PSU-AAUP issued a brief statement on May 20 condemning colonization, occupation, and continuing violence by the State of Israel against Palestinians. There has been an upswell of similar expressions from academic and labor organizations across the country.
At its June 3rd meeting, the PSU-AAUP Executive Council additionally voted to sign on the following statement in solidarity with the Palestinian People:
In Solidarity with the Palestinian People
June 9, 2021
Signed by:
American Association of University Professors, Oregon (AAUP-Oregon)
Portland State University-AAUP
We support Palestinians’ right to self-determination and right to self-defense against the terror inflicted on them by the state of Israel in Gaza, the West Bank, and Sheikh Jarrah, and other neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.
We affirm Palestinian human rights in the face of illegal occupation, displacement, and what international and Israeli human rights organizations are recognizing as a degrading system of apartheid.
Just this last month the Palestinian people have been illegally dispossessed of their homes (Sheikh Jarrah), detained and murdered in the occupied lands of 1948 under the watch of the Israeli Defense Forces, detained and murdered in the West Bank under the cooperation of the Palestinian Authority, and bombed and besieged in Gaza. What the world is witnessing is a ghastly instance of the tyranny of the colonizer toward the colonized.
We express our commitment to exercising our rights of free speech and academic freedom in bearing witness to, teaching and studying the causes of this tragedy.
We are committed to engaged and honest conversation and investigation on the range of methods to bring justice to the Palestinian people, including all forms of non-violent protest, boycotts, and economic pressure, and methods of building a just relationship between the Palestinians and the state of Israel.
Those of us who are Americans also recognize and denounce the role of United States support and complicity with the tragedy of Palestinians. We accept the responsibility for demanding accountability of our government and an end to unconditional support (currently at $3.8 billion a year) for the ongoing aggression of the state of Israel against the Palestinian people.
At our Oregon universities and colleges, we commit to a careful and ethical examination of, and conversation about, our relationships with universities and institutions in Israel. We do not wish to be unwittingly standing in the way of a movement that seeks non-violent means to end the apartheid, ethnic cleansing, occupation, and violence that besiege Palestinian lives. We also commit to a deliberate cultivation of relationships with universities and institutions in Palestine and Israel that are working on paths towards a just coexistence.
We uphold that the Palestinian struggle is proverbial in its breadth and endurance, and indispensable in our commitment to end all forms of oppression and racism, including Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and anti-Blackness.
As scholars, we join a growing number of communities of scholars* in support for an urgent, and just resolution to the suffering Palestinians.
* We are aware of the following: Scholars of Jewish Studies and Israel Studies, Palestinian Feminist Collective, Palestine and Praxis: Scholars for Palestinian Freedom, National Women’s Studies Association, Association of Asian American Studies, Middle East Studies Association, Gender Studies Departments in Solidarity with Palestinian Feminist Collective, UCSC Feminist Studies, UCSC Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, UIC Global Asian Studies, UCSD AAPI Studies Program, UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies, UC Davis, UCLA, UIUC Asian American Studies Department, Princeton University, and Yale Ethnicity, Rights, and Migration.