For the third time in a matter of months, SFSU President Lynn Mahoney has disregarded the legitimate and unanimous ruling by a faculty panel that recommended redress to Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa, a faculty lecturer in Women and Gender Studies, for the University’s violations of their academic freedom and that of their colleague, Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, founding director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies (AMED) program (AMED).
President Mahoney’s latest arrogant veto thus overrules a third unanimous decision by independent Faculty Hearing Panels in grievances filed under the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) that governs the relationship between the employer, and the employees, the faculty who are represented by their union, California Faculty Association (CFA) (SFSU CFA). Mahoney’s decision again demonstrates the University’s allegiance to and acquiescence of corporatized Big Tech’s increasing control over curriculum content as well as the university’s complicity with Zionist organizations that deliberately seeks to stifle all critiques of the apartheid state of Israel, its racism, colonialism and occupation, including its violation of discourse on issues of human rights and violence against the Palestinian people.
[Please read Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa’s extraordinary opening and closing grievance statements here.]
Mahoney’s three vetoes of these consecutive faculty decisions reaffirms the need to remove her from office–a demand by students, faculty, alumni and community members (USACBI). The President’s disregard for her faculty, her donor-driven bias against Palestinian students and faculty, her systematic campaign to dismantle the AMED studies program, as well as her obsequious acceptance of bottom line corporate interests, disqualify her as a neutral arbitor and the offical face of this historic public university with its social justice legacy associated with the spirit lf ’68 led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front.
President Mahoney’s May 17th contemptuous veto reflects the total scorn with which a corporatized CEO exhibited toward the seriousness of a Faculty Panel that oversaw six hour hearing, followed by two weeks of deliberation, dedicating their time and exerting their intellectual labor to fully investigate the arbitrary cancellation by Zoom and other social media outlets of Dr. Abdulhadi’s and Dr. Kinukawa’s online open classroom, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice and Resistance: A Conversation with Leila Khaled.” (Intercept article) Chaired by Dr.. Nicholas Conway, and composed of Julia Maxwell and Dr Christopher Yost-Bremm, the FHP agreed with the conclusions of the October. Faculty hearing panel that heard a similar grievance filed by Dr. Abdulhadi regarding the university’s violation of her academic freedom in the same open classroom.
In their decision issued on April 26th, 2022 (report), the Faculty Hearing Panel concluded that, given the harm the university caused to the two professors, SFSU should “issue a public apology to Drs. Abdulhadi and Kinukawa for failing to uphold their right to academic freedom . . develop a workaround from Zoom for delivery of the event (or similarly situated events)“. The FHP stressed the need “to avoid disruption of academic scholarship and teaching.”
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 Academic Engagement Network (AEN) (article), Hillel, and the Lawfare Project (article).
In the ruling on Dr. Abdulhadi’s grievance issued on October 21, 2021 (report), which was similarly vetoed by President Mahoney three weeks later, 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.” Furthermore, the panel ordered the university to provide remedy in the form of a public apology to Dr. Abdulhadi and to provide “a site for rescheduling the event with Leila Khaled on an alternate platform, without interference.”
President Mahoney similarly rejected a second unanimous Faculty Hearing Panel decision filed by Dr. Abdulhadi that found SFSU to be in breach of her hiring contract and fostered a hostile work environment to pressure her to give up AMED Studies (report). The Faculty Hearing Committee supported Dr. Abdulhadi and upheld AMED’s independence and integrity.
In that case, President Mahoney’s decision reflects the SFSU Administration’s systematic engagement in character assasination of Dr. Abdulhadi. As the Faculty Hearing Panel ruled, 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.”
SFSU’s lip service to academic freedom and diversity belies the University’s consistent practice of supporting the Zionist and Islamophobic agenda and limiting Palestinian speech in favor of an overriding concern for its corporate bottom line. The three faculty panels’ unanimous ruling in favor of Drs. Abdulhadi and Kinukawa sent a powerful message to SFSU administrators, condemning their collusion with private tech companies, the apartheid state of Israel, and Zionist organizations. Clearly, with these three vetoes by President Mahoney, SFSU is continuing its policy of harassment of Dr. Abdulhadi and Dr. Kinukawa, intensifying its efforts to dismantle the AMED program, and confirming its complicity with Zionist organizations that seek to silence Palestinian voices on campuses across the country.
In protesting against President Mahoney’s vetoes, Dr. Tomomi Kinukawa is publishing the opening and closing statements that they read at the hearings for their grievance on 3/18 and 4/12/2022 (here). We, the International Campaign to Defend Professor Rabab Abdulhadi, fully support and agree with all the points made by Dr. Kinukawa in their statements.
Stand in Solidarity with Dr. Abdulhadi and the AMED Studies Program
- Sign the US Campaign for the Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel (USACBI) petition calling for the resignation of SFSU President Lynn Mahoney here: https://usacbi.org/2021/11/sign-on-protect-sfsu-faculty-members-academic-freedom-demand-sfsu-president-lynn-mahoney-resign/
- Support Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice here: https://donorbox.org/teaching-palestine
For the much needed edification of SFSU President Lynn Mahoney regarding Zionism, a look back at documented history:
Between late 1947 & 15 May 1948 by means of force of arms, several massacres, mass rape & intimidation, about 400,000 indigenous Christian & Muslim Palestinians were permanently dispossessed & expelled by Zionist forces of foreign origin as were an additional 400,000 by early 1949 for a total of at least 800,000 as determined by Walter Eytan, then Director General of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. About 25,000 more were driven out just before & during Israel’s first invasion of Egypt in 1956 & an additional approximately 225,000 during & after the war it launched on 5 June 1967. Over 500 Palestinian towns & villages, including churches, mosques & cemeteries were destroyed by Zionist forces. Palestinians’ homes, personal possessions & lands were seized & their bank accounts & safety deposit boxes were looted, e.g., Jaffa.
In 2004, when asked by Ha’aretz journalist, Ari Shavit, what new information his just completed revised version of The Birth of the Palestinian Problem 1947-1949 would provide, Israeli historian Benny Morris replied: ‘It is based on many documents that were not available to me when I wrote the original book, most of them from the Israel Defense Forces Archives. What the new material shows is that there were far more Israeli acts of massacre than I had previously thought. To my surprise, there were also many cases of rape. In the months of April-May 1948, units of the Haganah were given operational orders that stated explicitly that they were to uproot the villagers, expel them & destroy the villages themselves.’ (Ha’aretz, January 9, 2004)
Mahoney’s brazen abuse of her office, undermining a fundamental mission of a university, and directly betraying the US Constitution’s guarantee of free political speech, warrants a thorough investigation.