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<div class="moz-forward-container"><span
style="color:rgb(0,0,0);font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;font-size:11.5pt">PRESS
RELEASE: October 14, 2021 - FOR IMMEDIATE PUBLICATION</span><br>
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style="font-size:11.5pt">ACADEMIC SPEECH AND FREEDOM ON
PALESTINE - IMPORTANT RULING AGAINST SAN FRANCISCO STATE
UNIVERSITY CONCERNING THE POWER OF BIG TECH OVER
ACADEMIA</span></p>
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style="font-size:11.5pt">In a decision with major
implications for campuses across the country, on
Thursday a panel of three faculty members at San
Francisco State University (SFSU) upheld a grievance
filed by Dr. Rabab Abduhadi, founding director of the
Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED)
program, regarding violations of Professor Abdulhadi’s
academic freedom. <br>
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style="font-size:11.5pt">The grievance seeks redress for
the failure of SFSU to protect Dr. Abdulhadi and the
AMED program from the arbitrary cancellation by Zoom and
other social media outlets of her online open classroom,
“Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A
Conversation with Leila Khaled.” The University is bound
by contract, law and AAUP policy to protect academic
freedom rather than subcontracting the responsibility to
private companies. Further, universities must maintain
structural independence from the whims and demands of
partisan lobbying organizations, including Zionist
groups like the Lawfare Project and the Israeli
government aligned app, ACT IL, both of which played a
prominent role in the manufactured outrage campaign that
led Zoom to cancel Drs. Abdulhadi and Tomomi Kinukawa’s
open classroom in September 2020. The panel’s finding
confirms both the University’s surrender of its
responsibility to the overreach of private tech giants
into academic affairs and its complicity with Zionist
and right wing groups aiming to silence Palestinian
voices on campus. In its decision, the faculty panel
affirmed that: “San Francisco State University has
inflicted harm upon Dr. Abdulhadi (and co-instructor,
Dr. Kinukawa) and that her academic freedom was, in
fact, violated. We characterize this harm in two ways:
1) that the university did not provide adequate support
to Dr. Abdulhadi against the actions of the corporate
entity, Zoom, and, more importantly against the outside
organization, Lawfare Project.” <br>
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style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">The SFSU panel’s ruling has
tremendous significance beyond its own campus and
teaching about Palestine. With the growth of online
learning, university teachers and students have become
increasingly dependent on corporate media platforms such
as Zoom, Google and Facebook. Advocates express alarm at
the growing power of these corporate entities to censor
the content and timing of classroom speech and
activities, especially those deemed by university
administrators as controversial. As Dima Khalidi, the
director of the advocacy organization Palestine Legal,
has written: “[such] attempts at censorship also have
consequences not just for movements supporting justice
in Palestine, but for racial, Indigenous, gender,
immigrant, economic and LGBTQIA+ justice movements
challenging government repression and overreach within
the United States and globally.”</span></p>
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style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">Dr. Abdulhadi has been a
luminary among international Palestinian intellectuals,
known for her original scholarship on Palestinian
women’s movements and her pioneering pedagogy
integrating Palestine into a critical, community-focused
ethnic studies framework. She has won numerous awards
for her scholarly and civic leadership, including the
Georgina M. Smith Award for “exceptional leadership” in
2020 from the American Association of University
Professors . <br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">SFSU has shown its bias against
AMED and in favor of Zionist organizations through its
open collaboration with groups such as International
Hillel and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN). These
groups conflate criticism of Israel with anti-semitism
and have as their stated mission to suppress support for
Palestinian rights on campuses and to exceptionalize the
complaints of Jewish students above all others,
including Muslims and anti-Zionist Jews. The decision
will now be placed on the desk of SFSU President Lynn
Mahoney, who will have three weeks to uphold the panel’s
findings. If she does not, the grievance will go to
arbitration. <br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">For further information and
interviews, contact:</span></p>
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style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">Rabab Abdulhadi* - <a
href="mailto:rabab.abdulhadi@gmail.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">rabab.abdulhadi@gmail.com</a>;
914-882-3180 (cell) *Please text first</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">Omar Zahzah - <a
href="mailto:omarmzahzah@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">omarmzahzah@gmail.com</a>;
562-896-3313 (cell)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">Rosalind Petchesky - <a
href="mailto:rpetches@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">rpetches@gmail.com</a>;
917-378-5683</span></p>
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style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:11.5pt">Harry Soloway - <a
href="mailto:sologant@gmail.com" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">sologant@gmail.com</a>;
914-815 2479 (cell)</span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><span
style="font-size:12pt">A copy of the Faculty Panel
Decision is attached below.</span><span
style="font-family:-webkit-standard"></span><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"
style="margin:0in;font-size:medium;font-family:Calibri,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><a
href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cWJ9rvURNHTZsDWbrDkanK7TbYyP2wl8/view?usp=sharing"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cWJ9rvURNHTZsDWbrDkanK7TbYyP2wl8/view?usp=sharing</a><span
style="font-size:12pt"><br>
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