The UCR Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) is a local chapter of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine. FJP is a decentralized national network of affiliated campus chapters whose faculty and staff members support Palestinian liberation through education, advocacy and action. FJP supports and amplifies the work of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) along with other student groups and campus unions. Currently, the UCR chapter of FJP includes over 50 faculty members and is growing.
On Thursday, Feb. 29, the University of California, Riverside (UCR) student governing body, Associated Students of UCR (ASUCR), voted unanimously in support of SR-W24-005: Boycott and Divestment from Israel and Corporations Complicit in the Ongoing Genocide in Gaza. This ethical spending policy applies principles from the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement to ASUCR funding.
Over five hundred students showed up for the vote. UCR faculty members in attendance, several of whom have been teaching at the campus for more than twenty years, remarked that they had never seen nor heard of such a standing-room-only turnout for an ASUCR meeting. Everyone who wanted to got a chance to speak about this bill. Only two attendees spoke against it. Both left shortly after their three-minute turn at the microphone. Dozens of people spoke after them in support of the bill. Students from a range of organizations representing different communities spoke about how important it is to take a stand against genocide and anti-Palestinian state violence. Palestinian students talked about what they are going through as dozens of family members are killed in one bombing after another. Jewish students talked about how violating it is to see a genocide conducted in their name and made it clear that Zionists do not speak for them. Students talked about how important the bill is as something concrete that they can do in a moment when they feel helpless before the spectacle of such extreme suffering. They talked about how resolutions like this are just what Palestinian activists have asked us to do. By the time faculty spoke, the students had said it all. So we let them know that we have their backs. And we do.
On March 1, a “University statement on ASUCR’s divestment resolution” appeared on the campus news website and declared “We strongly oppose this action and believe that it goes against the culture of open dialogue and discourse.” The statement continues, “The UCR community must be a place where all people feel welcome and safe, and where we engage constructively on complicated issues.”
The UCR chapter of FJP, fifty members and growing, rejects the UCR administration’s statement. It is dishonest, hypocritical and cowardly. Such a statement undermines confidence in the administrative leadership’s ability to represent the campus community, especially the students.
This resolution is, in fact, exactly the product of open dialogue and discourse. SR-W24-005 passed on the back of many years of student work. ASUCR previously passed divestment resolutions in 2013 and 2014. The fact that there is overwhelming support at UCR for BDS is the hard-won victory of generations of students who have been doing the research, hosting speakers, screening films, organizing teach-ins, showing up for conversations, staging peaceful demonstrations and engaging in hard forms of truth-telling under the most censorious of conditions.
The police and administrative repression against the Riverside 3 of the Irvine 11, who were arrested in 2010 for speaking out against genocide after Operation Cast Lead from 2008 to 2009, is one manifestation of sustained student dissent. The unanimous passage of the resolution before such a large crowd of supporters is a huge accomplishment. The administration’s statement is political propaganda that aims to delegitimize this bill’s passage and the work of its authors. At a moment when the UC Regents are attempting to ban political statements from department websites, this administration’s gaslighting is itself a glaring hypocrisy.
UCR FJP joins a growing global community of students, teachers, scholars, artists and educational workers of all kinds in declaring solidarity with Palestinian life and liberation, which are a minimal condition for truly “open dialogue and discourse.”
As importantly, we reject the legitimacy of UCR’s administration, which is acting as a de facto apologist for the U.S. taxpayer-supported mass displacement and militarized extermination of the Palestinian people in this historical moment.
UCR Faculty for Justice in Palestine want to be clear: the “we” of the “University’s statement” does not include us. We support the Palestinian call for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. We are proud of UCR’s students.
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