Statement

As the Chair’s Council of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, we vehemently condemn the Israeli genocide and displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. We demand an immediate ceasefire, the provision of humanitarian aid, and a permanent end to the genocide.

The College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU was created as a result of a 6-month strike demanding an education that represents the histories, perspectives, and experiences of communities of color and Indigenous peoples. For the last fifty-five years, the College has offered a fearless and engaged education committed to social justice and a curriculum responsible to the diverse histories, cultures, and struggles of our communities. It has understood the fight for justice and equity as indivisible, not as analogous or equivalent, but as entangled. We call attention to the links in anticolonial and anti-racist theories, methods, and organizing. We see our rights to self-determination as inter-dependent.

To date, over 15,000 Palestinians have been murdered, over 60 percent children. Survivors are facing rampant disease and imminent starvation. We join the international community, including the United Nations, and organizations such as Jewish Voices for Peace, in condemning the genocide of the people of Gaza and the unrelenting apartheid regime of the Israeli state.

We condemn equating the support for Palestine with antisemitism. We also condemn the equation of criticism of the Israeli nation-state, its apartheid regime, and its expansion through military occupation as antisemitic. We denounce longstanding Zionist efforts to punish us for speaking out against Israeli colonialism and for educating our students on the links between our struggles. We refuse to be silent or censored. We refuse the logics of “washing” (pink, green, and otherwise) genocide in order to recast apartheid as democracy.

SFSU claims in its mission statement that it is dedicated to “supporting our diverse communityand advancing social justice and positive change in the world.” We demand that the SFSU, and the CSU system of which it is part, stand by this commitment by taking the following actions:

1. Support the rights of our students, staff, and faculty to advocate for Palestine and to teach and learn about Palestinian history in the classroom. Make explicit their commitments to supporting student and faculty rights to intellectual and political freedom.
2. Reject the doxing, incitement, and harassment of targeted communities and grassroots organizations for their opposition to the current genocide in Gaza through means including but not limited to publicizing their personal and employment information with the intent of inspiring official censure and falsely charging them of terrorism and antisemitism.
3. Support calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) and divest from and end contracts with all states and corporations that invest in Israeli occupation. (For more information about what BDS entails, see https://bdsmovement.net/ and https://bdsmovement.net/pacbi).
4. With respect to the BDS call to not support institutions that benefit from apartheid, we demand the CSU suspend all Israel study abroad programs and enable Palestine study abroad.
5. Institute programs such as Arab and Muslim Diasporas and Ethnicities (AMED) across the CSU and provide such programs with funding, faculty hires, intellectual autonomy, and academic freedom.

In solidarity,
Chair’s Council, College of Ethnic Studies

• Dr. Falu Bakrania, Chair, Race and Resistance Studies
• Dr. Joanne Barker, Chair, American Indian Studies
• Dr. Katynka Martinez, Interim Chair, Latina/Latino Studies
• Dr. Abul Pitre, Chair, Africana Studies
• Dr. Wesley Ueunten, Chair, Asian American Studies

The Department of Race and Resistance Studies (RRS) condemns the systemic violence against Black people by the very governments and entities sworn to protect them. Murdering Black people with impunity must stop now! David McAtee, Patrick Underwood, Tony McDade, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery are the latest victims of unspeakable and indefensible hate crimes. We will not allow them to become mere statistics.

Anti-blackness and hate against people of color has ruled this land for over four centuries, creating and condoning violence. This is immoral, illegal and inexcusable. We are witnessing the death throes of out-of-control, predatory racial capitalism that must be eradicated. It is time for those that support and profit from this racist system to stop. The havoc they normalize has caused unimaginable grief and despair at home and abroad, as they empower fascists, white supremacists, and Nazi sympathizers to enact their doctrines of hate. Enough is enough!

RRS studies the race-related processes underlying social problems and the diverse struggles for social justice. We use a comparative and relational approach, recognizing that communities do not exist in isolation from one another and that racial formations are complex. We thus recognize that dismantling corrupt ruling systems is no easy task. It will take extreme effort on a number of levels, including political engagement and activism across all boundaries. We must organize to confront the powers that be that have been so entirely ineffective in making change. We must not be distracted by shallow consumerism, performative allyship, or the gaslighting that the right-wing spins with the cooperation of corporate media. The real looters and criminals are in the White House, Congress, and corporate backrooms. They will be held accountable. This is not a partisan issue; we need sweeping change. Apathy has held justice at bay for too long.

Now is the time for comradeship. We, in RRS, drawing upon the spirit of 1968 and Mayan principle of En Lak’Ech (You are my Other Me), recognize that we are all connected. There is no freedom without Black liberation. And we fully acknowledge this moment of crisis is but one intimately connected to a larger and longer history of struggle. Over fifty years ago, the Third World Liberation Front at San Francisco State University poignantly declared to the world, “We seek, as members of the TWLF, simply to function as human beings, to control our own destinies. Initially, following the myth of the American Dream, we worked too hard to attend predominantly white colleges, but we have learned through direct analysis that it is impossible for our people, so-called minorities, to function as human beings in a racist society in which white always comes first and anything else is synonymous with enemy, no matter what the attainment, educational or otherwise. So we have decided to fuse ourselves with the masses of Third World people, which are the majority of the world’s peoples, to create, through struggles, a new humanity, a new humanism, a New World Consciousness, and within that context collectively control our own destinies.”

In our teaching, in our scholarship, and in our organizing within our communities we commit to deepening those solidarities and the necessary work to advance those struggles that can, at long last, realize this revolutionary humanism and future for our Peoples here and across the globe.