Solidarity in Reactionary Times
JAIRO I. FÚNEZ-FLORES FEB 28, 2024
Since October 2023, many Palestinian and Pro-Palestinian scholars have been under attack within and beyond academia. Universities have not only been silent about the genocide in Gaza, but they have also been active participants in the repression of dissident voices.
This is not a surprise since Western universities have justified colonial domination for centuries. Within the halls of the ivory tower, colonial and racial discourses find legitimacy. Those who submit to them—the mediocre academics who can only think about their specific fields of interest and careers—don’t know what it feels like to experience institutional violence. Indeed, they are rewarded for their complaisance. These academics are easily promoted and tenured, while the historically excluded voices who forced their way in a space not designed for them are pushed out, silenced, criminalized, or forced to resign. Recently, for instance, a conservative organization wrote a hit piece to try to get me fired. This same organization has also initiated three FOIA requests, asking for institutional correspondence, syllabi, and even application material before I was hired.
For nearly five months, I have dealt with death threats, hate emails and voicemails, and even letters sent to my office. I have felt isolated at my institution mainly because there isn’t a strong faculty collective showing unwavering solidarity with Palestine. Hopefully, this will change soon after I, along with other faculty, organize a Faculty for Justice in Palestine chapter at Texas Tech University. Perhaps as a collective we can begin to slightly change the culture of silence and complicity at my institution.
Last week, on social media, I mentioned the hit piece against me. Several colleagues and friends got together to write an open letter of support and now there are nearly one thousand signatories. This overwhelming support has convinced me that, no matter what happens at my institution, I know that speaking out against colonial dispossession and genocide means that I am on the right side of history, despite the consequences this may bring to my livelihood. This open letter is not necessarily about. It is an open letter of support for everyone dealing with the same reactionary fear tactics. This letter has revealed that thousands of ethically and politically committed scholars around the world dream and fight for a world free of domination and exploitation. Despite some theoretical differences, I have seen clearer political affinity in comparison to the typical neoliberal practices we see in academia, particularly considering how territorial some academics become in increasingly precarious institutions.
Ultimately, Palestine has revealed the complicity of intellectuals who have advanced their careers by co-opting and distorting anti-racist, feminist, critical, decolonial, anticolonial, and postcolonial discourses. It has revealed that depending on one lens is insufficient to understand the overlapping systems that exist in Palestine. Palestine sheds light on the intimate connections between settler colonialism, racism, imperialism, and coloniality. It shows us how US settler colonialism has served as a template for Zionist settlement and dispossession. Palestine teaches us how imperialism’s and neocolonialism’s geopolitical designs are not confined to one place but are rather linked at a global scale.
To return to the initial concern, I would like to say that I am humbled by everyone’s solidarity. But I would also like to say that whatever I have shared on social media, written in my scholarship, or organized in the spaces I belong to, is the least I can do as a genocide unfolds in Gaza. No matter the consequences, we must continue to speak up collectively. And as Aaron Bushnell made clear through his ultimate sacrifice for Palestine, our acts of protests are meant to end our complicity in genocide. They must contribute, even if modestly, toward the liberation of Palestine and all oppressed and dominated peoples in the world.