13 March 2024

To all UCU members:

Colleagues,

The Hebrew University has just suspended one of its few Palestinian professors for publicly criticising the Israeli genocide in the Gaza Strip and lying about events on 7th October. Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian is Professor of child studies, and also a scholar of settler colonialism. In the interview for which she is being suspended, she condemned the genocide and the lies of the Israeli state. She also declared that the general situation in Israel and the in the WB and Gaza cannot continue, and requires the ending of Zionism.

If UCU colleagues have imminent branch meetings, please consider the following motion for your branch and for UCU Congress. Delete ´branch’ or ‘Congress’ as appropriate. …

Branch/Congress Notes:

  • the suspension by the Hebrew University of Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian for criticising the genocide, and calling for an end to Zionism;
  • the severe repression, disciplinary action and suspensions in Israeli universities against Palestinian staff and students who speak out, and against Jewish Israeli critics of Israeli policy;
  • pressure on Palestinian staff and student research to conform to the Zionist narrative across disciplines;
  • the complicity of Israeli universities in the occupation and maintenance of the apartheid system.

Resolves to:

  • contact Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian to express solidarity;
  • contact the President of the Hebrew University to express disappointment at this and other attacks on freedom of expression, and its failure to condemn the genocide in Gaza;
  • urge members to acquaint themselves with Israeli universities’ complicity via the Maya Wind study ‘Towers of Ivory and Steel’ (Verso 2024), and to consider the appropriate moral and political response.

(148 words)