QSAVE AMED AND END SYSTEMIC RACISM AT 

SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

Background:

     The San Francisco State University administration has tolerated and promoted egregious attacks against Arab, Muslim and Palestinians at SFSU. By suppressing and consistently opposing and thwarting the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) studies program and attacked its director and senior scholar, Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, SFSU Administrators have seriously undermined teaching Palestine and everything that it stands for at CSU, and by extension California and the United States. 

     Over the past 12 years, the SFSU administration has made it its mission to hinder the advancement of AMED Studies and torpedo the career of Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi. The University has withheld resources from the department, censored vital curriculum on Arab and Muslim communities, and most egregiously, has abetted the defamation of Dr. Abdulhadi by racist, heavily-funded Israel lobby groups such as the Lawfare Project, Academic Engagement Network, Stand with Us, Campus Watch/Middle East Forum, Canary Mission, Hillel, David Horowitz Freedom Center, and the AMCHA Initiative. These Israel lobby groups have falsely accused Dr. Abdulhadi and smeared her Palestine justice-centered scholarship, pedagogy and activism as “terrorism” and “antisemitism.” This is most tangibly evident through the shutdown of a university-sponsored open classroom, “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, and Resistance,” a virtual open classroom which brought students into conversation with a panel of international luminaries whose speech was described by SFSU President Lynn Mahoney as “abhorrent” and “deeply offensive.” The university's censorship of Dr. Abdulhadi does not only silence and repress Palestinian freedom narratives, but it deeply betrays SFSU's history of grassroots student anti-racist organizing, especially the 1968 longest student strike in US history led by the Black Student Union and the Third World Liberation Front. 

     SFSU's complicity with Zionist organizations, including the most recently reached agreement between the directors of advancement (fundraising) and diversity and inclusion, on one hand with Hillel, Hillel International and the Academic Engagement Network, on the other, exposes SFSU's Zionist bias and the cynical yet dangerous conflation between criticism of Israel and antisemitism. This collusion is evident in the targeted attacks against AMED at the expense of anti-Zionist Jews, Arab, Muslim and BIPOC communities, and thus can only be characterized as both racist and Islamophobic. These assaults must end immediately starting with a full investigation and including assurances of accountability of University officials who are responsible for these consistent and injurious actions. 

     Campus environments must be free from xenophobia, racism, sexism/genderism, ageism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. All campuses must support critical ethnic studies pedagogy such as that practiced by Dr. Abdulhadi, challenging all forms of systemic oppression. 

​THIS HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT HAS FORCED DR. RABAB ABDULHADI TO FILE LAWSUITS TO RIGHT THE WRONGS. 

FUNDRAISING:

WE ARE RAISING FUNDS TO COVER LEGAL DEFENSE COSTS FOR PROFESSOR ABDULHADI'S LAWSUITS AGAINST SFSU IN STATE AND FEDERAL COURT.  

​STRATEGIC OUTCOMES OF THE FILED LAWSUITS

1. 1) Defend Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi and affirm the administration’s commitment to community-centered pedagogy and assert complete support for the AMED program, by fully funding and resourcing the department. 

2. 2) End all collaboration and collusion between SFSU and Zionist organizations such as Hillel and the Academic Engagement Network (AEN), including the financial relationship between the University and these groups. 

3. 3) Assure that University administrators will be held accountable for their prejudicial and unethical actions that have poisoned the university community.

4. 4) Protect Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian faculty and students’ rights to teach and learn about Palestine and defend them from Zionist, Islamophobic and right-wing white supremacist attacks and smear campaigns.