Higher Education Labor United (HELU) stands with many others in the U.S. labor movement in condemning the arrests and disciplinary actions recently taken by a growing list of college and university leaders at Cal Poly Humboldt, Columbia, Emerson, Emory, NYU, The Ohio State University, Yale, the Universities of Minnesota, Southern California, Texas at Austin, and many other institutions against students and workers who have called for an end to the war in Gaza. These students and workers are engaged in organizing, research, and nonviolent direct action on their campuses and have been met with unjustifiable administrative action. In many cases, this has included calling in armed police and conducting mass arrests of peaceful protestors. We remind our colleges and universities of the need to respect all campus members, including students, workers, and surrounding communities. Our institutions must uphold workers’ rights, both as they are written into law and as they are guaranteed under union contracts, including rights to concerted action and disciplinary procedures.
A democratic higher education for the common good requires free speech and academic freedom, vigorous debate, and social inclusion. The current divisions on campuses highlight the erosion of these basic tenets of higher education.
We live in dangerous times. Reactionaries, including many in Congress, have seized on colleges and universities as sites of political struggle, targeting higher education workers in particular. Many in the leadership class of our institutions have chosen to play ball with this new McCarthyism by bowing to political pressure, violently disrupting peaceful demonstrations, and enacting harsh and undue disciplinary action against students and workers.
As higher education workers, we are keenly aware of the undue power of unelected, unaccountable administrations who prioritize political expediency and donors over our colleges’ and universities’ public service missions. Students, workers, and our allies are the last line of defense against this onslaught. Only together can we fight back against racism and sexism, Islamophobia and Antisemitism, and the deep inequalities that define not only our institutions but also our society more broadly.
HELU exists because workers in higher education across all job categories are recognizing the need to come together to reclaim our colleges and universities as democratic institutions that work for students, workers, and the communities we are meant to serve.
Echoing our colleagues from across the nation, we demand that:
- Suspensions and other disciplinary actions against students and workers related to Palestine solidarity protests and speech be dismissed and that related charges be dropped and records cleared.
- Student disciplinary systems not be used to enact one-sided suppression of political dissent or to silence and punish legitimate forms of speech, protest, and assembly. Any and all revisions to such policies and procedures must be democratically reviewed by faculty, staff, and students to protect the freedoms and due process rights of all.
- The rights of faculty and students to peacefully protest be restored immediately and respected going forward.
- College and university administrations must cease the abhorrent practice of turning armed police on peaceful demonstrators.
These events underscore the need to fundamentally reconsider how the U.S. supports higher education. It is time to democratize our institutions, to reinvest in them, and to put student, worker, and community voices in the lead.
We must stand together in solidarity with one another: students, faculty, staff, alumni, and our communities. When we come together in peaceful dissent against injustice, we build solidarity, strength, power, and community. It is imperative that we support one another in this moment.
***
What about the instances where there has been violence? What about protestors who are violating college/university rules as far as blocking areas and not allowing students to pass? What about all of the hate speech that has come from these demonstrations? Does HELU condone all of that? What about all of the anti- Israel and anti-American cheers and burning of flags? None of our Civil Liberties are absolute and there needs to be an accounting for unacceptable behavior and speech.
According to reliable press reports, the violence at protests that have now spread to universities and streets around the world has overwhelmingly been police violence. And contrary to Israeli and zionist propaganda that tries to confuse antizionism with antisemitism, virtually all the hate speech is coming from counterdemonstrators. And who decides what is “unacceptable behavior and speech”? Your comment mostly reads like something generic that could be written about any protest. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/letter-to-columbia-university-president-minouche-shafik/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=cc0946f723-ourlatest_5_2_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-cc0946f723-41146565&mc_cid=cc0946f723&mc_eid=ee23d5c5f6
During the Vietnam antiwar movement protestors *always* violated college/university rules, and engaged in anti-American cheers and burning of American flags and were right to do so. The Supreme Court, by the way, upheld the right of people to burn American flags. So HELU should condone and indeed support all that. Occasional expressions of anti-Semitism are bad, but Islamophobic statements, threats of violence against Palestinians and anti-Zionists, including Jewish anti-Zionists, are far more common and far more of a threat to civil liberties and human safety.
Good statement, as I would have raised similar concerns!
But the dissent has not ALWAYS been peaceful. It SHOULD be, but it has not.
With genocide going on, dissent should not always be peaceful.