculty

Jonathan Shannon, CUNY Faculty

Michael Druffel, CUNY Faculty

Marta Guttenberg, non-CUNY supporter

Flora de Tournay, CUNY Doctoral Fellow

Allyson Ganster, CUNY Grad Student

Robert L Herbst, Herbst Law PLLC; ICAHD-USA, JVP

Petra Gregory, CUNY

Jeff Voss, CUNY Grad Student

Laura Kaplan, CUNY Alumna

Rupal Oza, CUNY Faculty

Zoe Goldstein, CUNY Grad Student

Douglas Medina, CUNY Grad Student and Staff

Terri Ginsberg, non-CUNY Faculty

Marge Sussman, CUNY Alumna

Bill Leavitt, Attorney

Deirdre Silverman, CUNY Alumna

Lana Savoca, JVP

Jini Watson, NYU Faculty 

Colette Gerstmann, CUNY Grad Student

Michael Letwin, Former President, Association of Legal Aid Attorneys/UAW2325

Kimberly Stoddard

Sarah Meister, CUNY Alumna

Subramanian Shankar, non-CUNY Faculty

susie day, Monthly Review Press editor

Gerald Hassett

inma naima zanoguera, CUNY Grad Student

Shatzi Weisberger 

Beth Harris, non-CUNY Faculty, emerita

Elena hollemon

Eve Hershcopf

carol sanders

David L Mandel, Human rights attorney; member, Jewish Voice for Peace

Jesse Schwartz, CUNY Faculty

Tiana Reid, Postdoctoral Associate, Brown University

Joan Meisel

pat westwater-jong, photo journalist/retired

David Bragin, Jewish Voice for Peace

Cynthia Franklin, University of Hawai’i Faculty

Sara Driscoll

Nicholas Glastonbury, CUNY Grad Student

Deeadra Brown, CUNY Faculty

Robert Nowak, Jewish Voice for Peace

Aparajita De, ex-CUNY Faculty

Barbara H. Chasin, CUNY Alumnus and Faculty Montclair State University, Emerita

Ana Celia Zentella, CUNY Faculty, Emerita

Anna Bernard, King's College London Faculty

Colleen Pearce, educator

James Hession, CUNY Faculty

Irene Gendzier, Boston University Faculty, Emerita

Alexandra Raskin, Professional Developer - NYC Department of Education

Katherine Wilson, CUNY Faculty

Aseel Sawalha, CUNY Alumna

Jillian Schwedler, CUNY Faculty

Ellen Brotsky

Başak Ertür, Birkbeck and University of London Faculty

______________________________ 

[1] Institutional collaboration between CUNY and Israeli institutions currently includes: the Ginsburg-Ingerman Overseas Student Exchange Program, an exchange program between City College and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; the BC Program Study in Israel (PSI), administered through Brooklyn College; the Queens College Ben-Gurion University of Negev Semester Abroad Fellowship; and a summer exchange program administered by Hunter College. Additionally, Baruch College, Brooklyn College, City College, Hunter College, Queens College, and the College of Staten Island have all received grant funding from US-Israel Binational Foundations, designed to “promote scientific relations between the U.S. and Israel by supporting collaborative research projects.” As of 2014, CUNY had invested at least $1,093,900 in weapons manufacturers such as Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon; tech and security companies such as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, G4S, and Motorola Solutions; and construction firms such as Caterpillar and Cemex.

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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