We, the newly-formed Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, a group of University faculty and staff engaged in education, advocacy, and action in solidarity with Palestinian liberation, issue this statement in response to our University’s horrific suppression of free speech and activism regarding Palestinian human rights.
Proposal resolutions AR 13-025 and AR 13-026 promoted campus discourse about the University of Michigan’s complicity in Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians. However, against the will of the Central Student Government and the student body, the University squarely decimated that discourse. In his latest statement, President Ono hypocritically states, “I have heard you,” and in the same breath, “disallow(s)” any future votes on the matter. Exemplified by its brutal actions against students on November 17 and the cancellation of the Central Student Government vote, the University continually silences and punishes discourse and dissent regarding the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Palestine.
On Friday, Nov. 17, in a scarcely accessible video message, “President Ono’s Monthly Message for November 2023,” Ono addressed the inadequacy of his previous statements on the developing situation in Israel and Palestine — statements which, unlike this one, were conveniently shared via University-wide emails. The video message was instead uploaded that Friday morning without notification and then quietly released to a select group of University faculty. This came after weeks of pressure from the university community to recognize and protect students, staff, and faculty who have been subjected to relentless intimidation, racism and islamophobia, compounded by the University’s refusal to acknowledge violence and abuse against Arabs and Muslims, whether overseas or on our campus. One such targeted incident came from Carin Ehrenberg, a School of Information advisory board member, clinical psychologist and long-time donor, and against whom no action has been taken.
In the video message, Ono expresses the importance of embodying university values, decrying bigotry and championing free speech without the threat of backlash or intimidation. We applaud the spirit of this message. What we reject, however, is the abject, inconspicuous manner of its conveyance and, more importantly, the glaring hypocrisy in the release of Ono’s message as student protesters were being subjected to brutal intimidation and punishment from the University’s horrifying police response. Further, in light of the cancellation of the vote, Ono’s latest message has no remedial value.
Hours before the November video was distributed, hundreds of students held a peaceful protest on the Diag, calling for the University to heed students’ request to meet with Ono and for the Board of Regents to provide transparency regarding companies in which the University invests and to investigate their complicity in human rights violations, specifically the violations in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories.
The protest was held on the 42nd day of the Israeli assault on the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip where its relentless bombardment of civilian infrastructure and deliberate denial of basic human necessities– water, electricity, and humanitarian aid– has now claimed the lives of nearly 16,000 Palestinian civilians, over 70% of whom are women and children.
The multicultural coalition of students, together in their opposition to the University’s complacency in genocide, marched from the Diag to the Alexander G. Ruthven Building and attempted to enter the building, chanting, “The people united will never be defeated,” a beautiful display of unity, moral courage and justice — qualities that Ono so eloquently heralded in his video address.
In its decision to repress student voices rather than listen, the University ensured that students were met by a swarm of police officers from over 10 jurisdictions who forcefully blocked their entry into the public building during business hours.
First-person footage and student testimonies from the protest show nonviolent students being met with brute physical force with evidence of police using batons, pushing students, body slamming and ripping off a student’s hijab. Students relay how campus security employed aggressive tactics, including turning up the temperature in the building, denying students access to water and toilets and blocking the walkie-talkie frequency the students used to communicate. Medics were called for a student who had fainted after being refused water. Forty students were arrested and cited for trespassing because they dared to request a meeting with their president. All of this, in a campus community that waxes poetic about its efforts in diversity, equity and inclusion, and its exceptional status as “leaders and best.”
At the end of Ono’s address, after he has summarized the horrifying violence in the Middle East and the accompanying bigotry and racism that has affected students on campus, he rhetorically asks, “So, what is our role as a great, pluralistic public university?” The answer, he says, is that we should reaffirm our values, show respect and demonstrate that “there is and must be a better way.”
On this much, we can agree. The University should be a leading example of a better way by joining the nonviolent movement of concerned people everywhere, calling out atrocities against humanity, wherever they may be and divesting from companies that facilitate illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide. The better way is to ensure all students feel safe and heard when they speak out against these issues, rather than meeting them with brute force and silencing. The better way is not to simply spout platitudes in a video or email about unity, shared values and sympathy for the suffering of innocent people, but to do something about it.
Because, unlike the passive phrasing in Ono’s November address, bombs do not simply “fall” on an innocent, starving, occupied and besieged population. To frame violence as a function of its own doing is to create a climate of impunity for perpetrators of such violence and bury the University’s complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. A genocide carried out by the Israeli government and facilitated by corporations in which the university invests. In the interest of “reaffirming our values,” we call on University officials to meet with the TAHRIR coalition, offer tangible support to unjustly doxxed students, conduct a formal inquiry into anti-Arab and Islamophobic discrimination and harassment on campus, support and reaffirm faculty and staff who are being vilified for their support of Palestine and to divest from companies that profit off of human rights violations against Palestinians.
To us, it sounds like the “better way.”
MiC Contributors, Faculty and Staff for Palestine, can be reached at umfsjp@gmail.com.