[The following statement was written by the George Mason University chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine in order to express support for the George Washington University Gaza Solidarity Encampment and condemn the attacks against it.]
George Mason University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine joins our colleagues at other local institutions in voicing our full support of the DMV-area students, including George Mason students, who participated in the George Washington University Gaza Solidarity Encampment. We support them as they courageously continue to exercise their First Amendment rights, protesting against genocide and their nation’s and universities’ complicity in it.
Scholars speaking up for the human rights of Palestinians have faced harassment, threats, doxxing, and other forms of intimidation. The brunt of these have been leveled against students and faculty of color, especially those who are Arab and Muslim. Universities should be spaces of honest, fact-based analysis and discussion, where students can safely challenge systems of oppression and the narratives that legitimize them. Students should be able to, without fear of reprisal, demand that their institutions disclose investments and divest from militarism. At a time when academic freedom is under dire threat, our students risked their safety, careers, and futures to resist the suppression of speech, to center Gaza, and to demand better from the universities that they entrusted with their education and wellbeing. We commend their bravery, applaud their thoughtful commitment, and support their right to press for transparency and divestment.
Those of us who spent time at the encampment saw an organized, dignified, and energizing space of possibility. The GW encampment, like others around the country, was a moving example of nonviolent protest, and we condemn its slander by congressional representatives and university administrators looking to score political points or repress condemnation of Israel’s US-backed, genocidal violence against Palestinian people. In their dissent, students created an inclusive space of free education, food security, medical care, and creativity. They organized teach-ins, prayed, made art, held a Shabbat service, provided the press with daily briefings, and ensured each other’s safety through a practice of non-engagement with anyone who entered the encampment seeking provocation.
While the students remained peaceful and steadfast, politicians and administrators endangered the encampment’s safety through slanderous mischaracterizations of the students and their intentions. Such egregious misrepresentation served as a provocation and an escalation, as it has elsewhere in the country. We condemn in the strongest possible terms GW President Ellen Granberg’s decision to call the MPD on students who were demonstrating peacefully and endangering no one, and we demand that GW reverse its suspension of students for participating in the encampment. We equally condemn the MPD’s treatment of the students at the encampment, sweeping in before dawn, assaulting students with pepper spray, arresting over thirty students, and, according to a student’s testimonial, failing to safely secure in transport the wheelchair of an arrested student whose hands were zip-tied. We demand that all charges be dropped.
We reaffirm our commitment to support students in their First Amendment rights and to hold accountable those university administrators who would seek to deny our students those rights. We condemn in the strongest possible terms the nationwide crackdown on student encampments and the manufactured outrage at those of us who speak up for Palestine. We urge everyone to instead direct their outrage at the genocide, scholasticide, and US complicity that motivated our students to create encampments in the first place.
Members of faculty and staff at George Mason University who want to join FSJP or receive announcements about events in support of Palestinians can email fjp.gmu@gmail.com, and follow us on X here X.com/FSJPGMU
