Call to Action In Defense of Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi
Originally circulated November 21, 2019
We, the Palestinian Youth Movement, write to express our unwavering support for Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi in her struggle for just treatment at San Francisco State University (SFSU) demanding full institutional support for the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies program and defense against Zionist harassment and bullying, which the university has shamefully failed to uphold.
As Palestinians invested in the liberation of our homeland, it is our duty to channel our intellectual accomplishments towards the goal of justice and self-determination for our people. This is precisely what Dr. Abdulhadi is being punished for by Zionist and racist forces.
Zionist organizations have targeted Dr. Abdulhadi through lawsuits and smear campaigns. We know all too well that these are calculated efforts to intimidate, silence, and repress Palestinians. Zionists specifically target Palestinian academics and student activists because Palestinian intellectual work has been and continues to at the forefront of exposing oppressive manifestations of colonial power.
Zionist organizations have long repressed student and faculty activism on Palestine because university campuses have long been sites of social protest. For years, Dr. Abdulhadi, AMED Studies, the General Union of Palestine Students (GUPS), and the broader Arab and Muslim community at SFSU have sustained immense racism, islamophobia, and hostility from their campus administration and Zionist organizations. It is worth noting that SFSU is home to the only College of Ethnic Studies, which emerged out of the longest student strike in history in 1968; that AMED is the only program of its kind; and that GUPS at SFSU is the last-standing chapter since the 1993 Oslo Accords.
San Francisco State’s failure to honor its commitment to Dr. Abdulhadi and our communities to build AMED Studies is a disgraced outgrowth of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobic institutional policies that became standard in the U.S. post 9/11/2001. Lip-service pronouncements of support for “academic freedom” cannot hide the fact that the university has rarely protected scholars who are genuinely invested in our community. This is especially true when their scholarship challenges and unsettles comfortable investments in neo-colonialism, imperialism, and militarized policing and incarceration, which keeps the current university industrial complex afloat with profits.
As the examples of other Palestinian scholars, such as Edward Said and Ghassan Kanafani, make clear: intellectual work must be catalyzed through the critique of power. Without such praxis, intellectuals are merely pawns of the state and distanced from their communities.
Dr. Abdulhadi is a renowned professor and community leader who has dedicated her life and intellectual brilliance to our people’s liberation and freedom. Such efforts should not be targeted and attacked. Rather, they should be heralded as an incredible example of the vast potential for academic work to facilitate community uplift and support. Dr. Abdulhadi’s example makes clear that intellectuals also can and do play a vital role in the project of liberation.
Therefore, we, as the Palestinian Youth Movement, are steadfast in our support for truly liberation-minded scholars such as Dr. Abdulhadi. We call on SFSU to honor its commitment to building the AMED program into a full department in the College of Ethnic Studies and to firmly support Dr. Abdulhadi against unrelenting Zionist attacks. We further urge all supporters of the Palestinian struggle, people of conscience, and advocates of academic freedom to join us in our campaign.
We have no doubt that we will return and that our homeland will be liberated. And it is thanks to the myriad efforts of Palestinians in exile, including luminaries such as Dr. Abdulhadi, that we will realize our self-determination.
Until Return and Liberation,
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)