Jewish Rutgers Faculty Denounce Smears of Antisemitism Leveled at Professors and Student Palestine Advocates

As Jewish members of Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine, we denounce the smears of antisemitism being leveled at Rutgers professors and distinguished scholars Sahar Aziz and Noura Erakat, the Center for Security, Race, and Rights (CSRR), and the Rutgers Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter.

In a March 27 letter to Rutgers administration, House Committee on Education and the Workforce (HCE&W) chairwoman Rep. Virginia Foxx alleged “pervasive antisemitism” at Rutgers University, singling out Profs. Aziz and Erakat, CSRR, and SJP.

But it is clear to us that Rep. Foxx’s baseless accusation of “pervasive antisemitism” wantonly misrepresents the widespread support for Palestinian liberation from Zionist racism, dispossession, and genocide (UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese has correctly designated Israel’s assault on Gaza “an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure”).

As Jews, many of whom lost family in the Nazi Holocaust, we reject the weaponizing of our shared history of persecution, definitions of antisemitism that falsely conflate anti-Zionism with anti-Jewish hatred, and the hijacking of our Jewish identity to distract from the crimes of the apartheid Israeli state and muzzle its critics.

For us, the word intifada, meaning uprising in Arabic, and the slogan “Free Palestine From the River to the Sea” are neither antisemitic nor genocidal, as Israel’s enablers claim. Rather, they are calls for freedom, safety, and justice for all people — Jews, Palestinians, and other communities — who live between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

We recognize these smears, and violent police crackdowns on peaceful campus protests, are desperate responses to surging Palestine advocacy. We are proud to stand with Profs. Aziz and Erakat, SJP, and all those in the Rutgers community who reject racism in all its forms – including antisemitism — and refuse to be silenced in the face of injustice.

Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway will be testifying before the HCE&W on May 23. The world will be watching. We call on President Holloway to defend our colleagues, students, and our community against the committee’s unfounded and disingenuous allegations of antisemitism.

To donate to the Center for Security, Race, and Rights, click here.

To donate to the Center for Islamic Life, which was vandalized on April 10, the first day of Eid, click here. 

This statement has been endorsed by the Rutgers chapter of the Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and is signed by the following Jewish members:

Derek Baron, Postdoctoral Associate, New Brunswick

Mark Bray, Assistant Teaching Professor, History, New Brunswick

Ed Cohen, Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Hank Kalet, lecturer, Journalism and Media Studies, New Brunswick

Liana Katz, PhD Candidate, Geography, New Brunswick

David Kurnick, Professor of English, New Brunswick

Elaine LaFay, Assistant Professor, History, New Brunswick

Jeffrey Lawrence, Associate Professor of English, New Brunswick

David Letwin, Lecturer, Mason Gross School of the Arts, New Brunswick

Alexander Liebman, PhD candidate, Geography, New Brunswick

David A. Love, Assistant Teaching Professor, Journalism and Media Studies, SC&I, New Brunswick

Emily Marker, Associate Professor of History, Camden

Andrew Parker, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, New Brunswick

Bryan Sacks, Lecturer, School of Communication and Information, New Brunswick

Erin R. Santana, Postdoctoral Associate, Newark

Beth Stephens, Distinguished Professor, Rutgers Law School, Newark

Lauren J Silver, Associate Professor of Childhood Studies, Camden

Judith Surkis, Professor, History, New Brunswick

Howard Swerdloff, Lecturer, Writing Program, New Brunswick

Todd Wolfson, Associate Professor, Journalism and Media Studies (New Brunswick)

Sophie Ziner, PhD Candidate, Literatures in English, New Brunswick 

Abigail Zitin, Associate Professor, English, New Brunswick

FJP Statement in Support of Student Agreement

 We, the members of Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine, congratulate the students of Rutgers University-New Brunswick who demonstrated for an end to their university’s complicity in the subjugation of Palestinians, including an ongoing genocide in Gaza. We are in awe of their year-long efforts to organize the Rutgers community, which culminated in a peaceful negotiated settlement with the university administration. We fully endorse the agreement, which meets eight out of the ten student demands. This is a critical win achieved by our adept, disciplined, and politically astute students. 

Our students negotiated not only against the backdrop of brutal police violence unleashed against our universities across the United States, but against the imminent threat that they themselves would be subject to such violence. We have seen the results of police intervention at Columbia, UT Austin, UCLA and elsewhere: stun guns, tear gas and rubber bullets deployed against peaceful protestors, hundreds of students arrested and many injured, and others suspended or expelled for their calls for an end to genocide, with no concessions from those universities. More than 2,000 students have been arrested across the country, most at campuses where university leadership refused to even meet with student representatives. We commend our students on their successful negotiations to avoid these violent outcomes. 

Social and political change only occurs gradually and with great effort, and we know that the fight for Palestinian rights is far from over. FJP is determined to pressure the university to clarify the terms of its agreement and to comply with its promises, and we commit to supporting students in their two crucial unmet demands: divestment and cutting ties with Tel Aviv University. 

University administrators have agreed to engage in negotiations regarding divestment, and we intend to monitor their compliance with that agreement and to press them to carry out negotiations in good faith. We join the Rutgers Senate in insisting that the agreement be honored in full. We will work alongside students to bring clarity to all its provisions, and to ensure that such provisions are not interpreted by the university to favor inaction or partial compliance. 

We close with a statement of solidarity with the ongoing student/faculty/community encampment at the Newark campus coordinated by the Newark Solidarity Coalition, and with the Coalition’s demands, which link the struggle for justice in Palestine to the struggle for justice in Newark. 

Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine 

FJP Statement: Resist Congressional efforts to silence free speech on Palestine

Read the FJP statement in response to U.S. Representative Virginia Foxx’s (R-N.C.) letter to Rutgers administration, on Mondoweiss, here.

Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine Statement in Support of the RUSA Divestment Referendum

Representing over 80 Rutgers educators, including Jewish members, from a range of academic disciplines at the New Brunswick, Camden and Newark campuses, the Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter is writing to express support for Rutgers University Student Assembly (RUSA) Spring 2024 election referendum calling on Rutgers to “[Divest] from any firm or corporation materially participating in, benefitting from or otherwise supporting the government of Israel’s settler colonialism, apartheid and genocide of Palestine and the Palestinian people” and for Rutgers to “terminate its partnership with Tel Aviv University [TAU], including in the New Jersey Innovation and Technology Hub.” 

As educators, we note that the RUSA elections are taking place as Israel has destroyed or damaged all 12 universities in Gaza and over 375 schools, killing over 4,327 students, 231 teachers and 94 professors (statistics as of January 2023). Gaza’s libraries, archives, museums and other sites of cultural significance have been reduced to rubble. Leading scholars, in Palestine and around the world, have condemned Israel’s actions as “educide.” Israeli universities, including TAU, are complicit in this campaign of “cultural genocide.” 

The RUSA divestment referendum aligns with both the October 2023 “Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel” and the broader 2005 Palestinian civil society call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel (BDS). “Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions,” states the BDS National Committee, “is a Palestinian-led movement for freedom, justice and equality. BDS upholds the simple principle that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of humanity.”

The BDS movement demands an end to the 1967 Occupation, the right of return for Palestinian refugees ethnically cleansed from their homeland (affirmed by U.N. resolution 194), and equal rights for Palestinian citizens of Israel. FJP affirms that these rights include the right to education and the free pursuit of knowledge. In seeking these demands, BDS mirrors past social justice boycott campaigns, including those against apartheid South Africa and the Jim Crow U.S South. 

A recent letter to The Targum by faculty opposing the referendum cites “research” and “reports” indicating that “pro-BDS student activism leads to a marked increase in antisemitic incidents on campus.” The sources cited in this letter provide no credible evidence whatsoever to support this accusation. The letter comes on the heels of a petition from a website called “Israel War Room” pressuring, unsuccessfully, the RUSA president to unilaterally strike the divestment referendum from the election ballot, so that, in the petition’s own words, “this hateful, slanderously antisemitic [referendum] never goes in front of the student population.” 

We believe that those promoting these false accusations of antisemitism, unable to refute the referendum demands or the principles of BDS, are attempting to malign and pathologize Palestinians and their supporters—with the backing of the Israeli government—in order to silence them.

Rutgers FJP supports Palestinian liberation from over 75 years—three generations—of systemic Israeli racism, dispossession, and blatant disregard for Palestinian life. This includes the current genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, which UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese just called “an escalatory stage of a long-standing settler colonial process of erasure.”

We therefore urgently encourage Rutgers students to vote Yes on the RUSA divestment referendum, and to support the wider BDS call for freedom, justice, and equality. 

Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine

Rutgers FJP Social Media Toolkit

See here for our social media toolkit and links for how to support FJP and SJP at Rutgers

FJP Statement in Solidarity with Students for Justice in Palestine

Statement from Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine Condemning Administration’s Banning of Students for Justice in Palestine

Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine condemns the university administration’s suspension of the Students for Justice in Palestine and demands the group’s immediate reinstatement. The suspension letter, divulged to the press before being forward to the students, relies on unsubstantiated allegations. Moreover, the letter provides no evidence to supports its implication that the alleged behavior, even if verified, “pose[s] a substantial and immediate threat to the safety and well-being of others.” Equally disturbing, the letter revealed the name and contact information of an SJP member. This clear violation of student rights is the real threat to safety on campus.

The absence of a considered process strongly suggests that the administration’s actions are politically motivated. This singling out of SJP aligns Rutgers with institutions nationwide taking steps to muzzle the growing Palestine solidarity movement, and free speech more broadly. Beyond the danger to the student named, the administration’s actions reflect a racist and Islamophobic logic that frames any support for Palestinian liberation as presumptively antisemitic, putting all Palestine advocates in jeopardy.

Meanwhile, as SJP explains in its statement, the administration has failed adequately to respond to numerous reports of harassment, intimidation, and outright threats against SJP as well as Palestinian and Muslim-presenting students. As SJP writes, this “racist and inflammatory double standard” makes a mockery of the administration’s claims to be concerned with the well-being of all of its students.

As a newly established faculty organization, we are concerned about the well-being of all students, the university, and the principles of justice and equity in treatment and representation. In that spirit, we reiterate our call for Rutgers administration to remove its ban of SJP immediately, and demand that those responsible for the leak of the suspension letter be held accountable.

(Adopted December 18, 2023)

Sign on to the Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine Principles of Unity Statement

If you are part of Rutgers Faculty (we have an expansive definition), join us by signing our statement.

We, the undersigned, are answering the call for the formation of Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapters to “support national Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), protect local SJP organizers, offer faculty defense, organize teach-ins and other actions, and engage in Palestine solidarity work generally.” We define “faculty” to include those involved in making education available at Rutgers, including both tenure and non-tenure track full-time faculty, lecturers, staff, and graduate employees.
Rutgers FJP Principles of Unity:
● Rutgers Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) is a democratic collective that supports Palestinian liberation from 75 years of systemic Israeli racism, dispossession, dehumanization, and brutality. We understand the struggle for Palestinian freedom to be aligned with anti-colonial and anti-racist movements and struggles across the world.
● FJP demands Israel immediately cease its genocidal assault on Gaza and stands with the “Urgent Call from Palestinian Trade Unions: End all Complicity, Stop Arming Israel.”
● FJP supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against
apartheid Israel, and its call for freedom, justice, and equality for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine. We note that this includes the right of Palestinian refugees, ethnically cleansed in the 1948 Nakba and after, to return to their homeland.
● FJP rejects Islamophobia, antisemitism, and any discrimination based on religious belief, sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, ability, or class. We reject all attempts to conflate support for Palestinian liberation and opposition to Zionism with antisemitism.
● FJP will amplify the work of Students for Justice in Palestine and other pro-Palestinian student groups at Rutgers, and commits to protecting students’ right to free speech and assembly on campus from institutional or governmental suppression.
● As part of our commitment, FJP members will engage in education, advocacy, and
action, with an emphasis on supporting student-led initiatives.
● The most securely employed among us protect more vulnerable members of the Rutgers community at all times.
● Rutgers FJP will participate in regional cross-campus coalitions with allies at other
universities, and as a branch of an emergent FJP national network.

(Adopted December 2023)