The Solidarity Question: Why is Palestine Important to Antiracist Student Organizing?

During the spring semester, AU’s Antiracist Research and Policy Center hosted a Lunch and Learn event titled The Solidarity Question: Why is Palestine Important to Antiracist Student Organizing? The event focused on pro-Palestine student organizing through an academic perspective, bringing in experts in history, social movement theory, and decolonial theory to engage in dialogue together and with students in attendance. This transcription is intended to be used as an archive for those who are interested and were not able to attend.

AU Students Advocating for “World Peace” Can’t Stop Fighting in Their Own Friend Groups

For these “open-minded” closed-hearted individuals, friends are just like their internships: stepping stones for a greater scheme. The slightest infraction from friend group policy is often totally unforgivable and must be punished, even by so-called prison abolitionists. Maybe I have an idealized view of the past, but I feel like during the Vietnam War, radical politics were about loving human life and connecting with your like-minded peers (and smoking weed). Now, it’s about getting mad at people for hanging out with someone that didn’t say hi to you once.

Campus, Culture, CurrentMatt RomanoFebruary 26, 2024American University, Student Organizations, activism

Most of Us Are Mad

Ask yourself: has the university admin already chosen a side?

Considering the death threat sent to a Palestinian faculty member and how there was not much done to protect Palestinian members of our community after this. Also consider how the admin has rarely mentioned the Palestinian community in their emails, while almost always, the Jewish community was mentioned at least a few times per email. Admin has already chosen a side. A side they cannot say out loud because they’re supposed to be “inclusive.” They even have chosen to reinvent the curriculum of AUx 2, and even getting the FBI involved. Has anything happened? Not that I’m aware of. Previously, it was all about racism and teaching us students at this PWI about what intersectionality is, to a point where we know what it is and it feels like they are covering their asses by saying “we force everyone to take a class that teaches them to be inclusive.”