UWP Lecturers Fw: [UCmobilize] please consider endorsement of this letter in support of Irvine-11/hate-crime:free speech etc
sbaringer at gmail.com
sbaringer at gmail.com
Wed Mar 10 19:43:52 PST 2010
This seems pertinent to the UC law professor Dan Simmons op-ed in the Sacramento Bee on "civil discourse" that was just forwarded to us by Cheryl. See in particular the third-fourth paragraphs of the letter, articulating a double standard in the use of the term "incivility."
----- Original Message -----
From: piya chatterjee
To: amalia at ucr.edu ; ctushabe at ucr.edu ; chikakot at ucr.edu ; sherine.hafez at ucr.edu ; alicia at ucr.edu ; tamara.ho at ucr.edu ; Piya Chatterjee
Cc: Kris King ; christine.gailey at ucr.edu ; Caroline Tushabe ; Jane Ward ; Marguerite Waller ; Tracy Fisher ; Dylan Rodriguez ; jodi.kim at ucr.edu ; Setsu Shigematsu ; ray.kea at ucr.edu ; Nigel Hughes ; Mary Droser ; Ralph L Crowder ; Ellen Reese ; chris abani ; Chris Chase-Dunn ; UC Mobilize ; Carole Fabricant ; Devra Weber ; Carole-Anne Tyler ; parama roy ; Paul Ryer ; Toby Miller ; Christina Schwenkel ; derek.fay at ucr.edu ; marta.savigliano at ucr.edu ; Priya Srinivasan ; Jennifer Hughes ; VP Franklin ; Vorris Nunley ; keith.harris at ucr.edu ; Traise Yamamoto ; Lan Duong ; Ruhi Khan ; Rickerby Hinds ; maurya.simon at ucr.edu ; Michelle Raheja ; Farah Godrej ; Karthick Ramakrishnan
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 7:12 PM
Subject: [UCmobilize] please consider endorsement of this letter in support of Irvine-11/hate-crime:free speech etc
Dear UCR Colleagues:
We hope you will consider endorsing this letter which will be going to UCR's Chancellor White and Vice Chancellor James Sandoval--joining all the other powerful statements from TAO-UCR and the Ethnic Studies Department.
We received endorsement from many people nationally and internationally and we hope that we can get more UCR representation as well. The appeal here is for "cross-solidarity" --and hopefully all these collective texts of support will help the students.
The version to the UCR Chancellor will go out on Friday so if you want your names on it, please send your names and affiliations to ucantiracism at yahoo.com
.
The version to the UCI Chancellor and to UCOP will go out next week--so we can collect more signatures.
Thank you for your consideration,
Piya Chatterjee
with
David Lloyd
Sunaina Maira
Majid Shihade
Steve Salaita
***********************
March 10, 2010
Dear Chancellor White:
We write to you with great urgency and concern about the UCR (and UCI) students who are facing serious disciplinary action for their protest at UC-Irvine on March 8, 2010.
We write to you from across the UC-system, the nation, and internationally. We write to you as faculty of distinguished universities and colleges (including your own), as graduate and undergraduate students, and as members of organizations working on human rights and civil rights issues both in the United States and abroad.
We begin by first by drawing out the spurious connection made between despicable acts of anti-black racism at UC-San Diego and on other campuses in the system, and the acts of verbal protest by Palestinian and Muslim students protesting the speech of the Israel Ambassador at UC-Irvine on February 8, 2010. That this connection was made in a public communiqué sent by the President of the University of California and all ten Chancellors is deeply troubling. (Please see the statement and analysis which spells out our position in greater detail).
We believe that the conflation of these two incidents at the highest levels of the UC-administration is dangerous in what it reveals about the double standards with which this administration addresses its own institutional policies around racism and community-based acts of racism. The use of the word “incivility” cannot mask this double standard.
In that light, we ask you to re-consider the punitive action being leveled at the UCR students who acted well within the ambit “free speech,” and who exercised their right to protest on February 8, 2010.
We strongly believe that sanctions against these students will undermine any efforts by UC-policy makers and administrators to bring about social and racial justice in the wake of these terrible events.
Yours Sincerely,
Majid Shihade, Faculty, Lahore Insititute of Management Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan
Leila Hananineh, Faculty, Chemistry. University of Jordan, Amman
Sunaina Maira, Faculty, Asian American Studies, University of California at Davis
David Lloyd, Faculty, English, University of Southern California
Steve Salaita, Faculty, English, Virginia Tech
Piya Chatterjee, Faculty, Women’s Studies University of California at Riverside
Andrea Smith, Faculty, Media and Cultural Studies, University of California at Riverside
Margo Okazawa-Rey, Faculty Emeritus, San Francisco State University
Carol Tushabe, Women’s Studies, University of California at Riverside
Marguerite Waller, Faculty, Women’s Studies and Comparative Literature, UC-Riverside
Nadine Naber, Faculty, American Studies, University of Michigan
Ramzi El-khater, Al Awda Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Lara Deeb, Faculty, Anthropology, Scripps College
Sherna Berger Gluck, Emerita Faculty, CSU-Long Beach
Lisa Rofel, Faculty, Anthropology, UC-Santa Cruz
James Fujii, Faculty, East Asian Languages and Literature, UC-Irvine
Rei Tarada, Faculty, Comparative Literature, UC-Irvine
Gianpalo Baiocchi, Faculty, Brown University
Chela Delgado, Graduate School of Education, UC-Berkeley
Yael Korin, David Geffen School of Medicine, UCLA
Chikako Takeshita, Faculty, Women’s Studies, UC-Riverside
Nancy Naples, Faculty, Sociology and Women’s Studies, University of Connecticut
Alliance for Justice in the Middle East, Harvard University
The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard University
Hammad Shere, President, Muslim Students Association, UC Davis
Muslim Students Association, UC Davis
Maya Ezzedine, UC Davis
Deborah Al-Najjar, American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California
Sriya Shrestha, American Studies and Ethnicity, USC
Alliance for Justice in the Middle East, Harvard University
The Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, Harvard University
Michael Letwin, Labor for Palestine. Former President, Assn. of Legal Aid Attorneys,
UAW Local 2325
Ana Sanchez, MD. UCSD School of Medicine
Barbara Mair, Community Unitarian Church, White Plains, NY.
Susette Min, Faculty, UC Davis
Basem Khaddar, Chappaqua, NY.
Pete Klosterman, Piedmont, CA
Jessi Quizr, American Studies and Ethnicity, USC
Madyllyne Vasquez, Community and Religious Development, UC Davis
Mo Torres, Chican/o Studies and History, UC Davis
Alison Tanner, ASUCR Senator, UC Davis, CCC Peace Education
Abrham Castillo-Ruiz, ASUCR Senator, UC Davis
Geoffery Wildanger, UC Davis.
US Palestinian Community Network, (USPCN)
Adrienne Hurley, Faculty, East Asian Studies, McGill University, Canada
Molly Talcott, Faculty, Sociology, California State University-Los Angeles
Dunya Alwan, Birthright Unplugged, San Francisco, CA.
Laura Myerson, Cortlandt Manor, NY
Barbara Barnes, Gender and Women’s Studies, UC-Berkeley
John McGillin, Fairfield County and Westchester County, NY. NY.
Sarah Emmet, Psychology, UC Santa Cruz
Nada Khader, Executive Director, WESPAC Foundation. www.wespac.org
?Mona Baker, Faculty, University of Manchester, UK.
Emi Kane, Member, National Collective, INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence
Fatin Abbas, Comparative Literature, Harvard University
Chiaki Nishijima, Harvard University
Jamie Baker, UC Davis
Tanya McNeil, Sociology, UC Davis
Terri Ginsberg, International Council of Middle Eastern Studies
Susan Curtiss, Faculty, Linguistics, UCLA
Michael Eisencher, Faculty, Laney College, Oakland, CA.
Lawrence Davidson, History, Westchester University, PA
Alexander Satanvosky, UC Davis School of Law, 2011
Nataila Deeb-Sossa, Sociology, UC Davis
James C. Faris, Faculty Emiritus, University of Connecticut, CT.
Jess Ghanam, Faculty, Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences, UC-San Francisco
Sam Noumoff, McGill University, Canada
Dorinda Moreno, Former Faculty, San Francisco State University
Sushil Jacob, Boalt School of Law, UC-Berkeley
Zahra Billoo, UC Hastings College of Law, 2009
Abla Harara, Plant and Microbial Biology, UC-Berkeley
Selisa Romero, ASUCD Senator, UC-Davis.
Marchez L. Shurn, McNair Scholars Program, UC-Davis
Sharon Luk, USC
Laura Mitchel, UC-Davis
Dennis Kortheuer, CSU-Long Beach
Scott Campbell, New York University
Suzanne Ross, Co-Chair, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
Robert H. Stiver, Pearl City, HI.
Statement of Solidarity with African American and Palestinian Students in the UC System
In their statement to the University of California community, President Yudof and the Chancellors of the UC campuses express their “deep disturbance” at recent events on a few UC campuses. They condemn “all acts of racism, intolerance and incivility.” Although they do not name the specific events to which they allude it is clear that they mean the disruption of Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at Irvine on February 8th 2010, and the recent racist actions at UCSD, including both a fraternity’s “Compton Cookout” event, encouraging students to come dressed as racist caricatures, a comment made on student television calling black students “ungrateful n—-s,” and the hanging of a noose in the library.
The conflation of these two incidents is an extraordinary and implicitly racist act in and of itself. The students who interrupted Ambassador Oren’s speech were upholding the most honorable traditions of freedom of speech and exercising their right of non-violent protest at the representative of a nation that has been charged with war crimes by the United Nations' special investigator, Richard Goldstone, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Such charges Israel has dismissed out of hand and without serious investigation. Israel is equally the object of more UNGA condemnations for human rights violations than any other country and has been condemned for practices amounting to apartheid by the South African Human Sciences Research Council and by many respected international lawyers and statesmen. The students’ interruptions were directed at these facts and at the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
They caused no threat or harm to the speaker or the audience. Indeed, they left the hall quietly after delivering their prepared remarks. One may or may not agree that the charges are accurate, but the protesters certainly made no reference to the race of the speaker and were at no point anti-semitic in tone or content. In this country, and on UC’s own campuses, effective public criticism of Israel has largely been hampered by political interests and orchestrated campaigns of opprobrium. This situation leaves few avenues for protest of its actions or of the one-sided presentations of its representatives that would not be deemed disruptive. Indeed, it is almost always the case that events organized on campuses to present Palestinian viewpoints are required to include counter-speakers or are subject to strident and threatening criticism when they do not.
The current threat of draconian sanctions against these students, sanctions that have not been applied to those who have frequently disrupted Muslim speakers or pro-Palestinian speakers, and the imputation of guilt by association against the Muslim Student Union, suggest a remarkably biased application of disciplinary procedures.
The incidents at UCSD, on the other hand, were expressly racist, directed at one racial group in terms that have historically been used to humiliate and discriminate against African Americans and deploying symbols that have been associated with the worst and most terrorizing racial violence. That these acts of explicit and intimidating racism were met only with a teach-in on racism until student action forced suspension of only the student responsible for the most egregious act, the hanging of a noose, speaks directly to the unbalanced application of disciplinary procedures.
The UC’s unequal response to these and other incidents at the UC campuses sends a very strong message to students and the wider community. It suggests that racism against African American and Muslim students is tolerable, a mere breach of courtesy, while political protest of a state that has been condemned by impartial observers for war crimes and practices amounting to apartheid is unacceptable and subject to the severest sanctions. One has only to recall President Yudof’s public condemnation of a panel of experts on Israel’s assault on Gaza held at UCLA in January 2009 to recognize that such double standards are deeply ingrained in the attitudes of UC’s administration.
The racist incidents at UC San Diego took place on a campus where the enrolment of African American students has declined to 1.3% of the student body and in a state-wide university where the total number of African American students amounts to a mere 3.34%. These numbers are not accidental, but arise from a long-standing failure on the part of the administration to engage in desegregation of California’s higher education. The replacement of the language of desegregation with “affirmative action” and then “excellence and diversity” has consistently sent the message that it is normal for white students to be at the UCs, whereas Black and Latino students must be there by special permission. The language of “ungrateful n—-s” merely vocalizes in a more explicit and ugly way the attitude that is in fact materialized in the UCs admissions policies. In face of such facts, the attempt to confront such acts of racist intimidation with an appeal to the civilized “principles and values of this University” becomes risible.
By the same token, the imputation that protest against the state of Israel, which maintains a highly segregated society and which has placed all possible obstacles in the way of Palestinian education, is tantamount to anti-semitism constitutes no less a double standard. The accusation pretends to promote tolerance but in fact discriminates against the feelings, opinions and right to expression not only of Muslim students but equally of many who are outraged by the actions of a state and do not conflate them with an ethnic or religious group. That the Muslim Student Union at UCI is coming under sustained attack both from within and from without the university again merely vocalizes a set of prejudices that the UC’s own administrative actions and statements implicitly endorse.
We condemn this double standard on the part of the administration of the UC system. Rather than condemn a handful of students on the prejudicial grounds of “incivility”, the UC’s administration must face up to its own delinquencies on the matter of racial justice and equal access to higher education.
The University of California as a whole must be held accountable as an institution in whose academic cultures of racism is erupting precisely because it has not adequately responded to calls for racial and social justice.
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