Center for the Study of Women Statement on Palestine Solidarity Encampment and Protests

In our capacity as Director and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Women, we stand with our students who bravely upheld their moral and ethical obligations to protest in solidarity with the people of Palestine and against ongoing genocide in the face of mob violence and an administration that has demonstrated its eagerness to use brutal police force against them. We demand full amnesty for all those arrested or faced with disciplinary action due to protest and the immediate resignation of Chancellor Block. We also demand that the next Chancellor fully uphold our rights to free speech, academic freedom, and free assembly, rather than punishing our exercise of these rights.

We decry the administration’s deployment of police in response to our community’s protected right to protest. CSW’s mission is based on women’s studies and gender studies, fields that emerged out of social movements based on principled protest. For many years, one of our core research priorities has been anti-carceral feminist studies, which links critiques of prisons, policing, and punishment to the development of alternative ways of relating to each other through care and mutuality. We saw inspiring examples of the latter in the Palestine Solidarity Encampment, but appalling examples of the former in the administration’s brutal and repressive response—a response that continues to the moment of this writing, as hundreds of police and campus security staff roam our campus.

In solidarity, we join our students in denouncing Israel’s ongoing campaign of genocide in Palestine. We commit to working collectively to create true safety for our campus and our community.  

 

 

 

Grace Kyungwon Hong, Director

 

 

Nina Eidsheim, Associate Director