BUZZ
ANALYSIS: An oppression studies extravaganza
Earlier this month, two University of California Santa Barbara pro-Palestinian academic groups held a powwow over how best to tackle Israel’s alleged genocide in Gaza, along with issues regarding academic freedom.
Hosted by Academics for Justice in Palestine and Researchers Against War, the “Repression & Resistance in the Academy in a Time of Genocide & Fascism” talk featured a panel of four UCSB academics and roughly 100 in the audience.
The event was moderated by Environmental Studies Professor David Pellow, the Daily Nexus reports.
The Nexus repeatedly reminds readers the United Nations has deemed Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” in response to the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas militants — and even includes a ridiculously politically correct late “correction” about Researchers Against War:
A previous version of this article stated that R.A.W. was founded following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The article has been corrected to state that R.A.W. was founded in response to Israel’s military siege of Palestine following the Oct. 7 attack.
Panelist Julie Carlson, an English professor whose interests include “theories of race and sexuality” and “mind studies,” noted a pair of actions scholars could undertake “to protest the University’s support of ‘the logic and enactment of genocide’ by Israel.”
Carlson said academics could, via the “UC Move Your Money” campaign, “divert 10% of their retirement savings to the UC Social Equity Fund, which is divested from weapons manufacturers and prisons.”
She also implored her peers to continue supporting various diversity “hiring initiatives” such as the UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
Panelist Caleb Dawson, a “Black feminist sociologist” whose research “interrogates antiblackness [and] black life-making,” asked the crowd “What are we doing here at this privileged university in a luxurious beach town, while the U.S. and Israel continue to genocide Palestine, occupy and terrorize the people in Lebanon and wage an illegal regional war against Iran?”
Associate Dean and Director of Initiatives for Community Engaged Research and Pedagogy Walid Afifi, a “leading scholar in the study of uncertainty and its impacts,” told the audience academia has suffered a “Palestine exception” when it comes to academic freedom.
Afifi, along with moderator Pellow, also noted they view anti-Zionism “as distinct” from antisemitism.
The last panelist, an RAW graduate student who wished to remain anonymous, said “students, workers and educators […] have a unique and particular role to play in resisting the militarization of research and higher education.”
According to Researchers Against War’s website, the Pentagon “is the world’s institutional emitter of greenhouse gasses and has mobilized to support Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”
It adds “Climate justice is Palestinian liberation. Stop ethnic cleansing! Ceasefire now!”
MORE: UC Santa Barbara student leftists demand ‘sanctuary’ campus
