CUNY faculty and staff: We reject the Palestine Exception to free speech at CUNY

Editor’s Note: This statement, published on October 17 2023, was drafted by an ad hoc group of faculty and staff at the City University of New York (CUNY). As of October 18, it has been signed by more than 100 CUNY staff and faculty.

October 17, 2023

We Reject the Palestine Exception to Free Speech at CUNY

We, the undersigned CUNY staff and faculty, strongly object to Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez’s efforts to censure expressions of solidarity with the Palestinian people. In advance of anti-apartheid rallies planned on multiple campuses, the Chancellor claimed that the organizers would “glorify Saturday’s [Oct. 7] violence and celebrate the killings, injuries and capture of innocent people.” This baseless, prejudicial statement reproduces the racist, Islamophobic rhetoric that has accompanied the drumbeat for war. In preemptively withdrawing support from a whole subset of students, staff and faculty, he has sought to suppress dissent at a time when the university – a public university and the largest urban university system in the nation – should be fostering open, critical discussion.

This is not the only time that the Chancellor and other CUNY administrators have scapegoated Palestine solidarity activism. Last week, Brooklyn College president Michelle Anderson capitulated to Councilwoman Inna Vernikov’s demand to ban a Students for Justice in Palestine rally from campus. She informed the community that she had “increase[d] campus security,” and encouraged students “not to come to campus.” When the rally went ahead off campus, Vernikov attended it with a gun clearly visible. These actions make a mockery of the free speech and academic freedom commitments these university leaders claim to uphold.

In rejecting all criticism of Israel, CUNY administrators are not only at odds with Palestine solidarity activists. They are also against the consensus opinion of regional and international human rights organizations that Israel is an apartheid state and a state that systematically violates international law. This is in no way to condone the death toll of the last ten days – there is no justification for the targeting of civilians in any context.

And there is also no equivalence between the October 7 military operation by Hamas and the subsequent military attack by the Israeli state, and certainly no equivalence to the systemic and the violence of Israeli settler colonialism. Israeli state violence has defined Palestinian life in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip since 1948. The dispossession of Palestinian land by ever-expanding settlements, the construction of Israeli educational institutions on settlement land, the routine incarceration and killing of Palestinian protestors, the eviction of Palestinians and destruction of their homes, and the gunning down of Palestinian and Palestinian-American journalists are but a few examples. The Gaza Strip, described by Human Rights Watch as the world’s largest open-air prison, has been under Israeli blockade since 2007. Everyday life for the over 2.4 million Palestinians in Gaza, 55% of whom are children and more than 70% of whom are refugees, is crippled by restrictions on access to food, water, medical aid, electricity, and basic life necessities. Israel’s attacks on Gaza in 2008-09, 2014, 2021, and 2022 have resulted in the killing of almost 4,000 Palestinians.

Over the past few days, the situation has worsened considerably. Open calls for the outright elimination of Palestinians are echoing in the United States and abroad. Israel continues its indiscriminate bombing of civilian spaces—homes, schools, universities, hospitals, ambulances—and has cut off the supply of food, water, fuel, and medicine. In just the past week, over 3,000 Palestinians, including more than 1,000 children, have been killed in Israeli air raids. This collective punishment of civilians, whom the Israeli government has long dehumanized and now describes as “human animals,” is illegal under international law. Now, in preparation for a ground invasion of Gaza, more than half of its residents have been ordered to evacuate. More than 600,000 Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes at least once since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Many are calling this forced displacement a second “Nakba” that echoes 1948.      

As CUNY staff and faculty, we applaud all those in our community who refuse to remain silent in the face of an impending genocide. We stand with them in opposition to Israeli occupation, apartheid, and war crimes, and in support of Palestinian liberation. We bear witness as CUNY administrators have caused students, staff, and faculty to be silenced, vilified and even criminalized when they speak or act in support of Palestinian struggles. We pledge to stand up to CUNY management’s attempts to censor dissent. We demand that the Chancellor, campus presidents, and all those in leadership positions end the repression and intimidation of Palestine solidarity activists and fulfill our responsibility to equally protect the rights of all members of CUNY.

Signatures in process. For a full list of signatories, click here. CUNY staff and faculty can sign on to the statement here.