USACBI issued a call to launch Faculty for Justice in Palestine groups on campuses in order to provide a structure for faculty to engage in Palestine solidarity work and support SJP organizing and BDS campaigns.
Faculty at UC Davis, Kent State University, University of Florida, University of Hawai”i and Purdue University have launched groups including faculty, graduate students, and staff. Alternatively titled “Faculty for Justice in Palestine” or “Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine,” the members make a minimal commitment to the founding principles of USACBI. USACBI calls on faculty, graduate students, and staff at other universities within and beyond the US to follow the lead of these solidarity formations to provide a structure for local organizing.
For example, here are the mission statements of the FJP at UC-Davis and the University of Hawai’i (please feel free to use these templates for your group).
For more information or to discuss with USACBI about starting an FJP or FSJP at your institution, please email us at fjp@usacbi.org.
Faculty for Justice in Palestine
As educators at UC Davis we stand against all forms of colonialism, racism, and apartheid in that they are not compatible with universal education or emancipation. We stand in solidarity, therefore, with Students for Justice in Palestine and with Palestinians resisting occupation, warfare, displacement, and dispossession. We recognize further that their struggle is also one against the political and economic restructurings associated with global capital, and that principled opposition to one will also be principled opposition to the other.
The Palestinian question has become the fulcrum of these struggles on university campuses, and students and faculty who are part of the Palestine solidarity movement are increasingly subject to surveillance, and criminalization. Thus, we view the movement for justice in Palestine as a crucial terrain for highlighting the defense of freedom of expression and political commitment within the academy; the preservation of free inquiry, engaged pedagogy, and open scholarship; and the survival of egalitarian campus governance in the face of attacks by off-campus groups allied with unconditional United States support for the Israeli state.
In this context, we also support those in Palestine who have called for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions and for international solidarity in their struggle to:
- End Israel”s occupation and colonization of Palestine and all Arab lands occupied in June 1967 and dismantle the Wall;
- Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.
University of Hawai’i Chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) Mission Statement
As educators at UHM we stand for universal education and right to education, and therefore against obstructions to this goal, including all forms of colonialism, racism, and apartheid. Within both this broad understanding and from our own particular location on Hawaiian land occupied and colonized by the United States, we constitute ourselves in solidarity with Palestinians resisting occupation, warfare, displacement, and dispossession. FJP welcomes–and is interested in strengthening connections among–faculty, staff, those in adjunct positions, graduate students, and community educators. As we come together, we are interested in principled opposition to the economic and political restructurings associated with global capital that are at work in Palestine and in our own location.
The Palestinian question has become one of the great moral as well as political issues debated on university campuses, and students and teachers who are part of the Palestine solidarity movement are increasingly subject to surveillance, and criminalization. Thus, we view the movement for justice in Palestine as a crucial terrain for highlighting the defense of freedom of expression and political commitment within the academy; the preservation of free inquiry, engaged pedagogy, and open scholarship; and the survival of egalitarian campus governance in the face of attacks by off-campus groups allied with unconditional United States support for the Israeli state.
In this context, we also support those in Palestine who have called for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions and for international solidarity in their struggle to:
- End Israel”s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantle the Wall;
- Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.