This is an urgent call to all university students, faculty, and staff of conscience across the United States. 

As over 10,000 people have been murdered in Palestine, and as we face strong repression by the U.S. government and our university administrations in speaking up against these atrocities, we pledge to stand together to defend our right to speak out against genocide and over 75 years of settler colonial violence, dispossession, and erasure.  

The humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza is worsening by the day. There have been more bombs dropped in Gaza in the last three weeks than in a whole year of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. This is in a territory that is among the most densely populated in the world, largely comprised of refugees from the 1948 “Nakba” which established the settler colonial state of Israel. Roughly half of Gaza's population are children. Humanitarian aid has been repeatedly blocked from entering Gaza by Israel, a common pattern following bombing raids on the already besieged territory. Hospitals and churches sheltering displaced people have been deliberately targeted, and journalists have been assassinated along with their families. Recently, Israel strategically bombed telecommunications in order to impose a total blackout on Gaza. 

This is genocide. In addition to its decades long funding for Israel (over $240 billion since 1948), the U.S. has been directly involved in these latest war crimes, with plans to provide an additional $14 billion on top of the yearly $3.8 billion of military funding, provision of weapons, troops, and two aircraft carriers as well as strategic support to the Israeli government.

Although Palestine solidarity organizing has been steadily growing across the world over the past two decades with the rise of the BDS movement, we are witnessing an outpouring of global solidarity with Palestine with this latest escalation of Israel’s settler colonial violence. In places like France, and Germany and Australia, protests in solidarity with Palestine have been banned and criminalized, but people are openly and courageously protesting in defiance of these bans. In the United States, we have seen massive protests and direct actions by Palestinian grassroots and Jewish-led organizations standing against the genocide in Gaza and for Palestinian liberation. Universities are a central hub of activity, with protests and solidarity statements being organized not only by Arab and Muslim students and workers, but also by Jewish students and workers, as well as people of conscience from other religious and ethnic communities.

This outpouring of solidarity has been met with an unprecedented wave of repression, both from university administrations and the state and from Zionist forces within and outside of the university. Student organizers are facing targeted harassment: billboard trucks with hateful slogans and huge photographs doxxed and vilified individual student organizers at Harvard, Columbia, and CUNY, resulting in death threats; at Brooklyn College, a city councilwoman showed up to a student protest with a gun tucked prominently into her waistband; professors at Cornell and several other schools are facing campaigns to get them fired; students are having job offers revoked and precarious adjunct faculty are being threatened with the loss of their contracts if they speak out in support of Palestine. US lawmakers are bolstering this repression — Ron DeSantis is trying to ban Students for Justice in Palestine from forming clubs at Florida’s universities, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a resolution on October 26 denouncing student protests for Palestine as “antisemitic, repugnant, and morally contemptible,” and the Biden administration has pledged Departments of Justice and Homeland Security support for surveilling student activists. More than 100 institutions of higher education have signed on to a “coalition” that effectively criminalizes students organizing in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. We - students, faculty and staff at universities - vow to defend each other against Zionist attacks coming from within and outside of our universities. 

While the consent for these unprecedented acts of repression is being manufactured in large part through the (re)deployment of existing discourses - such as equating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism, and a (re)deployment of the “War of Terror” discourse that vilified all Muslims and Arabs as “terrorists”, and that insisted that people were either “with us or against us” - these discourses are also being transformed in horrific and dangerous ways. The new discourse explicitly dehumanizes Palestinians, virtually celebrating their ethnic cleansing by Israel, and goes much further than the repression of political speech by seeking to criminalize even the public expression of grief by and on behalf of Palestinians. The humanity and strength of the Palestinian people continues to shine through and inspire us to keep fighting despite all attempts to silence our political speech and criminalize our grief. 

We vehemently reject the attempt by those in power to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. As has been pointed out by many Jewish organizations and individuals, this is an outrageous betrayal of longstanding Jewish traditions of advocating for social justice and resisting state oppression in its worst forms. Jewish people have been and continue to be some of the most ardent and active Palestine solidarity organizers on and off our campuses. 

We condemn genocide and all forms of racism including antisemitism and Islamophobia. We - students and academic workers - have the right to speak up against injustice without fear of retaliation, and the cynical weaponization of antisemitism is designed to undermine that right. We will not be silenced. 

We recognize that conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism is a cynical move designed to drive a wedge between those who practice solidarity with the Palestinian people and the broader left. We reject the idea that one can be progressive “except for Palestine”. In the words of Angela Davis, ‘Palestine is a moral litmus test for the world’. 

The recent attack on the right of students, faculty, and staff to dissent is part of a long history of the criminalization of students and academic workers in the United States — a history filled with surveillance, infiltration, and repression that were  intensified during the McCarthy era and in the 60’s and 70’s when Black and Puerto Rican liberation and anti-war movements were the targets. More recently, Muslim students have been surveilled and harassed by campus authorities, police departments, and the FBI in the context of the “War of Terror,” and Black activists as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. We condemn these tactics by police and university administrations. They have no place in our universities or in our society. These tactics must stop, and we, collectively, will stop them.

Today we say enough is enough!

We know that the power of the working class and oppressed people of the world relies on our strength as a collective. Together, we are far stronger than our oppressors. Today, more than ever, we must stand united alongside the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation and against the violence of Israeli settler colonialism. The Israeli settler colonial apartheid state is supported materially and politically by U.S. imperialism. We oppose this support, as we oppose the US’s imperialist war-machine in other parts of the world. 

We stand with our Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students and colleagues, our professors and our classmates, against the fear-mongering and racist rhetoric being circulated in the mainstream media by politicians and university administrations alike. These racist assaults and the rise in attacks against people perceived as Muslim/Arab/Palestinian that they have enabled, has justifiably produced fear and insecurity among our comrades.

We stand against this political repression as we stand against all racism and religious discrimination and with one another, across the U.S. and internationally — wherever those who are protesting on behalf of Palestine are being repressed by their governments and other powerful institutions. We are proud of our internationalism and of the bonds of our solidarity which stretch as far back in history as the repression we have faced. Powerful institutions attempt  to suppress us because they fear our collective strength and the moral righteousness of our cause. But our cause is righteous, and it will prevail. 

We pledge:

1. To defend the rights of pro-Palestinian campus groups- in particular Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and groups advocating for BDS, both of which are under constant attack;

2. To defend the right to political speech on our campuses, including speech in defense of Palestinian liberation, as well as the right to protest and engage in acts of civil disobedience, which have been central to all social justice movements in the US and beyond;

3. To defend each other from harassment, intimidation, suspensions, firings, and other forms of repression;

4. To speak out against the genocidal campaign Israel is waging against Palestinians and the broader settler colonial project of which it is a part, and to force the U.S. government to stop funding and defending this genocide and Israel’s setter colonial project.

We encourage individuals or groups to sign onto this pledge and help build a national solidarity network through which we can collectively defend ourselves against repression and harassment.

An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. If one of us is attacked, we all rise up. ¡Basta ya! 

Initial Signatories:

1. CUNY4Palestine
2. National SJP
3. Within our Lifetime
4. Palestine Solidarity Alliance- Hunter College
5. Columbia/ Barnard College SJP
6. Columbia JVP
7. CUNY Law Jewish Law Students
8. Association SJP NYU
9. SJP Brooklyn College
10. Lehman SJP
11. John Jay SJP
12. SJP- Montclair
13. SJP-Wayne State
14. Oberlin Students for a Free Palestine
15. Oberlin Jews 4 Palestine
16. Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies, San Francisco State University
17. Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice
18. Swarthmore SJP
19. Jewish Voice for Peace of Vermont and New Hampshire
20. Palestine Solidarity Coalition- University of New Hampshire (PSC UNH)
21. Virginia Commonwealth University SJP
22. Rank and File Action-CUNY
23. Al Awda- New York 
24. Uhuru Solidarity Movement
25. Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! / African People’s Socialist Party (APSP)
26. Black Alliance for Peace
27. African People's Solidarity Committee
    
28. George Washington University SJP 
29. Muslim Students Association at Virginia Commonwealth University 
30. San Jose State University SJP 
31. Students for Socialism at USF
32. Bico JVP (Haverford and Bryn Mawr)
33. Critical Palestine Studies Association
34. NHYM UNH
35. SJP College of Staten Island
36. Nevadans for  Palestinian Liberation-UNLV
37. The Others’ Collective
38. Williams SJP
39. JVP University of Rochester
40. San José State University Student Justice For Palestine
41. Students for Socialism, DMV Region
42. National Lawyers Guild -- UChicago Law
43. Anakbayan--Manhattan
44. The New School Students for Justice in Palestine
45. Dominican Studies Group--CUNY 
46. University of Missouri-Kansas City SJP
47. Sarah Lawrence College SJP
48. JVP GWU
49. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Denison University
50. Northeastern University Huskies 4 Palestine
51. DAR Palestinian Students Union
52. Preserving Harvest Catering
53. Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine
54. Middlebury SJP
55. Fordham National Lawyers Guild
56. New York State Youth Leadership Council
57. California State University Channel Islands - Muslim Student Association
58. Shut It Down NYU
59. Columbia University School of Social Work
60. Yalies4Palestine
61. SJP at the Fashion Institute of Technology
62. NYU YDSA
63. New York School of Global Public Health
64. JVP-Detroit
65. SJP Temple
66. Drew University SJP
67. UMass Amherst SJP
68. Student-Parents Organization- CUNY
69. CAWARC-Committed Aspiring White Antiracist Circle
70. Emerson SJP
71. Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation - UNLV
72. Organization of Arab Students in the University At Buffalo (UB)
73. Nevadans for Palestinian Liberation - UNLV
74. Faculty & Staff for Justice in Palestine, UMass Boston
75. Colombian Studies Group, CUNY Grad Center
76. TCNJ SJP
77. Colorado College SJP
78. RAFT (Rank-and-File Temple) Caucus of AFT  4531 at Temple University
79. Emerson SJP
80. Climate Care Collective
81. Miami University Students for Justice in Palestine
82. Students for Justice in Palestine - VCU
83. Nodutdol for Korean Community Development
84. Bico JVP
85. UNC SJP
86. Northeastern University School of Law SJP
87. USF Latinx Graduate Students Organization
88. Montclair University SJP .
89.  Justseeds Artist Co-Operative
90. Texas University SJP  
91. Stonewall Policy Alliance at NYU Wagner
92. Indigenous Americans and the Law Student Advocates at CUNY School of Law
93. Jewish Voices for Peace Detroit
94. SJP UW-Madison
95. Students For Revolution ATX
96. Bronx Antiwar Coalition
97. Fordham SJP
98. The Sunrise Movement at Dartmouth
99. The Student Workers Collective at Dartmouth
100. National Lawyers Guild - University of Detroit
101. Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine, UCB
102. Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society
103. Pitt SJP
104. Al-Nur, Dartmouth College (Muslim Students Association)
105. UVA SJP
106. UVA ASO (Arab Student Organization)
107. Yale Law Students for Justice in Palestine  
108. Cooper Union SJP
     
109. MIT Jews for Ceasefire
     
110. Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine at the University of Hawai’i
     
111. Wayne NLG
     
112. May Day Student Organization
113. Architecture Students for Liberation (AS4L)
114. BICO JVP
115. Young Democratic Socialists of America at the University of Michigan
116. UMass Amherst Graduate Employee Organization Palestine Solidarity Caucus
117. Palestine Solidarity Committee ATX
118. UCSB External Vice President for Statewide Affairs
119. SALT
120. Muslim Feminists for the Arts
121. Rice SJP
122. Students Allied for Freedom and Equality (SAFE)
123. SFS DMV
124. University of Mary Washington Students for Justice in Palestine
125. Jews for Palestinian Right of Return
126. County Green Party
127. Black Student Union of the cooper union
128. Egyptian American for democracy and human rights New Jersey, New York
129. SJP University of Arizona
130. Arab American Union Members Counci;
131. Arab, Middle Eastern, and North African Student Psychological Association
132. Health and Justice Advocates (HJA) at UCI
133. Labor for Palestine
134. Stanford FJP
135. Faculty for Justice in Palestine at Syracuse University (FJPSU)
136. AlgeriaRevolt
137. Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine
138. Justice for Palestine at NEIU
139. Bergen County Green Party
140. Midwestern Marx
141. Los Ronderos de las Redes
142. Columbia-Barnard YDSA