Campus Dispatch Vol 2

Welcome to Campus Dispatch, an FSJP newsletter. Keeping you informed on what’s really happening at Portland State! 

This installment of Campus Dispatch is dedicated to the June 3rd Faculty senate meeting in which Ann Cudd was asked about her vague and repeated references to “vile” messages and epithets and how these vague references lead to repression. While we have included some of the responses to Ann Cudd, we encourage you to watch the video (linked below). If you’re curious about what she considers “vile” messages and epithets, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Dispatch From PSU: “A Disgrace On All of US”

For the June 3rd meeting of Portland State University’s Faculty Senate, twenty-one faculty and staff members submitted the following question for PSU President Ann Cudd:

President Cudd received the question weeks ahead of the meeting. At the meeting, she said that she would not say what the words and slogans are that she finds objectionable but that she would submit a list of them for publication in the meeting’s minutes. “From the River to the Sea” was on the list submitted. (Continue Reading)

Stephanie Wahab, School of Social Work

President Cudd, since fall term, you have consistently refused to accept or incorporate any Palestinian perspective or narration about what is happening in historic Palestine. You’ve not only pushed Palestinian perspectives on this campus into the margins, but right off the page.

While you state that you won’t utter the “vile” and “hateful” phrases graffitied in the library, I’m going to assume they include “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and “globalize the intifada.” Palestinians on this campus and elsewhere have told you directly and indirectly that these slogans, our slogans, are a call for our liberation and dignity, not an invocation to harm Jews. Why don’t you believe us? Why do you insist on acting like we are not reliable narrators of our slogans, our history, our liberation movement?

[prepared but didn’t get to say]

“From the river to the sea” is a statement about geography (from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea). What exists at this moment between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is Jewish supremacy operationalized through a violent apartheid system consisting of check points, operated by soldiers carrying machine guns, separate road systems for Palestinians and Israelis, a 30-foot apartheid wall, detention centers filled with over 6000 Palestinians being held hostage, and so much more. The slogan “ From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” calls for Palestinian liberation within this geographic area. Freedom is not a political arrangement; freedom is a human condition, and an essential pre-condition for any political arrangement.

Postscript

Here are some points for the PSU community to consider going forward:

1) Who benefits when university presidents claim to be neutral towards Israel’s complete destruction of every single university in Gaza, slaughter of over 95 university deans and professors, alongside thousands of university students?What and who is this “neutrality” in service of?

2) Despite claims of value neutrality as a position on the ethnic cleansing and genocide, in all of its forms including scholasticide (see point #1), PSU leadership and administrative priorities, communications, responses, and relationships suggest otherwise.

3) The centering of semantic violence rather than the actual systemic, genocidal violence, entirely enabled by American weapons and dollars, Palestinians continue to experience is not only a distraction, but a disgrace on all of us.

Amie Thurber, School of Social Work

Hello, my name is Amie Thurber, and I’m an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work. This is my first Senate meeting, and I’m not quite sure of the protocol, but it felt important to be here for this conversation, and I’ve prepared a few remarks.

I want to speak to something we’ve heard from the administration- that essentially although some phrases or slogans used to express solidarity with Palestinian calls for freedom - may be legally permissible, we should defer to what “the victims” take to be hate speech directed against them, and, for example, in the case of the phrase, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” -that Jewish people have said they hear that as a call for the annihilation of  the state of Israel and/or Jewish people. 

As a Jewish faculty member, this framing of ‘deferring to the victims’ has been troubling on several levels.

First, it suggests that Jewish people are a monolith - that all Jewish people have the same political orientation, the same beliefs, the same experiences - a flattening that, in assigning an assumed slate of characteristics to all members of a group- is itself antisemitic. 

In fact, Jewish people have been divided about the nature of a political state of and for Jewish people for as long as there have been CALLS for a political Jewish state. My great grandfather, Rabbi Irving Reichert, was a founding member of a national organization that actively worked to prevent the establishment of such a state. There was then, in the 1940s - as there is now - two predominant theories of change circulating among Jewish people. There were those that deeply believed that Jewish people would never be safe until they had their own political state and army - and thus they advocated for an ethno-nationalist colony for Jewish people in the land of Palestine. And there were those that deeply believed that Jewish people would be safe to the degree that ALL people are safe, and advocated for the creation of robust and fully democratic governments, in the US, and everywhere. This is essentially a belief in collective liberation- that none of us are free unless all of us are free.

There are of course many more than just two theories of changes circulating among Jewish people today - but these two are still very much in the mix - and which one you ascribe to impacts how you hear phrases like “from the river to the sea”. When I hear “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” from my Palestinian colleagues and students, among others,  colleagues and students I’ve known for years, with whom I’ve built relationships of care and mutual respect and understanding

•  I hear these words as a call for collective liberation;

•  I hear them as a lamentation for the collective injury caused by relationships of inequality;

•  I hear them as a hymn, a prayer, and a promise for a future Palestine/Israel that we have not yet seen, but still could come to be. 

I am not suggesting that others should hear this phrase as I do, simply sharing my perspective as a Jewish person who is part of a legacy and a contemporary community of Jewish people who believe that none of us are free until all of us are free.

Which brings me to the second thing that has troubled me about this framing that we should “defer to the victims”  - President Cudd, I have been in rooms with you where you have heard from Jewish people who hear this and other phrases differently from one another; I’ve been present as you’ve heard from Jewish people who feel the language is antisemitic and from Jewish people who do not, and in fact hear it as righteous - and I know you have received letters from Jewish people on campus and the community who say the same. But you have only referred to those Jews who find offense at this or other phrases. Why does our perspective not matter? Does that mean that you do not see us as Jewish people? This concerns me because there is a longstanding tactic of trying to silence dissent among Jews by claiming they are not truly Jewish. This erasure is antisemitic.

And this brings me to the third thing I find troubling about all this talk about what is or is not antisemitism and who gets to decide. It seems it would be simple enough to say the truth: that while there are some statements we might all agree are antisemitic - such as those denying the holocaust - there are others where there is legitimate debate and difference of perspective. That even the Association for Jewish Studies - the world's largest professional organization of Jewish studies scholars - discourages the use of a single definition of anti-semitism and instead recommends that universities familiarize themselves with three different definitions… 

But I’m not convinced that what’s at play here has anything to do with legitimate concerns about antisemitism. It feels to me like Jewish people - and Jewish people’s intergenerational trauma - are being used as pawns in a national political theater largely meant to delegitimize higher education. University presidents are getting hauled before conservative congressional hearings and accused of antisemitism by people with ties to white supremacist groups - these are clearly not people who truly care about the wellbeing of Jews. To be used and exploited in this way also smacks of antisemitism.

So - I am concerned about antisemitism I see circulating on our campus right now - and while this may include occasional language on signs, or slogans at rallies that strike me as demonizing Jews as Jews- I am particularly unsettled by the essentializing of Jewish people, the denial of Jewish identity to those who critique Israel, and the exploitation Jewish trauma, and I ask the administration to consider the degree to which you are contributing to this. 

Finally, what breaks my heart and shames me, as a Jewish person, is that not only are the horrific and worsening conditions in Gaza happening in my name, but that allegations of antisemitism are being weaponized to distract us from putting every available resource, every ounce of our creativity, and every minute of our generative thinking towards ending the violence and pursuing a sustainable and just future in Palestine/Israel. I urge you - please do not be distracted from what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank. I know we will not all be called to act in the same ways, but so much is at stake if we do not act.