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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/02/a-victory-professor-rabab-abdulhadi-wins-second-grievance-at-sfsu/">mondoweiss.net</a>
<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">A Victory! Professor Rabab Abdulhadi wins second grievance at SFSU</h1>February 19, 2022</div>
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<p>A faculty panel has unanimously sided with Professor Rabab Abdulhadi
at San Francisco State University (SFSU) in a grievance she filed
through her union, the <a href="https://www.calfac.org/cfa-san-francisco/">SFSU chapter of the California Faculty Association</a>. Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance reiterated her demand for SFSU to fulfill its outstanding commitment to build <a href="https://amed.sfsu.edu/">Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies</a>
by hiring two additional tenure-track faculty members, institutionally
supporting AMED, stopping the attempt to dismantle AMED, and ending the
creation of the hostile work environment to which Dr. Abdulhadi has been
subjected for at least 13 years for her directorship of AMED and her
refusal to abandon it.</p>
<p>Issued yesterday by the three-person Faculty Hearing Committee that adjudicated Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance on February 4, a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bz_fZAb4skTC3vAIdl9UjZZiWt91UG4V1dcBpXjeZL0/edit?usp=sharing">report</a>
agreed with Dr. Abdulhadi’s claims that SFSU breached her hiring
contract and fostered a hostile work environment to pressure her to give
up AMED Studies. The Faculty Hearing Committee supported Dr. Abdulhadi,
and upheld AMED’s independence and integrity. </p>
<p>The statutory grievance filed by Dr. Abdulhadi documented SFSU’s
refusal to honor the original Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) which
the university signed when it recruited Dr. Abdulhadi to create and
direct the AMED program in 2005. That MOU stipulated that two additional
tenure-track positions would be hired along with Dr. Abdulhadi to
ensure a full and sustainable academic, communal and advocacy multi-site
space on the history, politics, cultures and social movements of Arab,
Muslim and Palestinian communities as they intersect with and contribute
to the indivisibility of justice within and outside of the College of
Ethnic Studies at SFSU. The fact that those faculty positions were never
filled served to thwart AMED Studies and turn it into a token,
one-person operation without possibility of growth and development – had
it not been for Dr. Abdulhadi’s tenacity and determination to resist
such designs. In addition, the grievance detailed how the university
created a hostile work and study environment on campus for Dr. Abdulhadi
and her Arab, Muslim and Palestinian students and their allies,
including anti-Zionist Jewish students, staff and colleagues. These
efforts have been publicly decried by numerous scholars and academic
organizations, including the <a href="https://www.calfac.org/cfa-san-francisco/">SFSU chapter of the California Faculty Association</a>.</p>
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<p>The February 4 Faculty Hearing Committee rejected the university’s
claims, including several bad faith actions that sought to undermine the
transparency of the grievance hearing. Not only did the SFSU
Administration fail to submit the list of witnesses and evidence on time
as per their own deadline. The university representatives made a
mockery of the proceedings by sharing the names of their witnesses less
than 24 hours before the hearing, contrary to the very agreement on
which they had insisted.</p>
<p>The three committee members, Drs. Rita Melendez (Chair), Elahe
Essani, and Hui Yang, relied on “written documents, direct testimony,
and cross-examination of witnesses” to reach their findings defining Dr.
Abdulhadi’s grievance “to be serious, thus requiring an immediate
remedy.” The committee’s report recognized that Dr. Abdulhadi “met the
burden of proof and provided evidence that the former Dean of Ethnic
Studies (Dean Monteiro) promised two new faculty positions in AMED as a
condition of Dr. Abdulhadi coming to SFSU,” as stipulated in her job
offer. The report rejected the attempt by the SFSU Administration to
engage in character assasination of Dr. Abdulhadi, stressing that SFSU
“has fostered a hostile environment” and that “lack of hires has
resulted in intellectual isolation for Dr. Abdulhadi and has had
negative consequences in terms of her building an AMED program.” The
report ordered SFSU to “issue an apology to Dr. Abdulhadi for not
fulfilling the promise made to her upon her hire and for years of
denying the requests for the faculty hires.” </p>
<p>The report comes on the heels of another recent victory achieved by
Dr. Abdulhadi, AMED Studies communities, and Palestine scholarship and
pedagogy. In October 2021, a Faculty Hearing Committee <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2021/11/sfsu-president-sides-with-tech-giants-on-silencing-of-palestinian-voices/">ruled unanimously</a>
that SFSU violated the academic freedom of Dr. Abdulhadi and her
colleague, Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, when the university failed to stand up
to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/11/14/zoom-censorship-leila-khaled-palestine/">Zoom’s silencing and cancellation</a> of an open classroom they co-organized on Palestine, titled “<a href="https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/41817">Whose Narratives: Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled</a>”, on September 23, 2020. The<a href="https://countercurrents.org/2021/10/zoom-san-francisco-state-university-and-academic-freedom-an-update/"> Faculty Hearing Committee members</a>
ordered the university administration to apologize to Drs. Abdulhadi
and Kinukawa and host the censored webinar without interference from big
tech corporations while also faulting the administration for colluding
with The Lawfare Project, a right-wing organization that has been part
of a network of pro-Israel lobby industry groups intent on smearing,
bullying and silencing scholarship, pedagogy and advocacy for
Palestinian freedom for years, including that of Dr. Abdulhadi and AMED.
The Lawfare Project’s federal lawsuit against SFSU and Dr. Abdulhadi
(the only faculty member named in this lawsuit) was <a href="https://palestinelegal.org/news/2018/10/30/lawfare-case-thrown-out">dismissed with prejudice</a> in federal court in 2018 after 18 months of persistent attacks against Dr. Abdulhadi. </p>
<p>Rather than respect members of the SFSU faculty who volunteered their
time and exerted their intellectual energy to serve on the Faculty
Hearing Committee, SFSU President Lynn Mahoney vetoed the committee’s
unanimous decision that called for redress to Drs. Abdulhadi and
Kinukawa. In so doing, President Mahoney sought to nullify the
committee’s recommendations and sabotage the grievance process. <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0OYjJ9o21SocNNyjppJOxoSMANYMI-HEGySDsaRi7x3_mUA/viewform">Intellectuals
and academics were outraged by President Mahoney’s disregard of faculty
rights and due process and called for her immediate resignation</a>. These outcries and calls coincided with similar calls for the <a href="https://www.calfac.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/CFA-LB-Call-for-the-Resignation-of-CSU-Chancellor-Joseph-Castro.pdf">resignation</a>
of California State University (CSU) Chancellor Joseph Castro, who in
fact resigned on February 17, 2022 after reports appeared that he
mishandled misconduct complaints. Chancellor Castro had been supportive
of Mahoney, giving her a 10% salary increase despite faculty uproar over
budget cuts and the firing of a significant number of lecturers, using
the COVID pandemic as an excuse. Castro also presided over the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/fresno-state-cancels-a-middle-east-studies-professorship-after-pressure-from-right-wing-pro-israel-group/">cancellation of the Edward Said faculty position at CSU-Fresno under Zionist pressure</a>. </p>
<p>Academics, public intellectuals, and the broader Palestine justice
movement welcome yesterday’s ruling and congratulate members of the
Faculty Hearing Committee, Dr. Abdulhadi and the SFSU chapter of the
California Faculty Association for their persistence in protecting
faculty rights and refusing to join the SFSU Administration in its
collusion with the Zionist, orientalist and racist agenda that seeks to
silence the teaching of Palestine. During the 6-hour virtual February 4
hearing, SFSU arrogantly dismissed the seriousness of Dr. Abdulhadi’s
grievance and disregarded the university’s own proclaimed principles of
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). SFSU’s actions demonstrated its
cynicism regarding the university’s well-publicized support for
multiculturalism, equity and inclusion, which directly contradicts the
history of SFSU’s collaboration with and preferential treatment of
Zionist groups, including the recent agreement with Hillel, Hillel
International and the Academic Engagement Nework, as well as the SFSU’s
longstanding unjustifiable harassment of Dr. Abdulhadi by subjecting her
to multiple baseless audits for the sole purpose of discrediting Dr.
Abdulhadi and placating the AMCHA Initiative, a pro-Israel lobby group.
SFSU’s deceitful practices, misrepresentation of facts, and continued
attempts to smear Dr. Abdulhadi’s character in the recent hearing once
again showed SFSU’s disdain for the AMED Studies program and its
complicity with outside organizations that seek to silence Palestinian
voices (see <a href="https://mondoweiss.net/2022/02/why-are-dr-rabab-abdulhadi-and-the-amed-program-under-attack-at-sfsu/">Mondoweiss</a>).</p>
<p><a href="https://sfsu.box.com/s/rto857jx03q1kz9theb6npgpu3u56vq9">Evidence</a>
presented in this most recent hearing, including testimonies by
witnesses who were unable to testify due to SFSU’s attempt to subvert
the process, such as <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qmy-2wseQ5ra6Kq0wx8pfF7dhG4o_w5z/view?usp=sharing">Dr. Robin D. G. Kelley</a>, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hdHeuAmCEXqQXyYO6KdGsCEDwVrtVbFm/view?usp=sharing">Dr. James Martel</a> and doctoral candidate <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J2uA8Jv6QXy6Xc745MCu0DHDf3T-oabU/view?usp=sharing">Saliem Shehadeh</a>,
further demonstrates the corporatization of SFSU and its
administration’s collusion with right-wing and Zionist organizations
trying to dismantle and destroy the critical AMED Studies program.
Testifying for Dr. Abdulhadi were Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, Dr. Marc Stein,
Dr. Blanca Misse, and AMED/Ethnic Studies Graduate Student Leith
Ghuloum. Dean Amy Sueyoshi, Associate Dean Catriona Rueda Esquibel and
Dean of Faculty Carleen Mandolfo testified for the Administration. Dr.
Abdulhadi was represented by Professor of English and member of the
Executive Board of the SFSU Chapter of the California Faculty
Association, Dr. Larry Hanley. Professor Hanley was supported by a
committed team of scholars, public intellectuals and activists
representing AMED communities of justice who worked tirelessly and
voluntarily to defend Dr. Abdulhadi and AMED Studies and its students as
they have done throughout the last 15 years of Dr. Abdulhadi’s battle
to build AMED Studies and refusal to be stymied by the Zionist and
corporatized agenda within and outside SFSU. Yesterday’s report by the
February 4 Faculty Hearing Committee bodes well for the sustainability
of critical challenges to these reactionary efforts and the racism and
anti-intellectualism they entail. </p>
<p><strong>For more information, contact <a href="https://www.facebook.com/DefendProfAbdulhadi">The International Campaign to Defend Professor Rabab Abdulhadi</a> or write to <a href="mailto:Team@professorabdulhadidefense.com">Team@professorabdulhadidefense.com</a>.</strong></p>
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