Yesterday I attended a wonderful event at Stony Brook University: ‘Dissent, Democracy & Higher Education Under Attack’ with Tariq Habash (former DOE employee and first person to resign from Biden administration to protest the US’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza), Rana Jaleel (Associate Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies and Chair of the American Association of University Professors’ Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure), Danny Shaw (Latin American & Caribbean Studies Professor & Ethnographer who was doxed, harassed, fired from CUNY, and detained and interrogated by the FBI and DHS for his pro-Palestine activism) and Jonathan Wallace (longtime movement lawyer based in New York doing pro bono work to support faculty and students attacked for their support of Palestinian liberation). Good information about what’s going on and what tools we can use to resist but also a much needed space to feel collective power and solidarity. Congrats to the organizers
Two pro-genocide Z…… at the entrance passing out sheets of paper. I grabbed the sheet instinctively as it was aggressively handed to me but then I asked what it was. “More information so u can learn both sides of the story.” I gave it back and said no thanks. “It’s just so you have all the data” to which I replied I had all the data already. Then a pin to end all hate. “All hate,” they repeated. Reminded me of the Levine Center to End Hate in Rochester, NY, which is an extension of the Jewish Federation and uses this meaningless language (similar to All Lives Matter) to enter activist spaces and have known activists (many of them POCs) on their board. I said no thanks and walked in. We don’t have to engage just to be polite.
