For Freedom, Justice, and Democracy at GMU: A Joint Statement on the Targeting of Student Activists

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Dec 4, 2024 Palestine
For Freedom, Justice, and Democracy at GMU: A Joint Statement on the Targeting of Student Activists

For Freedom, Justice, and Democracy at GMU: A Joint Statement on the Targeting of Student Activists

By : Jadaliyya Reports

[The following is a statement published by George Mason University Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, signed by dozens of campus and community organizations, responding to the targetting and state repression of student activists.]

President Washington,

We write with deep concern about the apparent targeting of two George Mason students for their advocacy for Palestinian human rights. We are particularly concerned by the decision to impose a criminal trespass order against these students without a full investigation or even a student conduct hearing. This criminal trespass order bars both students from campus for four years, thus depriving them, without due process, of their right to an education. For this reason, these trespass orders must be revoked and an independent investigation into the decision to issue these orders must immediately begin.

Here is what we know so far: 

At 6:10am on November 7, approximately 30 armed Fairfax County and Mason Campus Police officers executed a search warrant at the shared off-campus residence of two GMU student leaders. The two students are the former President and current co-President of the Mason chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). 

The students were served with a search warrant and told verbally that the search was related to incidents of property damage at the Fairfax campus.

The next day, on November 8, an email was sent to an officer of SJP indicating that their student organization had been placed under an interim suspension order. That officer was one of the same students whose home had been raided the previous day. Because all of their electronic devices were seized by police, they did not receive the suspension notice until the following week. Troublingly, neither SJP’s faculty advisor nor the other officers and members of SJP received any notice of the organization’s suspension. 

Additionally, soon after the suspension of SJP, the two student leaders were served with criminal trespass notices that bar both students from campus for four years. These notices were delivered by Mason Chief of Police Carl Rowan. The notices, if left in place, will effectively expel both students from Mason, thus violating their right to an education without the due process afforded to all students under the Code of Student Conduct.

The punitive actions imposed on these students stem from allegations of (the students were told) graffiti causing property damage in two campus locations, yet to date no evidence has been presented to support these claims.

Do universities such as GMU routinely send phalanxes of police officers in military fatigues and armored vehicles, and carrying assault rifles, to break down the front door and raid the homes of students during the pre-dawn hours over an allegation of spray painting? Do administrators routinely rush to judgment and issue criminal trespass orders—the kind used to exclude serial sexual predators and stalkers from campus—against students who have been accused of graffiti? 

It appears that the answers to these questions may increasingly be “yes.” Since November 7th, we have learned that similar police raids against non-violent student activists have recently taken place at the University of Pennsylvania as well as other campuses. This pattern is extremely troubling and calls people of conscience to action. We at Mason and elsewhere find ourselves in a moment in history in which every individual must decide how much they value the civil liberties that are the lifeblood of democracy.

We insist that the answer to the question of whether universities such as ours participate in a coordinated campaign of violent repression of human rights activism must be “no.” Therefore:

  1. Administrators must immediately revoke the trespass orders against these two students, allowing them to come to campus and to continue their education. 

  2. Administrators must work with GMU Campus Police and Fairfax County Police to immediately return the students’ smartphones and laptops, so that they can resume their education, which has been on hold since November 7th. 

  3. The Office of Student Involvement must immediately reinstate the Mason chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine as a Registered Student Organization.

  4. We must begin a full and independent investigation of the series of communications and decisions (involving Mason Campus Police, administrators, and the Board of Visitors) that led to the police raid on the students’ residence on November 7, the subsequent trespass orders on both students, and the suspension of Mason’s chapter of the SJP, with results reported to the campus community in 60 days. 


For further context on the targetting and repression of GMU Paletine student activists, read here: "Police Raid Pro-Palestine Student's Home in FBI-led Graffiti Investigation"

To sign onto this statement, email FSJP.gmu@gmail.com.
__

We, the undersigned,

 Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, George Mason University

Jewish Voice for Peace, George Mason University
GMU UNICEF, George Mason University
Kurdish Student Organization, George Mason University
Arab Student Association, George Mason University
Students for a United Ireland, George Mason University
Moroccan Student Union, George Mason University
Muslim Student Association, George Mason University
Kashmiri Student Union, George Mason University
Premedical Society, George Mason University
Chemistry Club, George Mason University
Delegate Sam Rasoul, 38th District, VA House of Delegates
National Students for Justice in Palestine
Green Party of the United States
CODE PINK
Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism
Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee
American Palestinian Women's Association
US Campaign for Palestinian Rights
Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler , Senior Advisor , The Fellowship of Reconciliation, USA
Reverend Tyrone S. Pitts, General Secretary Emeritus for the Progressive National Baptist Convention
No Tech for Apartheid
Virginia Coalition for Human Rights
Virginia Student Power Network
Virginia Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
Abolish Slavery Virginia
Fairfax for Palestine
Alexandria for Palestine
Arlington for Palestine
Blacksburg for Palestine
Richmond for Palestine
Loudoun County Falastin
Loudoun County Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee
Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) Northern Virginia
National Lawyers Guild, University of Virginia Chapter
Amnesty International, Virginia Tech Chapter
Democratic Socialists of America, NOVA branch of the Metro DC DSA Chapter
Democratic Socialists of America, New River V alley Chapter
Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center
The Executive Board of United Academics of Maryland - UMD
DC for Palestine
Palestine Youth Movement - DC, Maryland, and Virginia Chapter
Jewish Voice for Peace - DC Metro
If Not Now DC
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams
Black Alliance for Peace DC
DC Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression (DCAARPR)
All-African People's Revolutionary Party DMV
American University Alums for Palestine
Maryland 2 Palestine
Food Not Bombs, DC
DMV Dissenters
Irish Americans for Palestine DC
Anakbayan DC
Occupation Free DC (OFDC)
Sunrise Movement DC
Queers for Liberation
No Pride in Genocide
Claudia Jones School for Political Education
Defending Rights & Dissent
Party for Socialism and Liberation, DC branch
Labor for Palestine
Rise Up for Sudan
International League of People's Struggle, Baltimore-DMV
Anti-Imperialist Action UMBC
Muslim American Society - DC Chapter
The Students' United Front, Virginia Tech
Young Democratic Socialists of America, Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech Coalition for Palestine
Jewish Voice for Peace, The George Washington University
Students for Justice in Palestine, The George Washington University
Students for Justice in Palestine, Virginia Commonwealth University
Students for Justice in Palestine, Virginia Tech
Students for Justice in Palestine, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Students for Justice in Palestine, Gallaudet University
Students F or Justice in Palestine, Old Dominion University
Students for Justice in Palestine, The College of William and Mary
Students for Justice in Palestine, American University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Virginia Commonwealth University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, University of Maryland - College Park
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, American University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Georgetown University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, George Washington University
Faculty for Justice in Palestine, University of Pennsylvania
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Drexel University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Temple University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, University of California - Berkeley
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, University of California - Irvine
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, University of California - San Francisco
Faculty for Justice in Palestine, University of California - Los Angeles
Faculty for Justice in Palestine, University of California - San Diego
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, University of Chicago
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, New York University
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, Sarah Lawrence College
Writers Against the War on Gaza
Adalah Justice Project
The International Youth and Students for Equity, GMU
The Workers' Solidarity Student Group, George Mason University S. Korea Campus

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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