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Justice for Palestine

What Would Daniel Ellsberg Do?

- By Christian Appy and UMass Faculty for Justice in Palestine

I have been a history professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for twenty years. On May 7, I was one of a handful of faculty members arrested for standing in support of hundreds of students who were engaged in nonviolent protest of university complicity in the ongoing slaughter and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. They want the school to divest from companies profiting from the carnage.

In the hours before UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes called in more than a hundred state police in riot gear to arrest anyone who did not disperse from the area in and around a small encampment, I wrestled with questions of conscience and practicality. Am I willing to be arrested? Is it the right thing to do? Could it make a difference? Would there be negative consequences for my...


Justice for Palestine

Seventeen Songs for the Truthtellers of Gaza

- By Farah-Silvana Kanaan

(An earlier version of this essay, titled “They tried to kill the truth, but it came back stronger” was published in Issue 4 (Spring 2024) of the print magazine, Discontent.)
 

1.

Every time I’ve opened this document to continue writing, I’ve had to turn to the death toll in the second paragraph and adjust it. Every time I closed this document, I knew that, while I went on to do seemingly mundane things – go for a walk, softly squeeze an avocado at the grocery store, sit in silence, the closest thing I have to prayer – by the time I returned to what’s supposed to be something between an ode and a eulogy, a celebration and a lament, an indictment...


Justice for Palestine

AN OPEN CALL TO FELLOW JEWISH ACADEMICS

- By Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Advisory Council

 

May 16, 2024

As Jewish academics, researchers, and higher education professionals, we are appalled by, and refuse to accept, the deliberate mischaracterization, and weaponization of persisting fears about Jewish safety and well-being on campuses across the United States as the singular excuse for a series of misguided and dangerous policies by university administrators. These include attempts to destroy one of the largest and most significant student and social movements of the last half century, efforts to crush academic freedom and freedom of expression, encouragement for brutal invasions of peaceful student-led encampments, attacks and arrests by police forces, and facilitating the wholesale takeover of universities by the most illiberal and...


Justice for Palestine

OVER 130 PEACEFUL PROTESTORS ARRESTED AT UMASS AMHERST

- By UMass Amherst Chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine

Drawing by Grant Hoskins, published with permission from the artist

Students Called for Divestment from Weapons Manufacturers as State Police Entered Campus

AMHERST, MASS.—Over 130 students, faculty, and community members were arrested by state police on the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus on Tuesday evening and into the early hours of Wednesday morning at the behest of UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes. Several students were tackled and injured during the course of the arrests. 

Students reestablished an encampment on the university’s South Lawn on...


Justice for Palestine

What's in a Name

- By Jim Hicks

 


“Palestinians are one of the final reminders that a future without colonialism is possible.”
  –  Devin Atallah and Sarah Ihmoud, “A World without Palestinians

In the time since we posted the call for our special issue, “The View from Gaza,” which will be guest-edited by Michel Moushabeck, we’ve received a number of queries, and criticism as well as support. Rather than reply individually, I thought it might be helpful to outline publicly my own reasons for supporting this project. Though I have...


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