March 10, 2024
Staff of the Writing Center
To the Evergreen Administration,
We members of the tutoring staff at the Evergreen Writing Center are writing today as part of a wider student movement to proclaim our solidarity with the 2.2 million citizens of Palestine currently under siege, as well as with Palestinian diaspora students, faculty, and staff at Evergreen and on campuses across the country. Israel’s present U.S.-backed campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza has already torturously murdered more than 30,000 innocent people, most of them women and children. Israel has demolished all of Gaza’s universities and has systematically executed its poets, academics, teachers, and students—like those we tutor every day, like us. As such, we implore Evergreen administration to take a stand—both in opposition to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians as well as in support of marginalized student voices. March 16th marks the twenty-first anniversary of the Israeli government’s 2003 murder of Evergreen student Rachel Corrie by bulldozer. Now more than ever, it is time for Evergreen as an institution to vocally oppose the normalized apartheid of the U.S.-backed genocidal Israeli state.
In addition to calling for a ceasefire, Evergreen administration must work to divest from financial entanglement with Israeli apartheid and the genocide of Palestinians. We implore the college to identify and remove Zionist-linked products and services from campus, and ethically it should refuse state funding until Washington state representatives have echoed our calls for ceasefire and divestment of tax dollars. As an institution of learning, it is in Evergreen’s best interests to show solidarity with our besieged Palestinian colleagues. Evergreen must condemn Israel’s documented murder of thousands of Palestinian students and teachers along with its assassination of Palestinian researchers and academics. Further, we hold that it is also our moral imperative, as an institution of the City of Olympia, to show solidarity with Rafah, our sister city, where 1.5 million Palestinians are currently trapped and being starved and bombed by Israeli forces. History shows us that those complicit in genocide are not judged lightly. As such, we affirm our total condemnation of the horrific campaign of colonial ethnic cleansing being carried out by the Israeli Occupation Forces with the financial, military, and political support of the United States. We urge the College itself to do the same.
Normalizing and overemphasizing Zionist perspectives has caused our campus to become an unsafe place for Muslim, SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African), and anti-Zionist Jewish students, staff, and faculty. We reject the conflation of Zionism with Judaism and Jewish Identity, and hold that such an assumption is fundamentally antisemitic, as it suggests that Jewish identity is grounded in the colonization and oppression of Palestinians—a notion that could not be more untrue. The promotion of this fundamentally colonialist, white supremacist, and Islamophobic viewpoint has not fostered community dialogue but has in fact suppressed student voices, especially those most in need of support from their administration in the face of unimaginable racial violence. In the name of “democratic discourse,” Evergreen policy has thus far proclaimed that the oppressed must share the stage with their oppressors, normalizing the position that colonization, genocide, and ethnic cleansing could possibly be justified. Concealing this imbalance behind a mirage of neutrality serves only to obscure what is in fact a searingly obvious issue of human rights. There are many things we can debate within the expansive worlds of academic theory and practice. Palestinians’ rights are not among them.
Considering this, the Evergreen administration must do more to protect, support, and uplift Palestinian, Muslim, and SWANA voices on campus. At the same time, pro-apartheid Zionist perspectives must be decentered, denormalized, and deplatformed. As part of this, we request that Summer 2024 offering “Many Israels” be canceled. The faculty and curriculum of this course are in signed connection to the Academic Engagement Network (AEN) and the Jewish Studies Zionist Network (JSZN), both propaganda groups which mobilize the notion of “academic freedom” to silence outcry against the oppression of Palestinians and promote voices favorable to the Israeli state. We must observe that “academic freedom” is not being upheld by projects that actively suppresses facts—such as the reality of Israeli apartheid and the present genocide—which are now affirmed by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the United Nations itself. AEN and JSZN have made clear through their statements how empty the common refrain to “academic freedom” is—in their usage it seems only to refer to the freedom of apartheid-supporters to spread their violent ideology without criticism.
Programs in support of colonialism simply should not exist; there is no way to present a pro-colonialist perspective without implicitly dehumanizing and encouraging hostility towards colonized peoples and voices. This implication of violence decisively places such ideologies as Zionism in direct opposition to Evergreen’s social contract, which guarantees all campus members “freedom from intimidation, violence and abuse.” We hold that to offer pro-Zionist coursework is an act that is fundamentally intimating and violent towards our Palestinian, Muslim, and SWANA community members. As such, we suggest a Palestine-Israel cultural anthropology alternative to be added in its place, with increased focus on Palestinian voices and the Palestinian struggle for liberation.
Finally, Evergreen must call out and be transparent around incidents of Islamophobia on our campus. A specific incident concerning an art space on campus, which was discussed in the February 2024 edition of the CPJ, implies that Muslim and SWANA individuals are not afforded equal freedom of expression on our campus. Evergreen must condemn this event, provide information to the public regarding the real presence of Islamophobia on campus, and present a plan to counter Islamophobia in our community.
A free Palestine is not a political question – it is our ethical obligation. The Writing Center stands in solidarity with oppressed students and writers on our campus. We stand with the people of Palestine, with students and writers around the world, and with all those who seek the liberation of knowledge and the establishment of a true, decolonized academic freedom. Finally, we would like to extend thanks to the students of the Master of Environmental Studies Student Association (MESA), for their resiliency and for sharing space, time, and energy with our staff in conversation around the impact of global events on our campus. May our voices be stronger together.
In Solidarity, The Writing Center
Evergreen Library
writingcenterstaff@evergreen.edu
