[News] No Sanctuary for Palestinian Scholarship

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/05/10/no-sanctuary-for-palestinian-scholarship/ 



  No Sanctuary for Palestinian Scholarship

by Diana Block - May 10, 2017

*Battleground San Francisco State University*

At a March 2017 conference of the National Association of Ethnic Studies 
held at San Francisco State University (SFSU), President Leslie Wong 
boasted about the University’s role as a sanctuary campus. He 
referenced  SFSU’s proud history of engaged  social justice scholarship 
going back to the 1968 Third World strike 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_World_Liberation_Front_strikes_of_1968> 
by students which established the first Ethnic Studies College  in the 
country.

To Terry Collins, an alumnus of SFSU who was a member of the Black 
Student Union that started the Third World strike, and is the current 
Board President of KPOO community radio <http://www.kpoo.com/about>, 
Wong’s words rang hollow.  “We fought for a radical vision of what 
ethnic studies should mean,” Collins told me.  “Last spring students had 
to protest and even hunger strike just to keep Ethnic Studies alive 
after it was threatened with major cuts. 
<http://college.usatoday.com/2016/05/22/10-day-hunger-strike-victory-for-sfsu-students/> They 
won a few crumbs but so much more is needed.  And Palestinian faculty, 
students and programs have been under constant attack! Where’s the 
sanctuary for them at SF State?”

Collins, an adamant supporter of Palestine since the sixties, was 
referring to a series of incidents over the past year at SFSU that have 
targeted the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) 
<https://www.facebook.com/GeneralUnionofPalestineStudents/> ,Professor 
Rabab Abdulhadi <http://www.nationalsjp.org/rabab-abdulhadi.html>, and 
the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) 
<http://amed.sfsu.edu/> program which she founded.  Most recently, 
racist, Islamophobic posters were plastered  across campus on May 3^rd 
and to date there has been no public denunciation of this hate speech by 
President Wong. While such attacks are not unique to SFSU, they have 
been escalating at a campus which has been a battleground for social 
justice struggles of many types, including Palestine, over decades.

In April 2016, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, was invited 
to speak at SF State.  A coalition of SFSU student groups, led by GUPS, 
protested against his talk citing Barkat’s extreme policies of expulsion 
and violence against Palestinian residents, including home demolitions, 
evictions, lock downs and collective punishment of entire neighborhoods 
in East Jerusalem. The day after the peaceful protest, which succeeded 
in interrupting Barkat’s speech, President Wong ordered a full 
investigation of the protest, reportedly after a telephone conversation 
with Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center 
<http://www.jweekly.com/2016/04/09/sfsu-president-promises-full-investigation-after-protesters-disrupt-jerusal/> 
who urged this course of action.  Hier referenced the successful 
prosecution of the Irvine 11 
<https://electronicintifada.net/tags/irvine-11>, students who had 
interrupted the speech of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren in 2010 and 
were convicted of conspiracy to disrupt a public meeting in 2011.

Over the course of the next five months, GUPS members and other 
students, primarily women, were not only subject to an intensive, 
disruptive official investigation but were also targeted by death and 
rape threats, and a vicious online campaign by Canary Mission 
<https://canarymission.org/> seeking to derail their academic careers.  
The University investigation exonerated the students on most of the 
charges in September 2016, but the students’ lives had been turned 
upside down.  None of the threats or harassment by pro-Zionist groups 
were ever addressed by the University.   In their statement responding 
to the report, GUPs pointed out the degree to which their education, 
lives and safety had been compromised in the name of protecting 
pro-Israel free speech. “Not only were we subjected to this hate monger 
[Barkat], but we were investigated for months and publicly smeared as 
violent and anti-Semitic.” 
<https://medium.com/@sfsugups415/gups-statement-on-independent-review-of-april-6th-2016-99d3c5b722c1>

Shortly after the report exonerating the students was released, another 
front of assault was opened against Palestinian scholarship at SFSU. 
   An online petition was launched by the Middle East Forum (MEF), an 
Islamophobic, pro-Israel group led by Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, 
calling on President Wong  to terminate a Memorandum of Understanding 
(MOU )with An-Najah <https://www.najah.edu/en> University in Nablus in 
the Palestinian West Bank.  The MOU was established in 2014, initiated 
by Dr. Abdulhadi ,with the stated purpose of encouraging exchange and 
partnership between the two universities and with the AMED Studies 
program. The petition accused An-Najah of “incitement to violence, 
anti-Semitism and the glorification of terrorism.”  The vilification of 
An-Najah, which is consistently ranked as a leading academic institution 
in the Arab world, was accompanied by a specific attack on Dr. Abdulhadi 
who was condemned for initiating the MOU and for her “record as an 
anti-Israel activist.” Some of the examples given included her role as a 
founding member of the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott 
of Israel and her service as faculty advisor for GUPS.

The catalyst for this attack was a conference, /Freedom Behind Bars,/ 
held at An-Najah in March 2016. This author attended the conference as 
part of the Prisoner, Labor and Academic Solidarity delegation 
<http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/13/reflections-on-a-delegation-to-imprisoned-palestine/> 
to Palestine convened by Dr. Abulhadi.  To the delegation, the 
conference was an exciting model of what international academic exchange 
between activist scholars should be.  To the MEF authors of the 
anti-An-Najah petition, the conference was a threatening example of the 
powerful potential of unfiltered exposure to Palestinian scholarship 
taking place in occupied Palestine.

Our delegation immediately issued an open letter in response to the 
petition, calling on President Wong  to uphold the importance and 
validity of the MOU with An-Najah, to reject the defamation of Dr. 
Abdulhadi and to expand institutional support for the AMED program.  
Wong’s office issued a lukewarm response, endorsing all of the 
University’s exchange programs without specifically upholding the one 
with An-Najah.    As our open letter was rapidly gaining signatures by 
students and faculty at SFSU and around the country, an even more 
egregious act of hate speech occurred on the SFSU campus as well as at 
UC Berkeley and UCLA.

On the morning of October 14, 2016, students arrived at SFSU to find 
numerous posters with racist caricature portraits plastered all over 
campus, defaming Professor Abdulhadi  and Palestinian student leaders by 
name and labeling them “Jew Haters” and “terrorists.” The posters were 
signed by the Horowitz Freedom Center, a virulently anti-left and 
Islamophobic organization. Students immediately went across campus 
tearing the posters down while University administration did nothing for 
hours.  President Wong finally issued a statement calling the posters 
“bullying tactics” but did not even mention that the Horowitz Freedom 
Center was responsible for them or label them a hate crime.

In response to these posters, numerous articles, statements, and 
petitions were issued by a wide variety of media and organizations 
including Palestine Legal, Arab Resource and Organizing Center, UAW 
Local 2865, International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network,  Jewish News and 
the Jewish Studies Department at SFSU.  They called on Wong to pursue an 
investigation of the posters as a hate crime and to defend GUPS, AMED, 
Dr. Abdulhadi and the Arab and Muslim community at SFSU. To date none of 
this has happened.

As Terry Collins points out, the incidents of the past year are just an 
intensification of long time problems  facing the AMED program and the 
Palestinian and Arab communities at SF State.  Dr. Abdulhadi was 
recruited to SFSU in 2007 from the University of Michigan, Dearborn.  
Her recruitment was part of the implementation of the recommendations of 
a campus/community Task Force that was formed at SFSU in order to 
address a backlash against Palestinian and Arab students in the post 
9-11 era.  According to Dr. Abdulhadi, she accepted the position at SFSU 
in order to create a program whose explicit purpose was the production 
of knowledge for social justice. Given the history of social justice 
engagement at SFSU, the large Arab and Palestinian population in the Bay 
Area, and the progressive political climate in the region, she believed 
that it would be an ideal place for her to develop this type of 
program.   In her recruitment contract she was promised two additional 
faculty positions for the program as well as administrative support.  
However, none of these contractual obligations have ever been met.

A year after Dr. Abdulhadi was recruited in 2008, the Department of 
Jewish studies at SF State received a gift of $3.75 million from the 
Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund to create an endowed chair in Israel 
studies, which SF State boasted put it “at the forefront of an emerging 
new academic field. <http://www.sfsu.edu/news/2008/spring/22.html>” 
  Since then Israel studies has continued to grow, while the AMED 
program has never expanded beyond Dr. Abdulhadi.  Recently Dr. Abdulhadi 
was told by President Wong that due to budget constraints, the only way 
that the two promised faculty positions could be added would be if the 
program itself could bring in large gifts or grants.

The problems confronting the AMED program have developed in the context 
of nationwide attacks on Palestinian scholarship including employment 
termination, disciplinary actions, suspension of student groups and 
cancellation of course sections.  As the Boycott, Divestment and 
Sanctions (BDS) movement has gathered momentum on college campuses 
across the U.S., the Israeli government and its allies have prioritized 
the targeting of all scholarship and activity that includes an 
anti-Zionist, anti-colonial, pro-Palestinian perspective.  Meanwhile, in 
the same period as online harassment and academic investigations were 
occurring at SFSU, students at An-Najah and other Palestinian 
universities have been subject to a mounting wave of raids and arrests. 
Since it is illegal for Palestinian students to organize protests on 
campuses, and campus political organizations are banned, there is a 
constant pretext for the Israeli military occupation to arrest students 
arbitrarily.  The increasing criminalization of speech and activism 
about Palestine on U.S. campuses represents a move in the same direction.

Yet despite the election of Trump, the acceleration of openly 
Islamophobic  policies, and the appointment of ultra-Zionist David 
Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel , the colonial reality of 
Palestine is breaking through the American wall of denial in 
unprecedented ways.  On April 16, 2017 the New York Times published a 
searing op-ed by Marwan Barghouti 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/opinion/palestinian-hunger-strike-prisoners-call-for-justice.html?_r=0>, 
a Palestinian leader and political prisoner, indicting the Israeli 
colonial prison system and announcing a hunger strike by over 1,500 
Palestinian prisoners which has continued into May.  A week later, Omar 
Barghouti 
<https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/25/bds_leader_omar_barghouti_dedicates_his>,  
a co-founder and leader of the BDS movement,  accepted the Gandhi Peace 
Award at Yale University after an international outcry pressured Israel 
to reverse a travel ban it had imposed on him.  And on April 27^th , the 
Washington Post published an interview with Palestinian parliamentarian 
and former political prisoner Khalida Jarrar 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/04/27/a-thousand-palestinian-prisoners-are-on-a-hunger-strike-this-woman-is-fighting-for-their-rights/?utm_term=.59ad59d9f991> 
in which she explains her support for the prisoner hunger strike and 
highlights the particularly cruel conditions to which Palestinian women 
prisoners are subjected.

Not surprisingly at the same time, the backlash has been escalating at 
San Francisco State.  In the beginning of April, Cinnamon Stillwell, the 
West Coast representative of Campus Watch and a graduate of SF State, 
accelerated the call to revoke the MOU between An-Najah and SFSU by 
denouncing the inclusion of former prisoners 
<http://www.meforum.org/6633/san-francisco-state-university-still-partnering> 
in the U.S. delegation that participated in the An-Najah conference. 
  And Nir Barkat, intensified the pressure on President Wong when he 
canceled a speaking engagement  at SFSU  claiming that SFSU hadn’t 
  sufficiently publicized the event  and therefore was continuing its 
“marginalization and demonization of the Jewish state. “ 
<http://www.jweekly.com/2017/04/05/jerusalem-mayor-angrily-cancels-sfsu-appearance/>

On May 3, students once again found dozens of anti-Palestinian posters 
plastered around campus, vilifying Palestinian feminist leader Rasmea 
Odeh <http://justice4rasmea.org/>, Students for Justice in Palestine 
<http://www.nationalsjp.org/> and a Jewish Voice for Peace 
<https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/>.  In an urgent message to Wong, GUPS 
responded clearly, ““Once again SFSU administration has failed to 
protect us and provide a safe work and study environment for students, 
faculty and staff.   Claims of being a sanctuary campus must be 
evidenced in deeds not in words. This applies equally to Muslims, Arabs 
and Palestinians as it applies to everybody else.”  Their email included 
numerous pictures of the racist posters before they were taken down.  
   In a Kafkaesque response, Wong responded the next day with an email 
claiming that he couldn’t do anything because the campus police “were 
unable to find any of the posters.”  He encouraged students to call the 
police and campus counseling if they felt unsafe.

2017 marks the tenth anniversary of the Edward Said mural 
<http://www.sfsu.edu/news/2007/fall/84.htm> which was created at SF 
State in a collaborative effort between students, artists and community 
members to honor this preeminent Palestinian scholar.  Like everything 
related to Palestine at SFSU, the mural has been the subject of ongoing 
bitter controversy 
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/event-honoring-edward-said-prompts-zionist-smear-campaign-against-san>, 
fanned by outside Zionist organizations.  The SFSU administration cites 
the mural as a symbol of its commitment to “healthy debate,” and 
“respectful solutions.”  To Terry Collins, the battle at SF State has 
never been about healthy debate or free speech.  “They’re trying to make 
an example of the students, GUPS, the AMED program because they’re 
standing up for Palestine’s freedom, just like the BSU stood up for 
Black freedom back in 1968,” Terry stresses. “It’s up to those of us in 
the community to have their backs!”

/*Diana Block* is the author of a novel, Clandestine Occupations – An 
Imaginary History (PM Press, 2015) and a memoir, Arm the Spirit – A 
Woman’s Journey Underground and Back (AK Press, 2009).  She is an active 
member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners 
<http://www.womenprisoners.org/>and the anti-prison coalition CURB. 
<http://www.curbprisonspending.org/>She is a member of the editorial 
collective of The Fire Inside newsletter 
<http://womenprisoners.org/?page_id=1061> and she writes periodically 
for various online journals./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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