NEWS: April 22 2024 — FJP-YALE LETTER TO ADMINISTRATION ON ARRESTS Read our letter.
Excerpt:
We write as faculty and staff of Yale University to strongly condemn the administration’s treatment of peaceful protestors, especially the arrest of students and community members at Beinecke Plaza on April 22, 2024, and the threats of disciplinary action. The April 22 communication from President Salovey justified the arrests as an exercise of “campus safety,” citing the “harmful acts” and “threatening language” of “aggressors” from within “the Yale community” as well as “outsiders.” This justification relies on a highly distorted and inflammatory characterization of the diverse coalition of Yale and New Haven community members who have been expressing solidarity with Gaza and calling for Yale to divest in weapons manufacturing. Especially in light of the fraught relationship between Yale and Black and Brown communities living in surrounding areas—a relationship which, as the university’s administration has acknowledged in its recent Yale and Slavery Research Project, requires ongoing repair work—we would have expected more care and sensitivity in addressing the presence of supportive and peaceful community members on campus. The president’s speculations feed dangerously racialized tropes of “outside agitators” and chaotic mobs. We are heartened by Dean Lewis’s retraction of false claims about potentially violent protestors and sincerely hope that President Salovey will follow suit as soon as possible.
How can it be that Yale Corporation’s investments in weapons that have destroyed every university in Gaza do not meet the threshold of a “grave social injury,” but Yale students’ prayers, performances, art, and books are a violation of “campus safety”? How could Yale fail to support our students who use every resource they have, including their own bodies, to reject the Yale Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibilty’s approval of investment in weapons manufacturing in the midst of a genocide?
Read the full letter.
NEWS: April 22 2024 — FJP-YALE DEMANDS ADMIN REFRAIN FROM FURTHER PUNITIVE ACTION; CALLS ARREST OF 47 PEACEFUL STUDENTS “DISTURBING.” Read our statement.
Excerpt:
In the wake of the administration’s disturbing decision to arrest 47 peacefully assembled students, we write to express our admiration of the courageous students who remain steadfastly committed to justice. We convey our immense thanks to our neighbors throughout the greater New Haven community who have provided protection, strength, and solidarity in the absence of the same from the Yale administration. We believe the inflammatory rhetoric, a fear-mongering tactic used by Yale administration to undermine this solidarity between Yale students and the New Haven community, only seeks to fuel division rather than promote peaceful freedom of expression. We urge the administration to refrain from pursuing any further punitive action against our students for exercising critical thinking and advocacy for and with others. Suspensions, expulsions, and other mechanisms of punishment are not only inappropriate, but counterproductive, as has been demonstrated at Columbia University and elsewhere. We write to our colleagues–fellow Yale faculty and staff–to encourage you to keep the powerful impact of today, the last week, and the last six months in mind as we move into the final weeks of this term. Though this administration sees fit to arrest our students, we as classroom leaders can model for them a different kind of leadership based on critical care and compassion. As the students’ chants continue to resound: “books, not bombs.”
NEWS: April 21 2024 — FJP-YALE REAFFIRMS ITS SOLIDARITY WITH “BOOKS NOT BOMBS” ACTION TODAY. Read our statement.
Excerpt:
The Yale University chapter of the national network of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) reaffirms our unwavering support of the “Books not Bombs” and #occupybeinecke actions, and roundly condemns the shameful threats to use disciplinary action or police intervention to interfere with and criminalize the students’ right to peacefully protest on a campus that for so many of them is also their home. We also refute the ridiculous efforts to manufacture patently false claims of violence and harassment of counter-protesters at the peaceful occupation of Beinecke Plaza. These spurious claims are particularly shocking given that the constant surveillance of the event by many faculty, administrators, police, and other authorities proves no such violence has occurred.
FJP-Yale does notice, however, a pattern of false allegations by counter-protesters. The last one was repudiated by the Yale Police Department using the claimant’s own video. These slanders are thus only the latest effort in spreading misinformation and attempting to tar popular and peaceful protest. This is the real story about what is occurring on Yale’s campus in desperate attempts to silence and repress pro-justice in Palestine students.
We stand in solidarity with our students as they advocate for meaningful change regarding Yale's investments in weapons manufacturers. These investments enable the genocide in Gaza, just as they have contributed to ongoing mass violence and death elsewhere in the world. As these students have so eloquently expressed, institutions like Yale should be invested in education, not destruction. The students’ steadfast commitment to being heard, to affecting change, to holding the University accountable, and to caring for one another is not only admirable, but endlessly inspiring. They make us proud to serve them, teach them, and learn from them. To the students we say, we will not abandon you.
Read our full statement.
NEWS: April 15 2024 — FJP-YALE STANDS IN SOLIDARITY WITH “BOOKS NOT BOMBS” ACTION TODAY. Read our statement.
Excerpt:
The Yale University chapter of the national network of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP) stands in unwavering support of the “Books not Bombs” action in Beinecke Plaza. We stand in solidarity with our students as they advocate for meaningful change regarding Yale's investments in weapons manufacturers. These investments enable the genocide in Gaza, just as they have contributed to ongoing mass violence and death elsewhere in the world. As these students have so eloquently expressed, institutions like Yale should be invested in education, not destruction.
Since October 7th, 2023, Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been under an intense military siege. In the first 65 days—by December 2023—the Israeli military had dropped over 50,000 tons of explosives on Gaza’s civilian population, an amount greater than the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. The U.S.-backed war has destroyed more than 70% of the residences in Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas on earth. The Israeli military, with unwavering U.S. support, has killed more than 30,000 civilians, a count that does not include the likely tens of thousands others left to die, unburied and uncounted, under the rubble of their homes, schools, mosques, and churches. We know that the decision to occupy Beinecke Plaza is not one taken lightly, but rather as a last resort in the face of the administration's irresponsible, reprehensible, and shameful refusal to engage with student demands for divestment. Over the course of several months, our students have presented detailed reports to the administration with requests for meetings to discuss divestment, all of which have been met with silence.
We encourage the Yale community to remember that our students have the right to peacefully assemble, make their community visible, create art, and foster a community-based education program that grounds and supports their reasonable and necessary demands. Their organizing efforts this week are part of a long tradition of community-based grass-roots initiatives that provide support and education when institutions fail. And Yale is failing–failing in its obligations to listen and respond to students, failing in its mission of global leadership, and failing to model a morallygrounded strength of character in the face of genocide.
It is imperative that the administration listens to the voices of the Yale community and takes meaningful action to address concerns about the university’s investments in violence, war, and genocide. We urge the administration to engage in constructive dialogue with these brave students and work towards a resolution that aligns with the values of our university, as has been done with similar commitments to divest from gun manufacturing and focus on green investing.