UC-Riverside Student Movement(s) for Justice in Palestine - Palestine and the Assault on Academic Freedom (2015)

Aisha Salah: Hello, my name is Aisha Salah, and I am the president of the political organization here on campus, Students for Justice in Palestine.

Tina Matar: And—

Speaker 3: Woo!

Aisha Salah: Ah, you guys. And it really is an amazing honor to be asked to moderate this panel, especially since so many of my inspirations are Here to speak. The first is Omar Zaza, who is a PhD student in comparative literature at UCLA and a member of Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA as well, and also a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement. He also wanted me to tack on that he is personally a writer and a poet.

Omar Zahzah: So very quickly, I just want to start out by thanking the organizers of this forum, this event, and as well as various organizations, including Palestine Legal and student and community groups, for their tireless efforts in helping activists fight for their free speech rights and calling attention to state and university officials' attempts to restrict political speech around Palestine by exceptionalizing it through wholesale dismissal of advocacy for Palestinian freedom and self-determination, including BDS work, as nothing more than code for antisemitic agitation. which consequently warrants abrogation. And however important the question of Palestine is for many of us here tonight, what we're discussing has a broader relevance. Ultimately, what we as undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, as well as concerned members of the larger campus community, are here to tease out, I think, can best be reduced to a series of interrelated queries. Is the university not the setting where political ideologies and individual worldviews are to be constructively put to the test?

Speaker 5: Yes.

Omar Zahzah: Are there, and should there be, limits, in addition to those already in place, to the types of political advocacy students, grad students, and faculty can participate in, even outside of the classroom? Who sets the boundaries for these limits? And finally, for those content with the idea of a Palestine exception to free speech, how long before the rhetoric of repression finds another cause, and we're looking at a whole new exception altogether? Now, my interest in these matters is personal as well as conceptual. I won't take up too much time, but what I'm going to do for the next few minutes is is to offer up an individual testimony of my own experience of repression of pro-Palestine activity in various capacities. I first came to UCLA to start graduate school in comparative literature in fall 2012. It was at that time that a friend reached out to me and told me about an event being put on by a group called SJP, and I'd never heard of this group at the time, and as I joked last night, as I'll say again, I wasn't sure if it was maybe some kind of Sarah Jessica Parker fan club. I had no idea what SJP was. So I thought I'd give it a shot. The event was a panel discussion about HR 35, a non-binding piece of California legislation that had just passed recently. As Steven Zunes wrote in an article for the Huffington Post at the time, HR 35, quote, constitutes a serious attack on academic freedom and the rights of students and faculty to raise awareness about human rights violations by U.S.-backed governments, end quote. Very briefly, HR 35 purported to combat antisemitism on campuses, but many of the examples it listed as manifestations of antisemitism were squarely political in nature. For instance, as Zunz enumerates, claims that the Israeli government is guilty of crimes against humanity, that Israel has engaged in ethnic cleansing, and even student and faculty-sponsored boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaigns were included. Unable to ban political speech outright, policymakers sought instead to sidestep the First Amendment with HR 35 by passing a resolution that called on university administration to intervene in student and faculty political activity. I'd like to emphasize here that this is not the first time such a strategy would be used, and we'll come back to that shortly. So there I was, a new UCLA graduate student, attendee of campus political events, learning for the first time about legislative attempts to block student political speech and activism. It was, it was to be sure, an ominous introduction to the stakes involved in campus Palestine organizing. I was stunned. I asked myself, was it really possible in 2012 for a state government to pass legislation contravening student political speech? In addition to my own personal connection to the cause for Palestinian freedom and self-determination, I think it was in large part the urgency of the situation that ignited my resolve to take part more and more in campus Palestine organizing, primarily via SJP, and I knew what that stood for now. I became an active member in the organization, then joined its board in 2013-14 as programming director, and became president in 2014-15. I was fortunate to be part of UCLA's SJP at a time when the organization would realize many important gains, including the defeat of an anti-divestment resolution in 2013, the passing of our own divestment resolution at the undergraduate student government level in November 2014, and as always, the ever-humbling bonds of allyship and solidarity with other campus and community organizations and individuals dedicated to ending systemic oppression and marginalization. Of course, SJP's work was not devoid of setbacks, including more attempts at repression. In June 2014, an ethics pledge circulated by members of Jewish Voice for Peace Armenian Students Association and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA asking student politicians not to accept free trips from lobbying groups with a history of bigotry was condemned as bullying by a Los Angeles City Council resolution that calls on university administrators to intervene and even consult law enforcement where appropriate. The City Council resolution was authored by Bob Blumenfield, who also sponsored the aforementioned HR 35. UCLA Chancellor Gene Block and UC President and former head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano both released statements criticizing the ethics pledge. With 6 other staunchly Zionist organizations in support, AMCHA Initiative began its own campaign against the ethics pledge, calling on university officials to prohibit SJP's activities and predictably casting the work of SJP and affiliated groups as antisemitic and rooted in terrorism. That summer, AMCHA, a group currently leading the charge to have the UC Regents adopt the State Department definition of antisemitism, which does not adequately distinguish between criticism of Israeli state policy and genuine bigotry, met with UCLA Chancellor Block to discuss the potential for sanctioning SJP as a result. Now, again, we see the same strategy at work. Unable simply to ban student activism with which they disagree, policymakers attempt to get around the First Amendment by passing legislation calling on university officials to become defenders of the political status quo and take more liberties in stamping out student political expression. The suggestion that administration call law enforcement where appropriate is especially egregious. It constitutes a voting body of policymakers sending university officials the following message: don't like what these students are saying? Feel free to call the police. And those of us following the developments around the possibility of the UC Regents reconsidering the State Department definition saw a similar logic at work when Regent Richard Blum, husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein, threatened political consequences against the UC system unless, as Glenn Greenwald writes, quote, students who express the idea that— ideas that fall within the State Department definition be suspended from school or expelled. And repression has taken other forms beyond legislation. By this point, I probably don't need to explain to anyone what Canary Mission is. And I think, again, I've said this, and I think it's true here today, too, that a lot of us are probably already on it. But suffice it to say that the virtual blacklist, whose purpose, according to the narration of an introductory video, is to ensure that, quote, today's radicals are not tomorrow's employees, constitutes only the most recent and extreme vigilante attempt at slandering individuals for pro-Palestine views.

Speaker 6: Thank you.

Omar Zahzah: Blacklists against people critical of Israeli state policy are nothing new, of course. AMCHA's list of anti-Israel professors is the academic variant of this phenomenon. And on the topic of employment, it's worth reflecting very briefly on the euphemistic unhiring of Professor Steven Salaita from a tenure-track position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign because the UIUC Board of Trustees did not approve of his tweets condemning Israel's violence against Gazan civilians during Operation Protective Edge. And while the deepest toll was certainly felt by Professor Sleita and his family, I think many of us who engage in Palestine organizing and are in academic positions felt directly implicated by the decision, which showed that unabashed support for Palestinian rights and freedom can trump an extensive publication record and overwhelming student support. The actions taken by University of Illinois's administration vindicated the notion that no matter how established or accomplished we are or will become as scholars, university administration's disagreement with our political beliefs and what we say on Twitter, by extension other social media sites, alone is enough to warrant termination from an academic To say that bearing this in mind, as many of us prepare to face an already uncertain academic job market, is chilling would be an understatement. But despite the gravity of the situation before us, we're not bereft of options. Carol Sanders, a lawyer and activist with Jewish Voice for Peace, recently observed that although technically still in effect, HR 35 was, quote, discredited after coming under a barrage of criticism, end quote. And the LA City Council resolution condemning the ethics pledge did not pass, but was tabled following pushback from concerned activists and community members. In each of these instances, it was intense public pressure following coordinated mobilizing and media campaigns that made all the difference. Even before I first started coming around to events, members of SJP UCLA were leading the charge in terms of getting their side of the story out there, writing op-eds in the campus paper and sympathetic outside publications, issuing press releases opining on important matters, and hosting events like this to engage the public at large. We saw a similar phenomenon happen with the case of Steven Salaita, which, contrary to what UIAC officials may have intended, has now become a widely publicized issue Emblematic of the challenges posed to academic freedom in an increasingly corporatized American university system. Here, too, it was the refusal of— it was the refusal of people of conscience from all walks of life to remain silent in the face of repression that brought the affair in question to the fore. For repression of the type we've seen here often thrives on secrecy. It's when we're able to mobilize and draw attention to instances of repression, whether it be intimidating legislation, McCarthyist blacklists, or administrative punition, or whatever else, that we reclaim a position of agency and are able to redirect the discourse from the terms set by those who would seek to silence us. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that the extent to which pro-Palestine faculty and students will succeed in countering local repression at the university level will coincide with the extent to which such anti-repression work is reconceived as the attempt to take back the narrative. In this, blowing the lid, blowing the lid on clandestine attempts to squelch pro-Palestine work and continuing to humanize pro-Palestine organizers, activists, and the cause through narrative and social media will play a primary role. There's a lot more to add, but for the interest of time, I think I'll close here. I would just like to end with the following observation: to my mind, the right to free speech is intended to reinforce the limits of power. Make no mistake, what those of us who engage in Palestine organizing at the campus level are experiencing constitutes an attack upon this notion. In the end, it is up to all of us to determine how comfortable we are with circumscribing civil liberties to better accommodate the political ideologies of officials, administrative or political. Moving forward, I submit that our stance on this issue will have serious implications that reach far beyond the university system, up to the very possibility of societal democracy in the broadest sense. Thank you.

Aisha Salah: Next up, the amazing Tina Matar, who is the former president of SJP. She is a recent graduate from the University of California, Riverside, with a bachelor's degree in business and marketing. While in school, she was the president of the student group Students for Justice in Palestine and a founder of the Middle Eastern Student Center at UCR. During her time at UCR, she led many campaigns, such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. She wrote and presented a resolution to her student senate to divestment— to divest from the UC funds from companies that profit from apartheid in Israel, which passed. She also led a movement to boycott Sabra Hummus from the campus stores. Finally, she taught a class her final quarter about Palestinians in Palestine, creating a safe space for Palestinians and non-Palestinians to talk about Palestine and its people, as well as struggle.

Tina Matar: The title of my talk is Political Indoctrination or Free Speech: The Impact of Repression on Palestinian Students. So, before I begin to talk about the class and why I wanted to teach, let's first talk about the history of activism at UCR. So, UCR is the most diverse school in California and the 6th most diverse school in the nation. This makes UCR a more unique campus than most campuses because we have the ability to mobilize and gather students of color from every corner because we as Palestinians can connect our struggles of colonization to all of theirs. UCR also has a long history of activism. Back in the '60s, UCR led a lot of the civil rights movements, and more recently with the Irvine 11, 3 of them actually came from UCR, Shaheen, Tahar, and Khaled. So this SGP at UCR is not known for being quiet. Another reason UCR is special is because 2 years ago, the Middle Eastern Student Center was established. It's the first of its kind in California, and possibly the first or second of its kind in the nation. And the reason this establishment is such a great accomplishment is because it was created by students.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Tina Matar: The want and drive to establish it started about 12 years— 12 years ago, but it didn't pick up any steam until about 6 years ago and was officially established 2 years ago. Students worked hard and fought for this. So with that being said, I'll start talking about my start. I've been involved with SJP for 4 and a half years now, working my way up from the board to eventually being president last year. In my 4 years here, I've helped with 4 divestment campaigns, a deshelving campaign, many, many protests and demonstrations, and with more recently the PYM SJP summer school. With that being said, I'm going to talk about why I thought the class— why I taught the class. It was my last year, and I wanted to go out with a bang. I also realized Palestine is not really talked about in classes, and I wanted another outlet for non-SJP people to learn about the situation situation, to learn about the situation. And I heard about this opportunity to teach an undergrad class at UCR. And with the help of Professor David Lloyd and Lubna, we prepared a syllabus and got all the materials necessary. So spring quarter came, and the ball was rolling. I had about 15 students, and it was a great mix of students. They were from different backgrounds with different knowledge and levels of Palestine.

Speaker 7: Thank you.

Tina Matar: So, the class was going great until about 4 weeks in, when I received an email from a reporter asking for an interview. I was surprised, because usually I only get asked to do interviews if SJP has an event or is in the news or something. So, I asked him what it was regarding, and he told me that AMCHA sent a letter to our chancellor demanding my class get canceled, because the class is a violation of UC policy because, and I quote, it's a misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination. The class has an anti-Israel bias and therefore should have never been approved in the first place. And one major bias was because I was at the time SJP president, and according to them, SJP's purpose is to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state and work towards its elimination. You can see they are using the harshest language possible to scare the school into eliminating my class. But if you look at the syllabus, which is public and posted online, you can see the material is not biased or one-sided. I had Zionist authors like David Grossman and Benny Morris, Jewish non-Zionist authors like Nora Barrows-Friedman, Arab authors like Edward Said, and non-Arab authors like Stephen Salaita. So I had a good range of authors that our students would be reading from. After I found out about this, I immediately contacted the school for a statement or letter of support. They ignored and refused, but released a letter to the press. They thought the story would eventually go away, and if they, if they left it alone, but it didn't. It just got worse, and more and more articles and blogs were being written. The lies just kept coming. The lies just kept getting worse and worse, calling me anti-Semitic, racist, a Hamas supporter, And many things like that. One blog hinted at— hinted me in kind of like rape. So my safety started getting in danger at that point, and the school still did nothing about it. Eventually, I couldn't take it anymore, so I called Palestine Legal and got a lawyer involved. Then they started to listen. I was traveling to Palestine that summer and got nervous that I wouldn't be able to get in because of all this. They promised— the school promised me empty promises to help clear my name, but nothing happened to this day. They suggested I first change the name from Palestine and— from the original title, which was Palestine and Israel: Settler Colonialism and Apartheid, to Palestinian Voices, because my class was under the English department, and that's not a very English title. I decided to change the name because it's just a title. I'm not changing the content of the course. Just the name. And that ultimately backfired on them, making it worse, because they started using that as a way to say that I'm hiding more antisemitic things by changing the title. So in the end, it backfired on them. Then they had the audacity to suggest that I teach a class alongside an Israeli to balance it out. They suggested that a Palestinian can't teach about Their own history unless the oppressor is present and approves. It would be equivalent of having an African American studies class, but you can only teach it if a member of the KKK was present. The very idea was absurd to me, and I refused. Finally, they asked me to hand over email correspondence between me and Professor Lloyd to make sure that we weren't doing anything fishy. They suggested going through my personal emails. They published an entire report, and You know, made it public. So my privacy was also involved. In the end, the class stayed, but I had to endure more than the others ever had, and it got me, you know, eventually added to the Canary Mission list. So that's basically my story of what happened and the class I taught. So thank you.

Aisha Salah: Next up, we have Christian Davis Bailey. Who is a Detroit-based freelance writer. He graduated from Stanford University in 2014 with a degree in comparative studies in race and ethnicity. While at Stanford, he was active with Students for Justice in Palestine locally, regionally, and nationally. Since graduating, his journalism and organizing have focused on Black liberation, Black-Palestinian solidarity, and transnational solidarity between social movements, more broadly. His work has appeared on ebony.com, Colorlines, and Truthout. Kristian is one of the central organizers of Black for Palestine, which issued the 2015 Black Solidarity Statement with Palestine, which has over 1,100 signatories of prominent Black activists, scholars, artists, students, and organizations.

Kristian Bailey: Hi, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Okay, just before I get started, I'd like to acknowledge and honor the struggles and welcome any people, indigenous folks, folks who are descendants of African slaves, folks who are workers, folks who are migrants or descendants of migrants, pretty much anybody who's from a community under struggle. I'd like to honor and acknowledge your struggle and to bring that into the space with us. this afternoon. So, I, there are a lot of things I could talk about. I think the big picture of what I'm talking about today is sort of the developments over the past year in terms of Black-Palestinian solidarity have been beyond what I, as a student organizer, could have expected, and beyond what most people doing organizing work could have expected. And I could take a big picture approach to it, but I actually want to focus on how this played out at Stanford.

Speaker 9: Okay.

Kristian Bailey: over the past couple of years. And let me— just wanna make sure that this is on and working. Yes, it is. Okay. So, I'd like to start in spring 2014, when members of my SJP chapter and I convened a meeting focused on Stanford's commencement speakers for the year, Bill and Melinda Gates. We were already aware that there were existing efforts in the Palestine solidarity movement targeting the Gates Foundation's investments Mm-hmm. Private prison and security company G4S. So we strategized around creating a campaign on this on our own campus. Ultimately, we decided against pursuing a campaign solely as our SJP and instead reached out and invited students from other communities impacted globally by G4S's disregard for life to form a larger campaign. The result, Gates Foundation Divest G4S, brought together the largest coalition of progressive students we had seen since the Occupy movement 3 years before. We decided that G4S's operations in occupied Palestine would not be the focus of the campaign, but that we would include Palestine as one of the many injustices G4S participates in, including youth incarceration in the US, deportation along the Mexican border with Mexico, prisons and detention facilities in the UK, South Africa, Australia, around the world. About a month after mounting a campus-wide petition and obtaining direct contact with the Gates Foundation's board, We received news in late May that the foundation would partially divest from G4S, and then a week later that both the foundation and the Gates' personal wealth would be taken out of the corporation. This victory, which happened alongside efforts, international organizing efforts from Palestinian and migrant justice groups and their supporters, was surprising to us, but more importantly, it laid the foundations for the personal intercommunity relationships that would produce a strong wave of Black and Palestinian organizing on campus over the coming year. Of course, this followed the events of this summer, both in Gaza and in Ferguson. So, as the scenes in Ferguson unfolded after Michael Brown's death, images circulating on social media revealed the face of the militarized police state to an even wider portion of the US population. These images of people facing guns and tear gas while protecting their communities were not lost on Palestinians thousands of miles away. Activists from the West Bank and Gaza began tweeting not only messages of support for the uprising in Ferguson, but also practical advice on how to deal with tear gas inhalation. On the ground in Ferguson, Black protesters were surprised to receive support from a people undergoing a 50-day Israeli assault in Gaza, as well as a crackdown across the rest of historic Palestine. Immediately, protesters in Ferguson began sending messages and images back, waving Palestinian flags at their own demonstrations, And we saw the development of an organic solidarity between 2 communities bearing the brunt of state repression. So, returning to Stanford in the fall, RSJP had another strategic meeting. Should we continue our own divestment efforts by ourselves and focus solely on Palestine, or should we reach out to other groups representing other communities and attempt a joint campaign? Following the model that we set by our Gates G4S divestment campaign, we approached our allies in the NAACP, Black Student Union, MECHA, Filipino Student Union, among others, about a joint campaign. What we decided to do was create a coalition called Stanford Out of Occupied Palestine. Much of the heavy lifting in SOOP, uh, SOOP, S-O-O-P, um, came from representatives of the NAACP, BSU, and MECHA, in addition to members of our SJP. And there was overlap between these 2 groups. But by our— by the height of our organizing later in February, SOUP had over 20 different student groups that were advocating for divestment from the occupation. How we got to that point was a product of the escalating joint struggle on our campus, as well as radicalization in students' minds over the course of the year. So, during the National Weekend of Resistance in Ferguson, which was also called Ferguson October, A new Black-led group on campus called Silicon Shutdown emerged and organized its first direct action. Over 100 students participated in a slowdown for Michael Brown, slowing down bike and foot traffic in the center of campus to a standstill, forcing people to confront messages about the ongoing war on Black life. Mobilizing 100 students was a huge development in recent campus activism history, but these numbers only grew and grew as campus consciousness was forced to confront the larger events happening around the country. So, we fast-forward to the day of the decision not to indict the police officer that killed Eric Garner in Staten Island, and roughly 500 students showed up in White Plaza during the middle of our finals week to protest. So, during this rally, during the core of the rally, where everybody was really silent, feeling sort of the emotions of the room, The Black organizers made an explicit point to mention our need to reflect on state violence happening in Palestine, and to organize in response to that as well. And this inclusion was intentional. The students utilized the access of hundreds of students being in one place at one time to raise up an issue that was often viewed as controversial on our campus. This inclusion repeated itself during Silicon Shutdown's next direct action on Martin Luther King Day. When I, along with 67 other Stanford students, participated in a shutdown of the San Mateo Bridge as a part of a national call to reclaim MLK. We were reclaiming King's legacy of confrontational direct action and civil disobedience, and placed a premium on his later legacy of internationalism by unveiling a 70-foot Palestinian flag at the height of our shutdown. This was the decision of the core Black organizers of the action, and I just want to stress how in a time of immense crisis for our own people, we intentionally centered and magnified the Palestinian issue, because for many of us, we recognize it as a cause that is directly part of our own. But the commitment of Black students to the Palestinian cause simultaneously manifested itself in our campus divestment efforts that year.

Omar Zahzah: Thank you.

Kristian Bailey: Through a period of intensive internal education, we taught each other not only about Palestine, but about the other struggles represented in our coalition. What many Zionist students didn't realize when they raised complaints about our linking of Ferguson and Palestine was that Black students formed a plurality of the ethnicities represented in our divestment coalition. Through the efforts of this group, we passed a divestment resolution through our student senate by a margin of 10 in favor, 4 against, and 1 abstention. This less than 2 years after only 1 senator out of 15 voted in favor of our divestment resolution. While we had cause to celebrate our work, students of color, and particularly Black students, soon faced backlash from Zionist students and the administration. During the student senate election cycle, a Zionist candidate and core counter-organizer against divestment made an allegation of antisemitic questioning against the Student of Color Coalition during her endorsement interview. With regards to her stance on divestment. The Student of Color Coalition, SOC, is comprised of 6 student groups: the NAACP, Black Student Union, MECHA, Asian American Students Association, Stanford American Indian Organization, and Muslim Student Awareness Network. At the same time, Zionist students alleged that SOC forced all of its endorsees to sign a contract saying they would not do any work with Jewish groups student groups on campus. Despite testimony from 9 SOC students who were in the room against the Zionist candidate's accusation, and with assistance from outside Zionist organizations, outlets from our local campus libertarian paper to the New York Times to the Times of Israel reported that SOC's questioning of— on divestment was anti-Semitic, and that they had created an anti-Jewish blacklist. SOC's funding was threatened. And even though SOC revealed all of its contracts and there was no such blacklist, and even though 9 students testified against this one candidate's testimony, the damage was still done. Zionists had punished students of color for aligning with the Palestinian cause while attempting to associate divestment with antisemitism. And around the same time, our Board of Trustees made an announcement following a request that SJP had put in in October of 2014. We had submitted a request to our advisory panel on investment responsibility for the university to investigate its investments in companies violating any one of 4 criteria in Palestine. Do they participate in collective punishment, institutional discrimination, do they maintain the infrastructure of the occupation, or do they participate in state violence against protesters? Stanford's divestment from coal in May 2013 was the end result of students from Fossil Free Stanford, making a similar request to the same panel. We were convinced that the committee could not possibly investigate our case and say there was no wrongdoing occurring, especially with companies such as Caterpillar, G4S, and Veolia. And we were right. The committee knew that they couldn't say, no, these companies aren't doing anything bad. So they said, no, we're not going to investigate your claims at all. So our board of trustees released a statement around the same time as this SOC endorsement controversy, saying that they— we had— SJP had brought a request to look at companies that we claim profit from human rights abuses in Israel-Palestine, but neither the advisory panel nor the board of trustees, quote, sought to determine the veracity of those claims or to disprove them. Rather than explore such issues, the board focused on the questions of divisiveness and negative impact on its mission as contained in the Stanford In the statement on investment responsibility. And just 4 days later, our provost of the university released a statement to a similar effect. He said, whether the issue is Israel and Palestine, sexual assault and due process, investment in fossil fuels, marriage and gay rights, black lives, or increasing disparities in wealth, we seem to have lost the ability to engage in true dialogue. Dialogue is not monologue times 2. The essential feature of dialogue is not speaking, but listening. Listening with respect and then expressing in turn one's own view with clarity rather than with volume. So, our year at Stanford was sort of punctuated by these really beautiful moments of strengthening alliances and doing direct action with communities, different communities across campus, at the same time with a lot of challenges in terms of silencing and repression from the administration. So, that's just sort of the context that leaves the current organizing on campus at Stanford, and that's where I'll close my remarks today. Thank you.

Aisha Salah: And last, we have Lubna Qutami, who is a PhD student in ethnic studies at UCR. Her work focuses on Palestinian and Arab student and youth movements, and examines the ways in which young people are envisioning, articulating, and practicing transnational politics. Which exceed the institutions and discursive regimes that contain revolutionary thought. She has completed a Master of Arts degree in the College of Ethnic Studies, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative at San Francisco State University, and is an alumni of the last-standing UC chapter of the General Union of Palestine Students.

Lubna Qutami: Lubna is also the former International General Coordinator for the Palestinian Youth Movement, as well as the former Executive Director of the Arab Cultural and Community Center First, I would like to thank Professor Lloyd, who's just been such an amazing support for me personally, for Students for Justice in Palestine, for academic freedom work on this campus, as well as the many other faculty, students, and people who made this gathering possible. I'd also like to recognize that we are on stolen land. This is the land of the Kaweah people, and I think that's important for all of us always to remember, especially when we're talking about something like Palestine. And the settler colonial project that's dispossessed and occupied my people. I wanted to sort of take a moment and offer some thoughts and ideas today to help complicate our discussions on academic freedom and the way Palestine is taken up in the university. My talk is sort of about the history of the General Union of Palestine Students and the transition to the Students for Justice in Palestine moment of now. But I apologize to those of you who were here a few weeks ago at the Humanitarian Ethics Conference, because I have to return to 1993 and the Oslo Accords, because it's just such an important moment in terms of talking about the shifts in student activity, particularly for students, Palestinian students of the diaspora and Palestine student movement more broadly. I think it's so important for us as academics, as students, as laborers, as intellectuals, as people who are activists and artists, and who work on Palestine in relationship to other struggles against colonization or for justice, to always think about the moment that we're in, and to think of that moment on the backdrop of history, what kind of history had to happen in order for us to be here, but also to think of power in a transnational sense. So for— in order for us to be sitting here in this room having this conversation, about Palestine and Palestinians, what dynamics and nuances in the Palestinian political situation have to be at play in order for this conversation to even be possible for us. I'm interested in doing this because it's important to understand that the extraordinary measures that our opposition would go to to stifle movements of dissent and free speech on campus That those extraordinary measures, that those exceptions to free speech, as Palestine Legal has coined it in their recent report, they cause a lot of draining energy from us as students, right? We invest so many resources and time and emotion and labor in just defending basic rights to free speech, basic rights to being able to talk about Palestine in a university, which is supposed to be a space of free intellectual exchange to begin with. Not that it always has been for certain groups of people in certain movements, but that those extraordinary measures that take so much energy from us can't be confused as— can't be confused for us thinking that what we are doing on campus is the most we could do or the most we should do, or even for us interpreting that what we're doing on campus is the minimum of what we could do. I think what we are doing right now is the minimum of what we must do. It is the minimum of what we must do between the student divestment campaigns, the conferences, the discussions, bringing Palestine into a classroom, when for over 65 years it's been a conversation that has been absolutely flattened, particularly in US universities. And the GUPS history is a a really important example of how Palestine has been silenced long before SJP took on divestment work, and long before there's been such amazing institutional and resource support for Palestine solidarity and Palestinian activism on campuses. But I just think that that's really important because, you know, the exceptions afforded to Zionism, the exceptions afforded to Palestine and Palestinian and Palestine solidarity activism, isn't necessarily something that makes it more controversial or more radical. And I think that that's important so that when we're in conversations with our university administrations, we make sure to identify that we're just doing what is perfectly legal and in our right in public universities. Secondly, I also want to recognize that this conference on Palestine and academic freedom wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for the longstanding decades of culture wars happening on university campuses regarding so many other issues, causes, movements, faculty, and issues, from cuts to the humanities, attacks on faculty of color, so many efforts to stifle student movements of dissent, to privatize universities, to push out the middle class, pushing out people of color from the universities, and now new efforts to, at the very last institutions where we had student-run Student centers, privatized student centers, such as just what happened at San Francisco State University within the last 2 years, the privatization of the Cesar Chavez Student Center, home to the Malcolm X and Edward Said cultural murals. Okay, so rumor has it that Israel's losing the war of legitimacy against the Palestinians. In 2010, Richard Falk wrote that even if the Palestinians win the legitimacy war, there's no guarantee that victory will produce the desired political results. In that same year, the Root Institute, an Israeli policy think tank, presented a conceptual framework geared toward building— toward guiding Israeli national security efforts at the 10th Annual Herzliya Conference. The framework titled Building a Political Firewall Against Israel's Delegitimization presented 2 existential threats undermining and weakening Israeli The first, called the Resistance Network, emphasized the regional configurations of state and political forces. The second was titled the Delegitimization Network. The authors of the document stated that the power of a network is concentrated in its hubs. Therefore, Israel must identify delegitimization hubs, usually metropolitan areas hosting strong anti-Israel sentiments and containing a concentration of international NGOs, media, corporations, and academia. Within these hubs— and they said this, I'm quoting from them— such as London, the San Francisco Bay Area, Madrid, Paris, Toronto, and Brussels, Israel must significantly increase its diplomatic and public diplomacy activities. In 2015, former Israeli Knesset member Ayelet Wolf has contributed what she calls a book of public service titled Winning the War of Words. Thank you. Essays on Zionism and Israel, in which she acknowledges the grave threats to the legitimacy of Zionism being waged not by tanks or guns, but by a war of words, images, and ideas. She says, it is a direct continuation of the placard strategy of anti-Israel activism whereby Israel and Zionism are equated, whether in demonstration placards, speeches, or writings, With a series of words: colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. These words are not chosen because they somehow reflect reality, but because they are universally considered evil. This might be something that I believe Zionists to Palestine solidarity activists to Palestinians might all agree on, that the Palestinians are winning the war of legitimacy. That the Palestinians are winning the war of words. But does that mean that the Palestinians are winning? That's the question that I think we need to ask ourselves in relationship to a conversation of academic freedom and Palestine on campuses. And if we look at the transition of what happened in Palestine's student movement here in the United States, it's an amazing sight in which we can see where the power that we have now, how Palestine has become mainstream in so many ways, and resources have become available to us, but where losses had to happen in order for us to get here. So the General Union of Palestine Students was the student union of the Palestine Liberation Organization, founded in 1959 out of the Palestine Student Union in Cairo, where a young Yasser Arafat, who later became the leader of the PLO, began his sort of political work as a student organizer. In '59, the GUPS was founded prior to the Palestinian political parties, prior to the establishment of the PLO in 1964, prior to the PLO's shifts of strategies in '64 and 1974, long before the signing of the Oslo Peace Agreements in 1993. GUPS became what was the largest and strongest union of the PLO in Palestine and in the diaspora. With over 100 chapters of the student union mobilizing over 100,000 students worldwide. The United States had a thriving active chapter of the GUPS, but did not begin until the mid-'70s, because prior to the mid-'70s, Arab students were organized here under the banner of the Organization of Arab Students. So when we talk about what's happening in the Arab world, it's important to realize that that reflects on the ground in terms of how politics is taken up on transnational levels. The demise of pan-Arabism, Gamal Abdel Nasser, the shift of Palestine being organized institutionally as an Arab struggle into Palestinian national institutions that also took form in the Palestinian diaspora, including here in the United States. And that's when GUPS really started to form in the early 1970s. And GUPS's role really here was very critical for the Palestinian cause because, as Kristian mentioned, as Tina mentioned about the work of SJP here at UCR, being on university campuses in the US allows there to be a connection between Palestine and other anti-colonial liberation struggles. So making connections of the kind of violence, the kind of oppression that people of color, colonized people were experiencing, was central to the role of GUPS. It was a learning moment for GUPS. It was about bringing Palestine into a sort of shared space of internationalism with other student organizers. In 1993, when the Palestine Liberation Organization crystallized the peace agreements with the signing of the Oslo Codes— Oslo Accords, nearly overnight, the Palestinian institutions of the diaspora were crushed. And that particular moment meant a lot for the Palestinian cause and people, because it meant the rupture of the transnationalism of the Palestinian people, with over 70% of our people living outside of the occupied territories, in refugee camps, or in exile transnationally. And it also meant that the Palestinians no longer had a political home, no longer had a place where they could actually actively engage in the struggle for the liberation of their land, And the return of the refugees and ending the occupation. And that is when moments of Palestinian communities who found themselves, you know, contributing to this liberation vision and home for so many years found themselves homeless in the diaspora in so many ways, right? And that's when we persisted in supporting our cause and bringing awareness about the Palestinian issue in solidarity circuits, in loose activist formations, and then we don't see the rise of groups like SJP until the early 2000s. So now, 2015, we have come a long way as the Palestine solidarity movement, and particularly Students for Justice in Palestine, growing from just a couple chapters in Northern California to over— what is it, over 100 chapters? 150 chapters nationwide right now, right? And that really all took place between 2010, from the first divestment vote at University of California, Berkeley, till today, within 5 years. But thinking about that moment, the passage that I opened this talk with, 2010, the moment where Israel is interested in crushing the war of words, in trying to win the war of words, that was the same time that we started seeing Zionist student groups come onto our campus with strategies for pinkwashing, passing out condoms saying it's safe to come to Israel. That was the same moment where we saw Zionist student groups coming to campus soliciting Black student unions and giving them free all-expense-paid trips to Israel so long as they would endorse and support Israel and not speak out against the occupation. But they have lost that, and the reason they have lost that is because SJP, particularly within the last couple years, have returned to understanding that Palestine is not just a struggle where we displace our solidarity or our privilege into our pity and empathy and charity for another people. It is a struggle that is highlighting the struggles of our universities, highlighting the struggles of the privatization and repression of the university. It is highlighting the struggles of Black communities, it is highlighting the struggles of Chicano communities, of Native communities, and that is— those are the students who are building with other coalitional allies on campus, who are saying, this is not just a war of words. This is about bringing— speaking truth to power, but this is also about understanding who is bearing the material consequences of oppression, and how the material consequences of oppression have accelerated exponentially.

Speaker 7: Right.

Lubna Qutami: Once we said that the oppression was over, that the peace accords were signed, that the civil rights passage was signed, right? So this is that moment that we're in today. And I just want to say thank you to everyone who is really focusing in that particular area of work, of helping Palestinians understand our struggle as part of yours, and helping— and we commit to continuing to bring to the fore the Palestinian struggle in connection to all forms of struggle, particularly on campus, because we're students and that's our role right now. Thank you.

Aisha Salah: So any questions for our amazing speakers?

Speaker 13: So I asked this of all the panel members up there, we're organizing on campus. I ask this question as a journalist who spent 5 years living in the West Bank and a year and a half in Gaza. What would be the most useful for your groups on campus? What kind of media materials from the Midwest or from the Middle East to help you in your organizing efforts?

Kristian Bailey: The most powerful event our SJP had on campus last year was during the Right to Education tour, which was a national tour that I coordinated through SJP National that brought 10 students from Birzeit University, split them into 5 different groups across the U.S., and just had them engage with American students. That was single-handedly the most powerful event that we had, because students were able to connect directly with People their own age experiencing like a completely different set of circumstances. So we had like 115 students show up from every community across campus. And I think my answer to your question is allowing, creating the conditions for Palestinians to engage with us here. Yeah. And particularly for me, at least, I think for students to engage with us is one of the more important things that we can be doing, because it disrupts the usual circuit of speaking about Palestine, where we have a lot of academics or writers or just folks that are much older than we are coming to talk to us about their experiences, when the most powerful thing for us was just to hear from students.

Speaker 5: Students themselves.

Kristian Bailey: So, that might not be a great answer to a journalist, but if folks are able to help contribute resources towards making that happen, I think in-person connections are the most powerful thing that we can be doing. And just to add on to that very quickly, it wasn't just powerful for us as students at Stanford, but for the Birzeit students. All 10 of them had an orientation in St. Louis and Ferguson. And got to connect with organizers there. And so, they then went back to Palestine and not only talked about what they experienced on our campuses, but held educational events about the history of the Black struggle in the US, held silent protests in solidarity with Eric Garner and Michael Brown. And so, it was a reciprocal relationship that allowed students in both places to elevate their organizing efforts.

Speaker 6: Just a quick follow-up.

Kristian Bailey: Through NSJP, and through regional chapters would also contribute as much as they could.

Speaker 6: Just a follow-up to his question, would it help to do a workshop on how to write letters to the editor and press releases and something like this?

Omar Zahzah: Um, so is that— that's good, right? Okay. Um, well, I think personally, um, this is kind of what I tried to touch on. Like, the more that, you know, people in SJP really put themselves forward in the media, the better. And we found that that's always had a really positive impact. But I think that sometimes, um, certain, you know, some chapters can be more reluctant than others to do it. Like, I was fortunate that when I came on, you know, I was around people who were already really doing that, and so I got sort of trained under them, getting really into the habit of, you know, every time something negative happens, make sure you're plugging it, make sure you're reaching out to sympathetic publications, outside publications, letting them know that this is happening on our campus, we need the public to know about it, making sure that you're always writing press releases whenever something happens, making sure that you're training your members on really making sure that they stay in touch, you know, with publications like the campus paper, with you know, writing things as quickly and as timely as possible in response to various incidents. I think those are really important skills to have and to spread out. So I definitely, I personally do believe that some kind of, you know, media workshops are always a plus, for sure.

Speaker 9: My question is for Christian, is it? Repeatedly during your presentation, you used the term Zionist. Could you define it from your point of view?

Kristian Bailey: Yeah, I think it's just the students and administrators who support the Zionist project in Israel, which is the colonization of the land for— primarily for European Jewish people.

Speaker 9: So your definition of Zionism would be what?

Kristian Bailey: I just defined it.

Speaker 9: Well, you talked about people who— go back and repeat that.

Kristian Bailey: Basically, people who support the project of Zionism, which has been a history of colonization, settler colonization, primarily of European Jews on historic Palestine.

Speaker 3: Thank you.

Speaker 9: It's not, not really a good definition, but go ahead. Uh, yeah, I think we can pass it to the questioner. Zionism is a movement Dedicated toward the reestablishment of a Jewish state in its ancient homeland. And since 1948, it has been that movement which has dedicated itself to the preservation of Israel. You use the term Zionist in a, I think, a much broader sense, embracing people who may agree or disagree with certain policies. That's not really the definition of Zionism.

Speaker 5: No, I know.

Speaker 9: The term originated with the word Zion.

Speaker 6: So I'm interested in knowing how we can translate our successes here, the winning the war on words here into an improvement if not necessarily a success quite yet but an improvement on the circumstances on the ground. And it is something that I think a lot of us think about a lot like, you know, I mean we celebrate We celebrate conferences like that. We celebrate the support, the intersectionality, the analysis that's coming out of moments like this. But how do we translate those moments into an improvement when, as Rukna pointed out, what we're seeing is actually— as all of us know— is ever harsher circumstances on the ground in Palestine, or even here, you know, not just in Palestine?

Speaker 5: Wow.

Aisha Salah: Good question.

Lubna Qutami: I might be saying something that's like completely useless and not very politically mature, but— That would be a first for me. I just, I mean, I think one thing that could be like really valuable is like knowing when to celebrate and who we're celebrating in front of. Like, I've been around so many young Palestinians and Arabs who are in SJP That just feel like running out of a room when everyone's, like, celebrating a divestment bill. And I think the reason is because they feel like we're working so hard to legitimize our struggle, but in the end, what are we actually doing for our struggle? So just maybe, like, being more thoughtful and mindful about, like, different positions of power within our organizing spaces is definitely something that can work to empower the people who are most impacted. Thank you. By the conditions that we're talking about. And if they feel like they have more resources at their disposal, if they feel they have more confidence and more of a— more rights and responsibilities to assume their role, either in SJP spaces or in other organizing spaces, then that means that they will have the energy to keep fighting, even when repression and, you know, bullying tactics and, you know, Things that try to scare them off or threaten their careers, you know, are at play. That's just one thing I think is important.

Speaker 5: I was in Cairo recently at a youth festival, and one of the things that I learned from one of the Cairo youth groups was that they've set up a website called Daily Victories, and mainly because Morale is so low in Egypt now because of the, you know, the collapse of the revolution. But people are doing a lot of things on the ground and having little victories every day. And so I'm just suggesting but also asking if you think that would be one of the many effective and fairly simple things that you could do.

Kristian Bailey: Thank you.

Lubna Qutami: Yeah, the daily victories is what's keeping the momentum high. I mean, I think, like, the resources at our disposal, that we wouldn't have won so many victories, I think, if people didn't think it was possible. And people thought it was possible after what happened at one university and the next and the next. So I think, like, anything that can Network organizers with each other or the victories? Yeah, I mean, you guys, I think, were more involved in it.

Omar Zahzah: Well, I mean, I think definitely keeping record of the victories is really— is important for maintaining a certain kind of momentum and for projecting a certain kind of narrative out there that, you know, despite all of the obstacles, there is, you know, still some kind of a triumph that's taking place. But I think It also gets a little bit— sometimes it gets more complicated, because I think Lubna's previous comment really got at this, this idea of like, what is divestment? What is it supposed to be? What does it represent? And what does it really affect? I think that the farther along I've gotten in organizing, the more I've realized like the importance of kind of straddling that larger awareness of realizing the situation at large in relation to, you know, the more local victories that you have. Not to say that you need to dissociate them from from each other completely, but that I do think it is important to maintain a certain kind of gravity toward the work that you're doing. Like, it is important. It's the very least that you could be doing that you need to be doing. But at the same time, there's still so much more. And so I think that while it is important in a very practical sense to keep a list of those to let people know exactly, you know, hey, these are all the gains that have been happening despite all the things they've been trying to do to shut them down, it is also important maybe Not to become so enamored by them that you kind of do lose sight of the larger picture. Because I think sometimes, because there are so many obstacles and because you can become so sort of overwhelmed, you know, with when you do have a victory, sometimes people can make the mistake of letting the space, of letting the organization, of letting the position in the organization kind of become the end-all be-all, when in reality it's not, right?

Kristian Bailey: Thank you.

Speaker 7: On that note, I would like to ask, given the amazing stories you've all shared, and particularly, Kristian and Lubna, your emphasis on accountability among people in solidarity with one another, both Palestinians accountable to their allies here in the States, the communities of color here, And vice versa. This may not be answerable. I'm very nervous about asking this question, so feel free to, like, think on it. We can chat later on in the conference. But the NYC SJP's recent statement— I know, I saw it too. You knew it was coming. Which I have to say I was a fan of for opening up conversation, even though I don't agree with all of its content. What, I guess, as SJP, organizers yourselves, um, what are some of the, I guess, thoughts you've had in encountering this and the ensuing debate around it? Again, you don't have to answer that right now.

Aisha Salah: If you would like to fill us in on what that contained, that would be great as well.

Lubna Qutami: I don't know, I don't know if we have the same opinion.

Speaker 7: Should I just—

Lubna Qutami: should like—

Kristian Bailey: Yeah, we, we can chat, chat later if you'd like.

Lubna Qutami: I mean—

Kristian Bailey: No, go ahead.

Lubna Qutami: Do you want to go ahead? Okay. I think it's going to be a conversation that is going to come up later in this conference, because I've already spoken with someone who plans on discussing it. I think it's really complicated, because there was an emphasis and an effort to try to hold NYCSJP accountable. I'm sorry, for those of you who don't know, NYCSJP The NAACP released a statement called The BDS Ceiling. It was kind of like an ultra-left critique of BDS as not being enough or being part of the system oppressing us kind of thing. And, you know, just kind of— and some people interpreted it as sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, delegitimizing the role of BDS in the work that we can do here, the role of the Boycott National Council. So it created a sort of big controversy within—

Speaker 6: Right.

Lubna Qutami: SJP's, as well as Palestine solidarity spaces. And I can say that I think that one of the biggest critiques was that NYC SJP is not a Palestinian political body, and so as solidarity allies, they don't necessarily have the rights to say what's the most revolutionary and right kind of Palestinian or Palestine solidarity activism, because they're not necessarily recognizing the colonial condition of the Palestinian people and the limitations that we're in, as well as the limitation of solidarity allies, as well as the importance of BDS and how it offers us something streamlined and concrete that we can do on the ground. But on the other hand, we also know people from NYCSJP, and they're young Palestinians who are really in like a place of warfare with Zionism in New York, particularly with huge kinds of repression on the CUNY campuses in particular, who feel that moderate ways of addressing Palestine and not addressing people of color relations and Not really understanding BDS as a tool and tactic of something greater is standing in the way of being able to build something more revolutionary. And that's something that a lot of people feel. That's not something that is just like a fringe group. So, you know, I think it's important to continue to be discussed, not in like a you don't have a right kind of way, because, I mean, you don't— you can't say you don't have a right because nobody has a right to anything if that's the case. We all have a right, or we know none of us have a right.

Aisha Salah: I mean—

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Lubna Qutami: You know, that's my opinion. I'm not speaking on behalf of any political body or organization, so I'm just saying.

Speaker 3: If I may ask a question, which is for all the panelists, and first, thank you, tremendous set of papers and comments. On the one hand, some of you spoke about how repression works as a stimulus to further activism. And certainly we know also that repression has been actually a remarkable megaphone for us. Those of us, for example, who were involved in the ASA boycott resolution found that actually nothing worked better for BDS than the attempt to stamp it out afterwards, because we got into the newspapers and you've got into the radio and the television and everything. So there is a way in which actually Part of the mistake, I think, that lawfare as designers are conducting is that it actually stimulates. On the other hand, you also talked about the draining effect, and I know for all the nice things people have said about this conference, I would much rather have been organizing a conference on something else than a conference that's involving us insisting on rights that we actually. already hold, but are having to now defend. So I wondered if you'd reflect a little bit on the balance that you feel between the draining impact of the attempt to repress and the stimulating impact of that attempt to repress from which we always rebound.

Omar Zahzah: Go ahead. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that that's The kind of push and pull you describe is exactly what a lot of us have been feeling on the ground in our respective campuses, in our organizing spaces. I mean, on the one hand, it is often a huge obstacle to have to overcome something like a piece of legislation that attempts to circumvent your rights to do something, or a malicious smear attack that comes out in a big publication. But at the same time, it does— it often can result in A victory that does more, you know, to off— you know, that sort of trumps what hap— what it was that happened in the first place. And I think the interesting thing about that is that it reflects that, you know, repression often doesn't really have a very cohesive strategy. You know, it's this very reactive— they see something, shut it down, shut it down, shut it down. And so, as stressed as you are when you encounter that, often you realize that you're able to overcome it precisely because what you're doing, you know, is something that's thought out, is something that's reasoned, is something that's, you know—

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Omar Zahzah: Vindicating what is, as you said, already in place, the rights that you already have. You know, there are narratives, you know, that you've already been working on. There are causes that you know and believe are sound, right? So there's really nothing that's— it's not like you're— it's not like there's something that you're hiding and you have to get better at hiding it. You know, it's all there. It's all out in the open for everyone to see. And what you're doing is just reaffirming what you've already said before. And so I think, interestingly, you know, often these attempts end up backfiring precisely because they really don't have any larger goal other than these very local, immediate kind of flinching, sort of, you know, knee-jerk reactionary logics that are informing them, basically. And so even something like Canary Mission, which you've sort of thrown around here and there, I mean, yes, you know, it's McCarthyist and all of this stuff, but if you actually read the site, it's completely incomprehensible. It's just fanatic right-wing, you know, it's ridiculous. I mean, nobody would take that seriously. You know, what does it even mean for somebody to be anti-freedom? I don't know.

Speaker 6: Do you know?

Omar Zahzah: So, yeah, I think eventually you see these mechanisms kind of imploding on themselves, and that's something to keep in mind for morale, I think, in the long run.

Speaker 14: On campus, is there— do you anticipate discussion about the S BDS sanctions? I mean, in the case of the South African movement, that was a clear goal and they succeeded. And in 1986, Congress adopted a law called the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. And there are people now who talk about the U.S. Arms Export Act and the Leahy Act, and the U.S. campaign, especially Josh Rubner, stressed the importance. But is there any—

Speaker 9: Yes.

Speaker 14: Discussion like this on campus, or is it restricted to boycott and divestment?

Lubna Qutami: Okay, that's a great question. It kind of is a little bit related to the point that I was trying to make. I'm not sure if it became very clear earlier when I was talking about Israeli sort of PR machines trying to think about forging relationships to sort of like make Israel look better and so that, you know, they didn't have such bad press. It didn't work very well. And that's actually right around the time that you really see an escalation in the Israeli leadership really focusing on making different types of alliances on a global level, alliances between other governments, particularly around arms trade and exports. So particularly since 2011, the Israeli army is now reliant 25% on arms trade and training local police officers, border patrol, federal officers on crowd control, surveillance, repression tactics, and really becoming sort of a leading industry in that. Because of that, that is giving students and community organizers Very, very clear material targets for local sanctions. We've been a little bit discouraged on the federal level in terms of sanctions of like ending U.S. government aid to Israel, because that's been kind of part of our work in some ways for a very, very long time. We haven't gotten very far on the federal level. But on local levels, campaigns to try to break local police department sister city agreements with Israeli sister cities, Or trainings, police trainings, Border Patrol trainings, creating research portfolios. Those are discussions that are happening amongst students, and it's actually projects that are connecting students and community in a way that we've been long desiring. So I think this S part is really going to start showing more now, not just from community organizations, but also from students. And I also want to sort of give a shout-out— I'm not sure if Irene is here. I know Jay's in the back. The UAW 2865 campaign, that is the labor union that is representing the 13,000 teachers, tutors for the University of California. Their campaign, or our campaign, because I'm part of the union, as is Omar, our campaign specifically was one of the first student campaigns that called for all 3 elements: boycott, divestment, sanctions. So we were asking our— Boycott. union workers to individually pledge to an academic boycott, because we're academics, as well as calling on the University of California to divest, as well as calling on the federal government, local government, for sanctions. So I think it's something that's coming.

Kristian Bailey: I actually wanted to answer your question, David. Yeah, so I just wanted to answer your question on the balance between Being drained and simulated. And I think that's a process that we went through directly at our SJP, because I mentioned in 2013 when we brought a divestment resolution, one senator out of 15 voted in favor of it. And that was incredibly demoralizing for us. And this happened, mind you, after an administrator came in and said, you know, senators, this really isn't your jurisdiction. You should have SJP defer to this Advisory panel on investment responsibility, because that's their job. And then when we did that, they refused to actually engage with us at all. So, like, just a side note on the rhetoric of dialogue being kind of BS coming from administrators. But besides the point, we spent a lot of that time afterwards just really thinking about how we were operating and how we were doing our work on campus. And as I said in my presentation, it was through the experience of engaging with other communities under struggle that we were able to sort of bully ourselves. So the work does get kind of draining at times, but I think having comrades and allies in other communities that are willing to take on the struggle as our own or their own is what keeps us sort of moving forward. And I think that's the case for SJPers sort of across the state and across the nation.

Speaker 3: Thank you.