Her dismissal marked an alarming escalation in the new wave of McCarthyist repression sweeping intellectual and cultural institutions across countries complicit in Israel’s genocide in Palestine.
Dr. Dean’s case is not isolated. Just a day before her dismissal, German authorities violently cracked down on the planned Palestine Congress in Berlin. PI Council member Yanis Varoufakis was later banned from traveling to Germany or addressing the German public.
These acts are not just assaults on intellectual and academic freedoms. They are also blatant examples of institutional complicity with the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, which has now claimed well over 40,000 lives — some 70% of them women and children.
Intellectual and cultural institutions have an obligation not only to foster free and open debate, but also to pursue truth and clarity in moments of tumult. Today, we call on them to help us navigate questions of our individual and collective responsibility to the Palestinian people, as Dr. Dean did so clearly in her essay: “Which side are you on? Liberation or Zionism and imperialism? There are two sides and no alternative, no negotiation of the relation between oppressor and oppressed.”
The administrators of institutions of learning are shunning this responsibility. They are siding with the oppressor in defiance of the blinding clarity flooding their hallways and courtyards as a historic student movement sweeps campuses in the United States and beyond. In a profound abrogation of the duty to prepare future generations for the world that is now emerging, they are confronting the pursuit of truth with dismissals, arrests, and batons.
Today, we stand with Dr. Jodi Dean and all those caught by the new wave of McCarthyite repression in the United States and beyond it. History will absolve those who stood on the side of the oppressed.
(You can add your name to the statement by clicking here.)
Abby Martin, Journalist, Empire Files
Ammar Ali Jan, Haqooq-e-Khalq Party
Adrienne Pine, California Institute of Integral Studies
Annie McGrew, UMass Amherst
Barnaby Raine, Columbia University
Camilo Perez-Bustillo, UNILA-Foz do Iguazú, Brazil; College of Law, National Taiwan University
Ché Zara Blomfield, Waipapa Taumata Rau (University of Auckland)
Cheryl Louise Trine, Trine Law Firm LLC
Christopher Helali, Dartmouth College
Eileen Weitzman, National Lawyers Guild
Faizan Rashid, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Farwa Sial, SOAS
Habravysh Natta, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Huwaida Arraf, Civil Rights Attorney
Jarrod Shanahan, Governors State University\
Jeff Coyne, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jen Goodman, Ypsilanti IWW
Jenna Norosky, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Jonas Staal, Studio Jonas Staal
Mark Stern, NLG
Matthew Holman, The University of Hertfordshire
Max Ajl, University of Ghent
Meghan Nicholson, University of Michigan Alum
MK Jutze, UMass Amherst
Nick Estes, The Red Nation
Nicole Fordey, Arizona State University Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law
Penny Pritchard, University of Hertfordshire\
Qiyamah A Rahman, Sister Souurce, Inc
Shady Lawendy Nashed, UMass Amherst
Shubhojeet Dey, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi\
Sintra Reves-Sohn, UMass Amherst
William Chaney, UMass Amherst
Srećko Horvat, Island School of Social Autonomy
Vijay Prashad, The Tricontinental Institute
Yara Shoufani, York University
