2024 NATIONAL STATEMENT TO UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS

Scholars in any US state or university can still sign this open statement.

U.S. SCHOLARS TO UNIVERSITY PRESIDENTS:

Honor Peaceful Protesters Standing Up for Justice

1,700+ Scholars Signed and Growing

TO SIGN, Click Here.

May 8, 2024

A Message to University and College Presidents Across the United States

We, the undersigned scholars of US colleges and universities, are writing to express our solidarity with the students, staff, and faculty who are peacefully and courageously protesting the Israeli government’s ongoing war on Gaza. Let us remember first why these protests are happening. According to numerous UN, US, and independent monitors, in nearly seven months the Israeli government has killed at minimum 34,568 Palestinians¹, the majority civilians including over 13,800 children; rendered 19,000 children orphans; destroyed 70,000+ housing units and displaced 1.7 million people; systematically decimated the medical infrastructure of Gaza along with every university; and brought 2.3 million Palestinians to the brink of famine—all enabled by US-provided weapons, normalization, and political support.

Amid this unspeakable destruction, at the heart of the student-led protests and Gaza Solidarity Encampments across the country is a straightforward but weighty question: Is your university profiting from or otherwise complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza, and its occupation of Palestinian territories more broadly? Answering that question is a far more urgent and grave matter than the “time-place-manner violations” for which some institutions are now arresting, punishing, and even brutally assaulting protesting students and employees.

History has shown that university administrations cannot repress their way into silencing a clarion moral call whose time has come. Ultimately, a just and peaceful political resolution between Palestinians and Israelis is the only way to heal the tensions and fears tearing apart college campuses. Until then, we call on you as university and college presidents to:

• Treat the student-led protests for what they are: a moral stance against their university’s potential complicity in war crimes, occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Hence we urge you to engage with protesting students in good faith and reach a peaceful agreement, rather than coercion, punishment and repression which will only escalate the protests and enflame tensions even further. It goes without saying that protesting students, staff, and faculty are equally your community members. Like any other member of our campuses, they must be treated with dignity and respect and protected from violence, harassment, and intimidation whether by law enforcement or counterprotesters. 

• Publicly commit to a serious, transparent, and sustained process of disclosure and divestment from all companies profiting from or contributing to war crimes and human rights abuses, including Israel’s ongoing assault on Palestine. While every campus is unique, this is an integral component of protesters’ demands nationwide; and in several cases, a response to university administrations thwarting the disclosure, open discussion, and democratic processes involving divestment at an institutional level. Hence your administration must not seek to block divestment or sidestep its purpose: ending complicity in grave human rights abuses including war crimes, occupation, and genocide in Israel-Palestine.

• Oppose anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim prejudice with the same resolve with which we must oppose antisemitism and any other form of racism and bigotry, on and off our campuses. We also note that part and parcel of combating antisemitism and protecting all our students is rejecting the weaponizing of overly broad antisemitism charges to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli state policies and those speaking up for Palestinian human rights.

Your choices at this historic juncture are inseparable from our collective moral and professional responsibility as academics to Gaza’s students, scholars, and universities in their darkest hour—as well as to the very values which we claim to defend. If our colleges and universities abandon the principles of academic freedom, critical inquiry, and social responsibility now, how can we possibly lay claim to them in our mission statements, publicity, and graduation speeches?

Summoning the police; arresting and assaulting peaceful protesters; suppressing debate on divestment. All of these reactions fail to grasp the protests for what they are: a call to our principles and a demand to be better. Should your administration refuse the call and persecute the messengers instead, you will be securing a historical legacy of repressing and silencing dissent—rather than honoring and learning from it to build a more just campus, society, and world.  

Sincerely,

1,700+ Signatories and Growing

Faculty, visiting and affiliated scholars, research scholars and fellows, program directors, and PhD alumni of US universities and colleges can SIGN this statement. All signatories sign as individuals and not as representatives of the university, college, school, or hospital for which they work or any other institution. For current signatories, click here.

¹ Fatalities reported by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) as of May 2, 2024. As of September 23, Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza has now killed at minimum 41,431 Palestinians, with UNICEF USA reporting over 14,000 Palestinian children killed and 12,000 wounded since October 7, 2023. Additionally, these body counts do not include at least 10,000 Palestinians missing and believed to be trapped or buried under the rubble of Gaza. On June 24, 2024, the renowned US humanitarian agency Save the Children reported over 20,000 Palestinian children of Gaza are now “estimated to be lost, disappeared, detained, buried under the rubble or in mass graves.”

This statement was delivered to the following organizations on May 8, 2024. US scholars can still support this call by signing and sharing this statement widely.

American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) American Association of University Women (AAUW) American Council on Education (ACE) American Indian Higher Education Consortium (AIHEC) Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Association of American Universities (AAU) Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC) Global Liberal Arts Alliance (GLAA) National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO) National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU)

CC: American Academy of Religion (AAR) American Anthropological Association (AAA) American Association of University Professors (AAUP) American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) American Economic Association (AEA) American Historical Association (AHA) American Political Science Association (APSA) American Public Health Association (APHA) American Sociology Association American Studies Association Amnesty International USA Association of Literary Scholars, Critics, and Writers (ALSCW) Center for Constitutional Rights Human Rights Watch - US Program Law and Society Association (LSA) Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) Modern Language Association (MLA) Society of American Law Teachers (SALT)