Who Are We?

We urge Harvard University to protect our students, who have been subjected to an escalating campaign of harassment, intimidation, and racist hate speech, and targeted by some of the University’s wealthiest and most powerful donors and politicians, all because of their advocacy for Palestinian rights. We urge the University to protect students from racialized violence, in light of attacks on students in nearby states and death threats faculty and students have experienced in our community.

Since systems of oppression are deeply interconnected, we pledge to combat all forms of discrimination and racism at Harvard and outside its walls, including anti-Palestinian racism, anti-Muslim racism, anti-Indigenous racism, anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and antisemitism.

Our university campus and classrooms must be an open and welcoming space for teaching and learning about issues relating to the history and the contemporary reality of Palestine/Israel and the Middle East more broadly. Therefore, as educational workers, we call on Harvard to reject funding from donors attempting to control or censor on-campus speech or course curricula or call for punitive actions of any kind.

We recognize the national movements that support the plight of the Palestinian people and endorse the 2005 call issued by Palestinian civil society for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. We call on the university to withdraw investments from the State of Israel and all companies that sustain Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and systematic human rights abuses against Palestinians. As educational workers, we are focused on boycotts of Israeli academic institutions that support apartheid and colonial occupation.