The Birth of Palestine Solidarity Activism at George Mason University
by Tareq Radi
Janet
McMahon: I’m Janet McMahon, the managing editor of the
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. For those of you who
are still print-oriented, our next issue will have the complete
transcripts of today’s conference. Videos of the panels and keynote
speakers are available on YouTube and at the conference website,
www.IsraelsInfluence.org.
Our first panel this afternoon will address efforts to counter
Israel’s influence in various venues, beginning with college and
university campuses. So I’d like to open by introducing Tareq Radi,
a Palestinian-American organizer based here in Washington, DC. Tareq
graduated with a BS in finance from George Mason University in
Northern Virginia, where he was a founding member of GMU’s Students
Against Israeli Apartheid, or SAIA. He’s currently the public
affairs coordinator at Georgetown University’s Center for
Contemporary Arab Studies. Under the umbrella of the Arab Studies
Institute, he’s leading an initiative to mine historical and
contemporary documents related to the Palestinian solidarity
movement in the United States. The work will culminate in a series
of databases aimed at studying the U.S.-based movement, and offering
researchers and advocates alike a critical resource. He intends to
pursue graduate school, with hopes of developing and conducting
research on resistance economies. Please join me in welcoming Tareq
Radi.
Tareq Radi: So before I begin my talk, I’d just like to thank the
Washington Report and the Institute for Research for
hosting today’s event. Thank you to Delinda and Grant for the
invitation and all that you all have been doing, and to the staff
that made today possible. I would especially like to thank the
workers of the National Press Club who have been working so
tirelessly to make this venue such a nice venue that we’re sitting
in today.
As we walk through the main atrium of George Mason University
Student Center, you’ll notice two parallel rows of banners splitting
the cafeteria in two. But the banners that you’ll see are things
you’ll kind of expect to see at any university—slogans of Patriot
pride, advocating for the different university services, things like
that. But there’s one banner in particular that always seems to
catch the attention of passersby. Because of our banner’s presence,
one might assume that, historically, George Mason University has
embraced a politically radical climate. But you only need to go back
three years to see it’s quite the contrary, actually.
What I’d like to
talk about today is going back in these three years and observing
the shift in discourse on Palestine and also the emergence of
student groups that are committed to radical politics.
GMU’s Students Against Israeli Apartheid first formed as an ad hoc
committee during Israel’s Operation Pillar of Cloud. While an SJP
chapter already existed on our campus, they were ardently anti-BDS,
and thought protests to be too radical.
Now, this is a symptom of being within the Beltway, you know,
something I call Beltway syndrome. It also could be attributed to a
number of other factors, obviously. George Mason University is one
of the fifth most militarized campuses in the U.S. So there’s a lot
of things that will contribute to this. To discuss the effects of
Beltway syndrome would take an entirely different talk.
So we set out to establish an organization that would address the
issue of Palestine without making appeals to authority. Come January
of 2013, we had completed the requirements to become a registered
student organization, and all that was left to us was to wait for
our application to be approved.
From its inception, SAIA faced tremendous discrimination from the
GMU’s administration. Every action we took on campus was met with
immediate response from the administration. Now, before we were ever
granted our club status, we were actually threated with termination.
Now, the administration’s tactics to silence critiques of Zionism
can be divided into two phases—the first phase being an outward
denial of rights without plausible justification, and the second
phase employed a series of policy reforms that aimed to circumscribe
the agency and reach of our group on campus. Now, these repressive
tactics exercised during the second phase would reveal a set of
double standards applied to Palestine solidarity groups that we see
constantly on different campuses. For this reason, I believe it’s
important to examine these policies and challenge these reforms,
because they aim to centralize power within the administration—and
by doing that, administrators are able to prohibit movement building
of any kind, whether it’s Palestine-related or for other groups.
So, basically, this would end up backfiring on the university. As
they started to restrict all of these policies that were aimed to
restrict SAIA, what ended happening is it created a political
consciousness amongst the student body.
And before I end my talk, I’m going to come back to this a little
bit and discuss some of the larger challenges of social movements on
campuses today. You know, while I believe that the double standard
for Palestine exists and I think it’s very real—that threat—I don’t
want to exceptionalize our cause. I think the issue of Palestine is
representative of a change that threatens the status quo and
encompasses values that could destroy the foundations upon which
repressive institutions are built. So with that, let me start.
One of the first steps we took to change the political climate at
GMU was initiating an educational program. We believe that education
was a necessary component to engaging and politicizing the student
body, and that without it they would not participate on our
political actions. Now, despite not being a student organization
with access to space, we hosted weekly meetings in a small study
room in the library. As students began to feel empowered through the
readings, word spread and eventually we could no longer cram into
these small study rooms.
Now, because the university had frozen our application, we were
forced to meet outside. While this was an inconvenience, it actually
turned out to be a subversive act that would fuel the university’s
overall discomfort by our existence. Our outdoor meetings were a
public display of a growing movement to reclaim space, even if we
didn’t realize it at the time. And again, this is not exclusive to
Palestine. We felt this subversive act in Ferguson, in Baltimore, in
response to the National Guard’s curfew. We watched this unfold in
the protracted process of the Arab uprisings, and we were inspired
by the students at Mizzou, who made their voices heard in front of
the administration. And there are countless examples of this
changing tide that is occurring, not just on campuses but globally.
Now, through this educational program the students became empowered
to challenge their professors and peers who either supported Zionism
or claimed neutrality. Because we refused to normalize with Zionist
groups on campus in any way, we were accused of being dogmatic and
divisive.
Now, institutions, whether they be academic or nonprofit, they often
try to hide behind this idea of objectivity, which actually
entrenches a culture of mediocrity and actually supports oppression
and seeks to protect the status quo.
As Fanon asserts, “for the colonized subject, subjectivity is always
used against him.” But we need not to be colonized to have
objectivity serve as a tool of repression toward us. And I say this
so that we always question ourselves when we attempt to be objective
in these circumstances. Keeping this in mind allows us to be aware
of where we stand in terms of power. Through this analysis we were
able to cultivate a culture on campus that not only rejected Zionist
normalization but challenged the residual effects of objectivity,
one of them being victim blaming. There are a lot of other
intersections that we can address.
In the case of GMU, our commitment to anti-normalization served to
isolate Zionist groups on campus. During my time there, the only
time Zionist groups would emerge was in response to Palestinian
organizing. And because we refused to engage with them in official
fora, much of the campus community rejected the false parity of
Israelis and Palestinians being on equal sides, and kind of the
myths of Zionism and the origin of the project.
Now, I attribute much of SAIA’s success in the first year at least
toward our dismantling of this false parity. But education for the
sake of education alone is not enough. If you’re not putting people
and galvanizing people into political action, you’re really just
pontificating and sitting in these rooms. And it’s fun to talk
theory, but we wanted to see material change. We wanted to see ways
that we can actually support our allies, where people can feel
empowered and have agency. So the first thing that we started was
our Sabra Campaign, which was to de-shelve Sabra [hummus] on the
campus’ cafeteria.
As we collected hundreds of signatures, the university continued to
crack down on us, but we were unwavering on our efforts. One of the
repressive tactics the administration deployed was to restrict the
areas on campus that were considered free-speech zones. Eventually,
the only area on campus that was considered a free-speech zone was
in the middle of campus—which, if you could imagine trying to flyer
or organize in the winter, how difficult that would be in DC. And
again, this is talking about this idea of reclaiming space. I want
us to think about that throughout this talk— you know, who is here,
who do you listen to, think of this idea of reclaiming space.
Then, you know, eventually, despite the administration’s
disapproval, we weren’t able to de-shelve Sabra completely, but we
were able to offer an alternative that actually severely affected
the sales of Sabra on campus. It’s something worth mentioning,
especially it was a way for students to kind of support us, like Buy
Hummus Tuesdays, and stuff like that.
Now, certain students took notice of the administration’s repressive
policy reforms aimed at circumscribing our reach and agency on
campus. As a result, students who may not have been initially
interested in the question of Palestine joined SAIA, as they saw
Palestine as a vessel to address larger issues in America today; at
this point, realize that SAIA needed to have more intersectional
understanding and analysis of the effects of Zionism and its role in
global capitalism and oppression. As we know, again, there are way
too many intersections for me to talk about in this one talk. So I’d
like to focus on how we began to better understand Zionism’s
proximity to power in capital as we began to call into question the
neo-liberalization of the university.
So our next major action would be a walkout on graduation—and this
would actually be my graduation. Now, the university announced that
Israeli businesswoman Shari Arison would receive an honorary doctor
of humane letters at winter graduation and be delivering our
commencement speech.
Well, GMU’s President Ángel Cabrera attributed Arison’s honoring to
the example she set as a morally responsible investor. It’s far more
likely that it was due to her $3 million endowment of a
professorship named after her business model. Now, while Arison
claims to be a socially responsible investor committed to
values-based business and morally responsible ventures, an
investigation of the operations of her company reveals she invests
in firms directly involved in the illegal occupation and
colonization of Palestine. Arison’s family’s wealth was built
through the direct dispossession and oppression of Palestinians.
Now, as we outlined in an open letter to the GMU community, the
honoring and speech given by Arison at graduation made it clear that
the university was not concerned with the experience of Palestinian
students and families who had been affected by this woman’s or
family’s presence. But more important than worrying about this
question of how did Palestinians feel—because, really, does anybody
care about that? More important than this is, we brought up the idea
of donor aid and the influence on curriculum. And this is what
started to galvanize people on campus who didn’t really even care
about Palestine. The administration stated that the professor of the
endowed chair will be dedicated to research and education as
exemplified by Arison’s vision. It’s deeply troubling to think that
an apartheid profiteer can gain a direct line of communication to do
these values to the student body.
And without going into that story, we were able to do the walkout on
graduation. The university actually facilitated it. And so I walked
out of the commencement speech with 30 friends and 100 or more so in
the crowd, and then we walked back in and received our diplomas. So
it wasn’t that we were punished, which was really nice. Again, that
wasn’t the university being nice. That was them being more afraid of
like what we would do if that didn’t happen. So I think there’s
something to be said about having rad politics on campus and not
making appeals to authority and constantly trying to appease the
administration in negotiations.
Now, the question of donor aid would ignite a discussion surrounding
faculty governance, centralization of power, and the role of the
administration on campus. The question of Palestine was no longer
solely a critique of Zionism; rather, it was a lens in which the
campus community could begin to understand power dynamics on campus.
And for this reason, I now understand, after witnessing student
movements on campuses throughout the U.S., that the administration’s
backlash against Palestine advocacy is not unique. Rather, it was
the typical response of power to those who seek to disrupt the
status quo.
From here I would like to shift our conversation and take the
opportunity of such a large and engaged audience to offer
suggestions but, more importantly, raise a few questions that
hopefully we can all work through as we leave this conference. I’ll
continue to use GMU as a case study, just because that’s where my
experience was grounded.
So in terms of organizing on campus, one of the ways we responded to
oppression we faced was through mirroring the tactics of trade
unions. We made sure to make every single instance of repression or
any violation against our rights—the smallest slight—the biggest
deal. This might seem like we’re picking benign little issues, but
the sum of all these issues is much greater than if you were to add
them individually. And I think there’s something to be said about
that.
Now, in thinking through how students organized and our interactions
with the faculty after the walkout, I began to understand the
relationship that should exist, and had flourished in the past,
between students and the faculty. For instance, at GMU, much like
other universities, the faculty in regards to self-governance have
as much power, basically, as students. They really have no power to
enact change within the university’s policies.
So I’d like to quickly rewind to one of our past victories, when the
American Studies Association passed the resolution to endorse the
academic boycott of Israel. So this was right before the university
facilitated our walkout, where they implicitly acknowledged that
Arison’s presence may be offensive to members of the GMU community.
The administration’s response to the ASA’s boycott resolution
embodies the discomfort that institutions in power feel as they
watch marginalized communities reclaim space and advocate for
self-determination.
After the resolution passed, GMU’s President Cabrera made the
following offensive statement: “Universities exist to build bridges
of understanding, not blow them up.” His line, you know, saying
this, insinuates that being in solidarity with Palestinians is now
on par with terrorism. Cabrera’s use of this damaging language was a
blatant response to the support SAIA received from faculty who
endorsed our walkout over the graduation.
Now, I’d like to read a small excerpt from a statement we released
in response to Cabrera’s opposition to the boycott. “Cabrera’s most
recent action is a deliberate attempt to stifle any form of faculty
organizing on the GMU campus. Today, we are fighting for the
faceless Palestinian academic, but tomorrow we may be demanding
better working conditions and pay for you and your colleagues. For
this reason, President Cabrera opposed the ASA’s resolution, because
the former will lead to the latter, and the latter is an
administrator’s worst fear.”
It will only take one year for us to witness this prediction come
true. Two prominent figures on our campus who actually had very
close ties with SAIA—and again we have no way of proving these types
of, forms of discrimination, because the university is not
transparent in any way, so we’re not able to prove it—but it’s
clear.
When you see somebody speaking at our first Israel Apartheid Week,
when we see the ODIME director supporting us and seeing that,
because we are a movement that is inclusive of everyone, that they
should support us and not isolate us like the university had tried
to do in the beginning, we can start to see the change that it has
on campus.
Now, we can observe that all it took was one small group of
students. We started as eight people just causing constant noise all
the time no matter what, wherever we could, just reclaiming as much
space. Even the voice and the noise, that is a part of reclaiming
space. That is putting out your affect, right, talking anthropology.
Today at Mason, it’s a very different campus. SAIA no longer hosts
our meetings in these four-person study rooms. The African and
African-American Studies program generously allows students to use
the Paul Robeson room for their weekly meetings, which is really a
beautiful room. It’s a really beautiful sight to see students
talking about these things in a room named after Paul Robeson.
For instance, the student senate, before the emergence of SAIA, they
passed a resolution condemning Sodexo workers and university staff
for going on strike because it was an inconvenience to students.
That’s to show you how conservative this university was that even
the senate is passing these types of resolutions. Just last
semester, they passed a resolution to abolish Columbus Day and to
replace it with Indigenous People’s Day. [Applause] And I think
that’s a really big deal. And these are just a few of the very small
instances of how we were able to change campus climate through
Palestine work, and it wasn’t always about Palestine, and I think
it’s important to note that.
Now, thinking about this, I’d like us to envision all of us as part
of a larger effort to reclaim space for marginalized communities and
for those who had been pushed to the fringe. If we come at these
challenges that we’re facing with this attitude, it would help us
fully understand the attempts to thwart growing grassroots activism,
whether that be in the form of anti-BDS bill, you know, repressing
students on campus, or the disgusting attack on Rasmea Odeh. All of
these things are one and the same. They challenge power.
It’s important that we fight tooth and nail against the backlash
facing Palestinian activism. I’m not saying this because I’m
Palestinian, but because what happens next will reflect how those in
power will address social movements at large. By challenging these
notions of power, we illuminate larger questions of knowledge
containment, governance—and we begin to ask who defines boundaries.
I’m not going to go into this, but issues of civility that we saw
with Steven Salaita’s case. Maria can speak more than I can on that.
As a social movement, we should constantly be asking ourselves about
issues of access and inclusivity. To be honest, part of me wonders
why I’m here today. I feel really upset that I’m actually breaking
up a panel of all-female panelists. It’s the only one that’s here
today. At the same time, I’m Palestinian, I’m a Palestinian man.
There is a dehumanization of Palestinian men. There is an
infantilization of Palestinian women, categorizing them and
collapsing them with children, right? These are things that we are
saying. We need to ask what types of voices are allowed to speak and
start addressing these types of questions. The organizers are doing
great. I’m just saying that we need to think about these things. We
should always be constantly pushing the envelope. [Applause]
Thanks. And I’m almost done, I know I have 15 seconds. So if our
work isn’t grounded in anti-imperialist, anti-racist, feminist,
queer liberation ethics, we must ask ourselves, what is the point of
what we were doing? We’re working so hard to, hopefully, create a
new world. Let’s break free from the paradigms that we’ve been put
in, right? We can do it outside of what we’ve been told, the ways
that we were supposed to do. We need to ask, who are the people that
we are making appeals to? Is it important to have everyone in the
room? You know, these are just questions that I’m trying to build
for the movement.
In closing, I’ll just implore us to always challenge who is in the
room, who are we giving voices to, how do those voices address
power? I think if we do this, we will undoubtedly dismantle the
institutions that are built upon our repression and that seek to
protect the status quo. So, thank you.
Janet McMahon: Thank you very much, Tareq. And please feel don’t
feel guilty—there were no women on this morning’s panel breaking up
the all-male panels, so you’re welcome here!
